They came from a trashy store on Hollywood Boulevard, the shoes, but the first sight of them spun me back to an infamous strip club in San Francisco. Clear Lucite platform heels — a stripper wardrobe staple, they were comfortable and, in a sleazy way, quite practical. But it was the pink glitter accented with the sparkling white heart appliqué that sold me. They looked like something an O’Farrell girl would wear.
The Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre, in San Francisco’s rundown Tenderloin district, was most widely known as a post-Flower Power bohemian hangout, where Hunter S. Thompson and other margin-dwelling luminaries would drop by to smoke pot and play cards with owners Jim and Artie Mitchell. I was never invited into the boss’s office with Jim and Artie, though — Jim was in prison for killing Artie with a rifle blast by the time I signed on to dance there.
Despite its old-school hippie associations, the O’Farrell Theatre was avant-garde in its elegance. It was the first strip club I saw that could authentically be described as beautiful, the crown jewel of the club’s many rooms being New York Live, where dancers would perform two-song sets bathed in a body-caressing pink spotlight on a gorgeous polished wood stage. Watching dancer after dancer sweep across that stage, her costume, mannerisms and music perfectly coordinated, I knew that in order to fit in and pull down significant cash, I would have to make an effort; I would have to put together something resembling a show. Under the older dancer’s tutelage, I learned to kick off my thong and catch it in one hand, how to flip upside down on the brass poles, and how to cultivate a workable persona. I wasn’t the sweet one, the popular one, the exotic one or — let’s be frank — the gorgeous one. I was the aspirational arty girl (still found today in clubs, wearing glasses with her Catholic school girl costume). For all the coaching, my costumes remained lame, hastily assembled affairs. Ambivalent about stripping, I was reluctant to commit to investing in decent gear. Why wear sparkling pink when scuffed, secondhand black would do? That final layer of professional polish evaded me.
So a few years later, when I snuck back into the business to write about it and needed to costume myself again, I couldn’t resist the shoes. By stripper standards, they were strictly utilitarian, but they felt like an homage. A shot at image rehab. A shot at stripper redemption.
If the New York Live stage was the elegant face of the club, the dressing room was the heart. Any businessman, Japanese tourist, curious married couple or sex-positive feminist could sit in the New York Live audience and lay down singles and plaudits, thinking they were part of the scheme, but the dressing room was sacrosanct. Strippers Only. Our job requirement was to be someone unreal, a hyper-sexualized girl who danced and deferred, but in the dressing room, we could be ourselves, neither distorted by fantasy nor brutalized by judgment. We could fix our makeup, wiggle our toes, count our money, goof around and just talk.
When you came in at the turnover between the day and night shifts, you’d save your spot at the red melamine dressing room counter by scrawling your stage name on the mirror in lipstick. Girls could leave out their custom-order rhinestoned gowns, their Borghese makeup cases, everything but tips and wallets, a remarkable contrast to dressing rooms at shadier clubs where even dirty panties would get stolen and the most you’d dare let lie around was a busted-up curling iron or your $3 Wet ‘n Wild powder compact.
What made that dressing room so special was that it was infused with the sex industry’s scarcest commodity: trust.
That trust fortified us against the seamier aspects of the job: the cover stories quickly conjured to sustain a double life, the burnout, the dirtbag customers who thought it was OK to show up for a lap dance with reeking hair and wandering hands, management favoritism, and ever-changing, ever-more-demanding club standards. There was something reassuring about slumping onto a dressing room stool on a bad night, tossing a fistful of sweaty singles on the red counter and groaning, “Oh my God,” and a girl inspecting her tan lines at the full-length mirror would roll her eyes and say, “I know, right?”
Not every dancer could armor herself through camaraderie, however. I saw women positively implode, from drugs, the weight of deadbeat lovers, or death by a thousand surgical cuts, like one girl, who at 23 had already had a phenol peel on her face and showed up to work a week after having her breast implants swapped out for the third time, strange incisions below her nipples bound up with clear suture like fishing line.
At 26, I forced myself to move on from the O’Farrell, feeling ancient and emotionally exhausted by an elemental sex work paradox: It’s hard to feel like you’re simultaneously above the job and trapped in it.
Starting with a single phone call a couple years ago, one reconnection led to another, and now dozens of us are back in touch. Turns out tragic endings have been few and far between — in fact, the most jarring loss was Jim Mitchell himself, who died of heart failure in 2007. Since our dancing days, we’ve gained husbands, partners, kids, careers, college degrees, spiritual practices and homes, each wild child all grown up. I’m proud that our lives are so blessedly ordinary because what we have now is more fulfilling. Because after years of toiling in chaos, we deserve this peace. Because we survived. I will never look back on stripping as the best days of my life, but these women and I shared a unique crucible, strangely glamorous yet impossible to glorify. And our youth? We burned it at both ends, cowboy.
How funny that, of all my stripper memories, the club I most vividly remember is not the notorious establishment in which I worked, but the sisterhood that formed inside it. In a business built on fleeting fantasy and illusion, that kinship is the one thing that has lasted over time.
The shoes maintain permanent residence in my stripper trunk now stowed in the basement. Once in a while I take them out, put them on and do a turn or two. The pink glitter sparkles in the light that shines through the windows of my suburban home, the click of Lucite heels on the hardwood floor an elegy. Like stripping, the shoes are horrible and brilliant, tacky and gorgeous, dangerous and common, and, still, irrefutably part of who I am. I will never throw out these shoes because they remind me of the women who inspired me to buy them. These shoes remind me that before they walked into history, they stood for something real.
I’ve only once woken up screaming. It was because I’d seen a ghost.
About 10 years ago, I was lying in the bedroom of my house in Cheyenne, Wyo., an old place that used to be workmen’s lodging down by the Union Pacific railroad station. I wasn’t in a deep sleep, more like that murky in-between state as slumber comes in for a landing. I opened my eyes halfway. In the doorway of the bedroom, a young man stood staring at me. Was he 15? Was he 20? Dressed in work clothes from the 1930s, of humble posture, he was there — I will never forget those eyes — yet I could see straight through him. Frightened to my core, I sat up, screaming until my boyfriend shook me. “What? What?”
“There was a boy over there! He was standing right there.”
“No one else is here but us,” he told me. “You were dreaming.”
But I wasn’t. The shock and fear left me shaking, but most disturbing was the physical sensation. I hadn’t just seen this ghost boy; I had felt him. Sorrow, loss, loneliness. It was as if he was saying, I’m lost. Help me. I need to be seen.
I kept the bathroom light on all night for a month, maybe more, my eyes trained on that doorway. If I was going up the stairs in the dark, I would climb quickly, two steps at a time, as if someone, or something, was chasing me.
Growing up, a gory Halloween costume or haunted house could scare the daylights out of me, but I’d always been skeptical about ghosts and spirits. When I was 20, a hardened realist — and an atheist, to boot — broadened my mind. At the epicenter of the Bay Area punk scene in the ’80s and ’90s was a guy named Tim Yohannon. A product of the ’60s counterculture’s angry edge, he was punk rock’s own paterfamilias, a graying, squatty Azerbaijani Humphrey Bogart. He taunted vegetarians. He smoked about 8,000 Benson and Hedges a day. Like much of my peace-punk cohort, I loved and looked up to Tim. He was generous, and in the midst of the crazy punk scene, he radiated sanity. Once, when we were driving along a winding Marin County road on the way back from a day at Stinson Beach, our hair sticky with sea salt, he told me that once, when staying at a nearby bed and breakfast, he’d seen a ghost. He was jolted awake by a strange voice hissing “TIM!” He opened his eyes to see a mean-looking disembodied head, floating there. He and his girlfriend dropped the key at the front desk and fled. I thought, if a realist — a non-believer no less — could encounter the supernatural, then maybe there was something to it.
In 1998, Tim died after a lengthy battle with lymphoma. While it is painful to lose a friend in any capacity, the loss of a role model is particularly acute. A sharp pain as the light draws down on a certain phase of your life — the end of an era, indeed. But slowly, he faded from memory, supplanted by more immediate losses — my father, a grandmother. Then last year, I went through a bout of insomnia. Work, as usual, was keeping me up at night, worse than ever.
As I stared at the laptop screen, the glow of the blank page insulting my eyes, I kept hearing Tim’s voice in my head: “Be punk rock about it!” It bedeviled me. Not the sentiment; I got what it meant: Be bold. Leave a blistering mark. But the voice’s persistence. Why now? I hadn’t thought about him in, honestly, years. Yet, if the voice in my head was to be believed, it was as if he never left. Fully inhabited by the idea of him, I went downstairs to the kitchen for a drink of water. Then I drifted to the back door and opened it. I stood on the creaking old wood porch, dry-rotted wood on the door sill flaking under my feet, and tilted back my chin. The night was perfectly clear, no moon, the October air acutely sharp.
I looked up into the center of the starry sky and held out my arms, “OK, fine, Tim. If you’re really there, then prove it.” At that moment, a small but brilliant meteor streaked brightly across midheaven. The hairs at the base of my neck got all tickly and tears sprung up in my eyes. I felt as if I’d risen from my body, weightless. My breath whooshed out of me. “Cool,” I said, to no one.
Lit up inside, I went back into the house, and powered through my assignment. There was something inspiring about what seemed like a paranormal visitation from an avowed atheist. Maybe it was his way of saying, “Hey, I was wrong. There’s more.” And a command performance in the sky: There was a wit to it. I know some people will insist that meteor was a coincidence, but I insist that it wasn’t. And unlike my first brush with the Otherworld, I felt no fear whatsoever. Though the living Tim would have hated this particular expression, I felt blessed.
I’ve shared these experiences with people from time to time, and I’ve found that by admitting supernatural experience, a floodgate opens: A friend who swears he smells his grandfather’s pipe whenever he’s in danger — a car about to serve in front of his bike, a branch overhead threatening to break, when he’s hiking alone. A widow who is sure her husband tells her where she’s put misplaced objects. These stories are often shared in the dead of night, when conversation veers off-grid, toward the realm of the unexpected. Maybe such topics are more welcome in the safety of darkness. I am only too happy to miss sleep to hear them. We’re so rarely invited into each other’s interior lives, and if you tell me that a departed loved one makes his or her presence known, I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re lucky.
Do ghosts and spirits really exist? Sometimes, I still take that question into my backyard. With the fragile faith of the near-converted, I stare at the night sky, waiting, thinking about the ghosts in my life. How much of their vaporous presence is genuine, and how much is a trick of the mind, a fondest wish or worst fear manifest? It’s hard to say. While I’m far from a state of certainty, there are a couple of things I believe in my heart: that there are more possibilities out there than we could ever fully imagine. And I’m no longer afraid of the dark.
Lily Burana is the author of three books, most recently “I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles.”
“God” is a loaded word. “God” is a loaded gun. Of all the taboo talk points — sex, politics, religion and money, it’s God that clears the room quickest. But earlier this week, when the subject came up on the Facebook page of beloved Gothic novelist Anne Rice, it drew a sizable crowd.
“Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out,” Rice wrote.
I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious and deservedly infamous group. For 10 years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else … In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.
The Rice controversy has offered many frustrated progressive Christians an entry point into a crowded conversation about faith. I think it’s more than just coincidence that in the days prior to Rice’s post, Facebook was dotted with “likes” for the group “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.” There’s something in the air about this.
Interestingly, Rice is running out for all the reasons that I’m running back in, called to a fiery, deeply felt place where rage and devotion intersect. I, too, resent the way homophobic, misogynist, hypocritical and otherwise unbearable people are laying claim to “true” Christianity. But unlike Anne, I don’t want to punt. I want to fight.
I was baptized Presbyterian at the font of a stone church in 1980. Presbyterianism is marked by a freakish work ethic, austerity, an emphasis on education and, relative to other Christian denominations, a pronounced liberalism. As far as righteousness goes, a sort of sliding-scale spirituality prevails — more if you can, less if you can’t. There’s always a sense that forgiveness and regeneration are within reach. In a nod to Presbyterian gender equality, my eldest sister became a minister and has been for the past 22 years. In a show of characteristic thrift, my father once generated several pews’ worth of laughter by making change from the church collection plate, swapping his $20 bill for three fives.
At some point when I wasn’t looking — I was distracted by punk rock, alt.feminism or maybe yoga — the dominant tenor of Christianity became almost unbearably shrill. As America in general became more stratified along religious and political lines, I slunk to the margins, caring less and less. Now, something rebellious and itchy has awoken in me, and I care a lot. Despite the frequent impulse to just keep quiet and hope that someone will rescue Christianity for the rest of us, I want to engage. Even if I have to start a lot of sentences with “I’m a Christian, but…” Even if I end up sounding like a two-bit Anne Lamott with anger-management issues.
After all, the self-satisfied and self-righteous have come for me, too: “YOU, a Christian? With those politics? With that past? Not with those go-go shorts, missy, your Queer Nation stickers, your unrepentant cursing, and your premarital everything.” I knew they’d show up, those stingy, uncharitable moral goalkeepers, with their underlined passages in Leviticus and their pointy-finger God. It just ain’t a Jesus party without this particular turd in the spiritual punchbowl. Maybe it’s the believer’s rite of passage — until you’ve encountered this type and had them declare a fundamental component of your identity an “abomination,” you kind of haven’t lived. The challenge is to have your faith tested this way and not blink.
But private moments of grace shore up my belief, no matter what any Christian Grinch might proclaim. When my grandmother was in hospice care, in the final stages of metastasized liver cancer, my mother called everyone to Baltimore for a final visit. Seeing my once-industrious, stylish grandmother shrunken and dwindling with disease was crushing. Her mind shutting down, as well as her body, she drifted through periods of delirium. From her hospital bed, yoked to tubes and machines, she’d try to bolt from the room, fleeing an invisible attacker, or take an imaginary phone call: Hello? What number did you dial? Then, out of a period of silence, she turned her face, pale but still pink, to my mother and addressed her with perfect lucidity. “I just wanted to say ‘thank you.’” And my mother replied, kind and plain, “You’re very welcome.” To hear that soothing maternal voice, the one that comforted me as a child, turned on her own mother was the greatest gift. It let me know that among the kidney-shaped plastic bins for spitting up blood and ever-increasing morphine drips, God was in the room, too. A sublime memory that can both wreck and revive me all at once. I’ve had, also, examples of grace so stupidly obvious that a Hollywood hack would be embarrassed to claim them: One cold April day, when I was broke, drag-ass depressed, my marriage on the verge of cratering, I was driving, and heard, for the first time, Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus Take the Wheel,” a song about a woman so desperate, she turned her entire life over to God. After I wiped my eyes with napkins I’d stashed in the glove box, I thought, Well, that was a little on the nose, don’t you think, Lord?
Elegant or corny as the messages may be, they are consistent, well-timed and appreciated. They’ve enabled me to say, authentically, that I don’t fear God. But that doesn’t mean I judge those who do, or that I judge those who are just too sick of people being cruel in his name to put much stock in believing. There is no hell like man-made hell, no sting worse than rebuke in the name of God, and some of us never recover from being told that we’re not straight enough. Not obedient enough. Not submissive enough. Not pure enough. So they quit. When you want that gentle, open-armed Jesus with the soft eyes and lambs and love, only to be refused, over and over with “Not. Good. Enough,” it’s hard not to internalize it, this belief that you’re unworthy of God’s gracious care. If you’ve grown weary of being told you come up short, you may settle for stepping out of the way of the roundhouse kicks. You’re too bruised and tired to hear a safe voice saying, “Come back!” Salvation as the prize in this carnival isn’t worth another throw.
Of course, it is said that Christians, not Christianity, are the problem. I’ll give an Amen to that. I’ve had to devise ways to deal with the frustration born of small-mindedness and stupidity in the clown suit of righteousness. When I think people suck too much to justify a belief in God and all his mangy disciples, power ballads call me home. I sit alone, agitated and pulled apart by cynicism, blasting my praise music playlist on repeat until the beauty hammers me back into place. Some days I rely entirely on “Bring the Rain” by MercyMe, which starts off with the line: “I can count a million times people asking me how I can praise you with all that I’ve gone through.” There’s crashing drums and heart-quickening gospel voices on backup at the climax. My idea of joyful noise. A thousand hymns belched from church organ pipes couldn’t come close.
I believe that a relationship with the church, like all relationships that sear your soul, will never be perfect. But I’m not going to flee the church because someone else thinks they know who belongs there. Religion can be freighted with heartache, disappointment, uncomfortable adjustment and the dreary slog through the vale of tears. But I believe we can fashion the pieces of a broken heart into a new shape of belief. I’d rather endure the contortions of worship than suffer the bone-dry refuge of refusal or a spiritual life half-lived.
And I believe that, in her way, Anne Rice is saying the same. While I’m not moved to join her, I sure don’t blame her. I was touched that she cared enough to come right out and say that she was willing to renounce organized religion as her high-dive act of faith. I hate that it had to come to this for her, but I’m grateful for what it has lit up in me. If that’s what it takes to praise you, by all means, Jesus, bring the rain.
Lily Burana is the author of three books, most recently “I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles.” Her all-time favorite Jesus jam is Kutless’ “Word of God Speak.”
I confess: I don’t get George Clooney. He’s a looker, yes. A talent and a wit. But still, no. Ditto other obvious celebrity-crush choices like Johnny Depp, Justin Timberlake, Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell, David Beckham, Dylan McDermott, Taye Diggs and John Mayer.
When I crave a little fantasy, I dream about a 6-foot-2 fuzz-face with a posh English accent and a penchant for New Orleans blues and the Triumph Bonneville. Who’s this, you say? Why, none other than the latest inductee into the Order of the British Empire, actor Hugh Laurie, aka Dr. Gregory House, lead curmudgeon on Fox’s medical drama “House,” which closes out its third season Tuesday night.
I know I’m not the only one. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that Laurie has become the zeitgeist obsession for the smarty-pants set — partly because of the obvious lures (talent, wealth, looks) and partly because unlike, say, Clooney or Farrell, he’s a good lust objet for those of us who fancy ourselves “above” such fixations. He has that refined air, that admitted tendency toward melancholia. He’s soulful, clever, quirky yet out of reach. Add a touch of sexual ambiguity for good measure, and every alterna-doofus wants to be Laurie’s own personal love pony. (Or have him be theirs. Objectification — it’s a big tent!) Laurie is the grown-up version of your teenage Morrissey crush, perfect for those of us who sexually imprinted on this type of hunky British gloomster in adolescence.
To many people, Hugh is House, and House is Hugh, though those who know Laurie point out that he’s quite different from the character he plays. Constantly described as “brilliant but flawed,” House speaks to the part of us that wants to believe that we are so amazing, people will withstand our dread obnoxiousness to bask in our brainy, radiant glow. And his tossed-off zingers reinforce the notion that it’s cool to be a dick — as long as you’re a quotable dick. Plus, it’d be awesome to pull down a solid six figures showing up for work in assed-up jeans and a Joy Division T-shirt, as House does. And there’s a vicarious thrill (and some hope) in seeing someone limping into their late 40s, drug addled and cranky yet still able to make young hotties go gaga.
Hit a fan-fiction site and you’ll find tons of fans tapping out scenes between Dr. House and every other major character on the show: pretty princess/doctor Allison Cameron, tough-as-nails hospital administrator Lisa Cuddy and, most heatedly, Dr. James Wilson, played perfectly by sweet-faced Broadway emeritus Robert Sean Leonard. I’d be happy to see a little polymorphous perversity on a hospital drama, but personally, I think Wilson’s altar-boy countenance and boundless compassion would quickly have House bored out of his mind and taking his cane to Wilson’s knee in a fit of misplaced frustration. But hey, we’re in Crushville here — chacun à son ‘ship.
I’m on Team Cuddy because she clicks through the halls of the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital in low-cut sweaters and pencil skirts, bringing incredible Jewy glamour to prime time. The show’s creators are smart enough to keep House’s romantic fate a mystery by pitching different prospects at him, including a nutritionist played by the delectable Piper Perabo, who just so happens to be my other celebrity lovebug; therefore, I must insist to the writing team that House keep his lecherous paws off the coltish miss. Seriously. Go dream up some lonely Princeton student-cum-dominatrix with eczema or acid reflux and let House follow her around.
My Laurie fixation started when I caught him on “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” and realized he wasn’t American, despite the 100 percent convincing accent on “House.” Impressive! This prompted me to start poking around online, and between what I found on Google and YouTube, I was soon stacking up layers of infatuation the way a master baker diligently assembles a tiered cake: The comedic firmament; the befuddled looks and killer thighs; the decades-long friendship with Stephen Fry, who is a comic God unto me. I pieced together randomly mined bits of Laurie goodness, then there we were at the top of the luv cake: Me and Hugh. Hugh and Me. Grinning, waving.
Mostly what appeals is his hilarious self-deprecation. Despite the fact that his former Cambridge classmate and girlfriend, Emma Thompson, once described Laurie as “one of those rare people who manages to be lugubriously sexy, like a well-hung eel,” he doesn’t agree. He told Britain’s Now magazine: “I recently did a shower scene and it was one of the most traumatic events of my life. It struck me as a misuse of resources because the producers have gone to the trouble of hiring young, beautiful people with smooth skin and high bottoms and they go and pick the old guy with buns of yogurt.” I like this. If you’re going to self-lacerate, at least be kind of fun about it.
I’m in favor of any form of distraction that doesn’t result in liver damage, a broken marriage, consumer debt or excessive weight gain, so I heartily enjoy the rush of that exquisitely modern guiltless pleasure known as the Google stalk. Through the magic of the Web, I’ve learned this about Laurie: He’s a Gemini! With many planets in Leo! His late father was a doctor, and he thinks New Age medicine is stupid! He picked Ian Dury’s “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” as one of his desert-island discs in the 1990s! At this point, I could take a medal in Laurie trivia. Speaking of medals … did you know that Laurie’s father won a gold medal in rowing in the 1948 London Olympics and Laurie himself rowed at Cambridge?
It’s not all cyber hunt-and-peck, though, this fascination. I have a fantasy relationship with him as well. We have cute nicknames for each other, like Sexy Trousers and Kinky Boots. On rainy nights, I sit by the piano while he’s at the keys, busting out the Brit-rock equivalent of blue-eyed soul, long fingers teasing out tortured ballads. David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” followed by a Paul Weller sampler: “The Bitterest Pill,” “Long Hot Summer,” the original version of “The Paris Match,” with perfect elocution on the French bits. When we’re apart, the mailman delivers a steady supply of brown-papered parcels. One week, it’s two dozen Cadbury Dairy Milk bars, the next week, Leadbelly on vinyl. Then two airline tickets to Bali, where we douse ourselves in 400 SPF sunscreen and hide our pasty asses in the shade. (His wife is given special dispensation to do whatever she wants during our idyll, while my husband is promised a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” getaway with Lisa from QVC.)
I’m not blind to the fact that this passion can’t possibly translate to real life. Even if we were both single (and we are both so not), we’d be doomed. Two self-loathing, guilt-laden Presbyterians in one relationship is the worst possible redundancy — we’d implode in a black hole of repression and “No, no, after you” politesse before we even started. Just meeting him would be a disaster. I’m sure I’d say something fannish and stupid, like, “I think virtually every pop song can be improved by the addition of a Hammond organ, don’t you?” While infatuation taps into our escapist needs, it also brings out our inner 14-year-old, and that’s never a socially graceful creature, is it?
Some might say, what’s the point of fancying someone if there’s no move to follow through? But not following through is precisely the point. Stasis is the very essence of the crush; it’s not supposed to go anywhere. Must we be so damn American in our affections? I’m already too goal-oriented as it is — relentlessly doing stuff, acquiring things, making changes. When it comes to crushing, I’m content to just let it be. To allow my fondness for my fantasy Hugh to remain purely indulgent.
In fact, I may have to do even less than I’m doing now, if I want my fantasy to survive. If I continue to Google up and consume every bit of news and trivia, I may have to face the fact that His Hughness is not as perfect in reality as he is in my imagination and my Web browser. So I’ve resolved to stop the stalking. Instead, I will get no closer than late-night reruns on the USA Network. Because some things should remain sacred. Celebrity crushes may twist and wither under reality’s harsh light, but they can always be sustained by the sanctifying loop of syndication.
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Politics is a cruel mistress. If Jack Ryan were a masochist instead of an exhibitionist, he might be having the time of his life right now. The 44-year-old Illinois Republican is the latest politico to taste scandal’s lash, and it’s left the poor guy battered and bruised. In fact, the multimedia drubbing has cost the Harvard-educated aspirant and millionaire his senatorial bid: Friday, the AP announced that he has withdrawn from the Illinois Senate race.
Sucks to be him.
It all started Monday when Ryan’s divorce records were unsealed. His ex-wife, “Boston Public” and “Star Trek: Voyager” actress Jeri Ryan, 36, alleged therein that during their eight-year marriage, Mr. Ryan took her to sex clubs in New York, New Orleans and Paris. Ms. Ryan claims her then-husband encouraged her to engage in sexual activity with him while another couple watched. Eager to protect his self-interest, his career and his 9-year-old son, Mr. Ryan denied her claims, calling them “ridiculous” and “smut,” but still, the flames were fanned on this scandale erotique, and Ryan’s political career just might be over for good.
Ask your average, everyday sexpert how Ryan’s alleged exhibitionist streak ranks on the 1-to-10 kink scale and they’d give it a blasé 5. But by milquetoast network media standards, it’s pretty hot stuff. Throw a foxy celebrity wife into the mix, and you’ve got all the makings of a month’s worth of wire stories and late-show monologue jokes. What makes it so fascinating? Is it the whiff of coercion? The frisson of kink? The thought of a parent having a non-procreative sexual urge? No. The Triple-X factor that takes this peccadillo over the top is that Ryan is a politician. The much-manicured image of the political type is clean-cut and old-fashioned — the earnest cowboy, the forthright soccer dad, the buttoned-up do-right kind of guy. His presumed position in sex? Strictly missionary.
There’s always petitioning from the sexual fringe to be out with one’s erotic whims, whips, chains and all, but such open-book policy never works outside the utopian bubble of, say, a liberal arts college, the Omega Institute or Santa Cruz, Calif. That privacy carries the day is largely for the good; there’s an integrity and dignity to sexual discretion that anyone can appreciate. The downside, however, is that we have very little idea of what kind of sex “normal” people desire and have (plenty of which falls outside the missionary zone). This basic ignorance is the agar in which sex scandals are grown. If it were common knowledge that yes, even accomplished, ambitious men (and women) on the Hill might favor sexual experimentation, then maybe we could focus on what really matters. Desire isn’t partisan, kink knows no party line, and neither is germane when it comes to gauging one’s leadership potential.
For such a sex-obsessed populace, Americans are oddly prudish when it comes to politics. We’re always shocked, shocked to hear some libidinal blip from Washington. (Maybe because wonks and politicos look so unsexy, all neckties, immobile anchor-dude hair and pit-stained campaign trail button-downs. And those ladies in their serious suits. Bleah. It’s the one uniform we haven’t fetishized — perhaps for good reason.) But the whole “No sex, please, we’re politicians” shtick is constantly sent-up as the farce that it is, from Monicagate to books like Shawna Kenney’s “I Was a Teenage Dominatrix,” in which Ms. Kenney works her way through American University on the latex catsuit plan (with some high-profile D.C. clients), to the blogging of Washingtonienne, (aka Jessica Cutler), in which the young aide to Republican Sen. Mike de Wine chronicled her sometimes-paid liaisons with various Beltway types. Given the abundance of evidence to the contrary, it’s hard to believe we cling so tightly to the mutually agreed-upon fiction that the power of politics remains beyond the reach of the power of sex. As if the American public were 280-plus million lily-whites rendered apoplectic by the very idea of sexual diversity. As if Capitol Hill were as chaste as a convent. As if one must be Boy Scout-pure to kick ass in public office. (Hello, Jefferson. Hello, JFK.)
If this were the story of an abused or betrayed ex-wife, that would be one thing, a mark on Mr. Ryan’s character that would be of some political merit. (“If that’s how a politician treats his wife, how might he treat his constituents?”) But Ms. Ryan has stated that neither she nor her son was physically harmed, she believes Mr. Ryan was faithful during their marriage, that he is “a good man, a loving father” and that she has “no doubt that he will make an excellent senator.” Sounds like the sex-club fiasco was basically a case of incompatible taste, with some ham-handed clueless guy “encouragement” tossed in. Mr. Ryan was right to point out that he didn’t break any laws, any vows or any Commandments. Sure, his oafish, coercive behavior (if allegations are true) could destroy a marriage. But should mere allegations of same destroy a career?
How political can a personal life become? How long until every politician’s ISP records are dredged up, and every visit to www.bootlicker.com or www.gigglytoplessteens.net is counted up and trotted out as political fodder? Is it only a matter of time until every horny IM, cam-photo and e-mail is snared for future torpedo power? It’s as if the PATRIOT Act and the Meese Report got together and had a nosy little baby. Boy, I’d hate to see this monster when it grows up.
In BDSM, participants use a safe word, something they can utter when the play gets too heavy or they otherwise need to stop — maybe “red” or “uncle” or “quit.” It’s an agreed-upon word that brings the scene to a dead halt, a necessary measure for safety and sanity. Too bad there isn’t a political equivalent, something you can call out to curb the pointless scandal-mongering and silly, sexually ignorant attacks. The perfect word in such a situation might just be “enough.”
Who hasn’t gone through a period in their adult life when they thought about sex and then thought, “Eh, why bother?” There are many compelling reasons to have sex — the need for affection, arousal, the desire to get pregnant, to get off, to get over someone by getting under someone else. Sex can be sublime and meaningful, or at the very least, something to do to pass the time. Sometimes, though, it just doesn’t seem worth the effort — either the motivations aren’t clear, the feelings aren’t there or the potential hurt and disappointment outweigh any potential heat-of-the-moment benefit.
Is celibacy a solution for sexual ennui and confusion?
Author Donna Marie Williams thinks so. In her book, “Sensual Celibacy: The Sexy Woman’s Guide to Using Abstinence for Recharging Your Spirit, Discovering Your Passions, Achieving Greater Intimacy in Your Next Relationship,” she makes a case for consciously curtailing sexual activity for better peace of mind. Not that everyone needs that. We all know that some people can just naturally balance love, sex, work, family, friendship and spiritual growth. Others, however, find that time and time again, their lives are totally eaten up by their romantic and sexual pursuits — even when they’re certain to be dead ends. Those are the people Williams is trying to reach in part because she’s been there herself.
Williams, a stunning 40-ish African-American woman, is candid enough to admit, “I had no identity or sense of worth outside my male-female relationships.” Without several periods of celibacy, she writes that she “could never have developed identity and self-worth within a relationship. I needed the time alone. Although I perceived celibacy as sexual famine and karmic punishment, the times alone were gold mines of opportunities to discover the real me.”
Williams is hardly the lone wolf of modern celibacy — her contemporaries include authors Wendy Shalit (“The Return to Modesty”) and Wendy Keller (“The Cult of the Born-Again Virgin: How Single Women Can Reclaim Their Sexuality”). While statistics about the increase in celibacy-by-choice are sketchy at best (none of the aforementioned authors can cite a definitive study), its proponents insist that a whole lot of people are opting out of sex, and that an “underground movement” is indeed afoot.
The rise in American fundamentalism — Jewish, Christian and Islamic — is no doubt fueling much of the new passion for celibacy. From screaming girls at Christian rock concerts claiming they are reborn virgins to Shalit’s orthodox long-skirted “refusniks,” pockets of women are being touted in the media as scions of a new sexual conservativism. But what’s interesting is that none of these writers comes from a religious perspective. They may admire the attitudes of certain religions toward erotic restraint but they’re not practicing religious people themselves.
Is this the rise of a celibacy that defies its spiritual roots? In the past, celibacy has been a tool for transcendence to another world — a way of getting away not only from the body but the self as well. But without its religious underpinnings, celibacy becomes a different kind of tool. For Williams it’s a tool to self-knowledge; for Keller and Shalit it’s a tool to make men behave until the right guy comes along. All three women argue that it is often a path to higher self-esteem.
When you consider the visibility and cultural weight that the sex-positive feminist ideology had in the early ’90s, it makes sense that now women who are more inclined to show their sexual power via restraint should step up to have their say. Unlike Shalit, who in her book lapses into predictable soapbox dismissal of all those icky exhibitionist women, Williams doesn’t dis her more sexually active sisters. Instead, she focuses on creating guidelines for women who wish to redirect their attention from all-consuming sexual relationships to themselves. With that goal in mind, she outlines a Dating Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for Sensual Celibates.
Every woman:
Has the right to pursue love, liberty, and happiness.Must have a strong sense of her own boundaries.
Must have the courage of her convictions.
Must respect a man’s decision if he doesn’t want to abstain from sex.
Has the right to forgiveness if she falls off the wagon.
Has the right to date as many men as she can manage.
Has the duty to continue her self-improvement program whether or not she is in a relationship with a man.
Much of the book follows in the same self-help vein. She offers the affirmations, quotes, exercises and personal testimony that we’ve come to expect in the Oprah age. She also lays out the different manifestations of contemporary celibacy — from Ten Commandment Celibates (people who are saving themselves for marriage) to Healing Celibates (people who abstain to heal from past sexual trauma) to Technical Celibates (women who are involved with someone but refrain from actual sexual intercourse).
While such celibacy trends are largely espoused by, and aimed at, women, Williams also mentions the more elusive trend toward male celibacy. The stigma for celibate men is greater, for obvious reasons. So much of male power is equated with male sexual potency (virility, frequency and so on), that any man who is not a member of an abstaining religious order is seen as something of a social mutant if he consciously abstains. Still, Williams maintains that men can be healed by celibacy just as much as women.
“Sensual Celibacy” is the benchmark of quality counsel for the would-be celibate — recommended reading for anyone who is considering putting away the black satin sheets and bachelor- or bachelorette-pad music for a period of erotic introspection.
Where Williams comes across as a reasonable, earthy friend, Keller, author of “The Cult of the Born-Again Virgin: How Single Women Can Reclaim Their Sexuality” sounds like a cheesy celibacy guru twittering out platitudes at a seminar held at the Red Roof Inn in hell.
Never mind that the writing in Keller’s book smacks of self-important inanity (“Saying nice things about yourself and others TO yourself and others is like putting Miracle-Gro on the flowers in your soul”); her solipsism and lack of cogent thought are downright insulting.
Consider her pitch for personal responsibility and motivation. First she likens an affection-starved woman with bad sexual habits to a bum, then she extends her metaphor obscenely:
Billions of dollars are funneled into the social services every year. If the bum really, really, really wanted a place to sleep, a shower, and a warm meal, not only could he go to a shelter, but he also could choose to get free training in job skills, break the cycle of drugs or alcohol (if applicable) and find work … The bum could choose a different life if he wanted. At any moment, he could decide his life isn’t working for him and move physically to create emotional changes in his life.Thank you for that informed, compassionate analogy, Newt.
It’s unclear whether Keller advocates celibacy (or, in her terms, “being a Born-Again Virgin”) for reasons of self-preservation, healing, image enhancement, being a presentable role model for your children or just holding out for the “right” man. What is clear is that she sees the world in a profoundly hierarchical way. At times, she invents an entire cosmology based on celibacy:
Different levels of varying kinds separate people on this planet. In this new millennium, we need to be very clear about the psychospiritual caste system we have collectively created. It appears that the people who are ready to honor their bodies and their hearts by choosing appropriate sexual encounters for themselves are the ones who are moving most quickly to the highest planes of existence.In her pitch for modesty and sexual control, Keller shows scarce intellectual control, indulging in gushy New-Ageism one moment and overwrought arguments on behalf of women’s liberation the next. Like Shalit, she propounds the theory (often quoting Shalit chapter and verse like a prophet) that feminism has made young women more emotionally and sexually weak than centuries of unequal treatment between the sexes. Most outrageously, Keller links women’s liberation with increased sex crimes and petty harassment. “We now accept we must be afraid of rape, stalking, harassment, and in every other way used, manipulated, discarded and unloved,” she writes. “We literally have created our own bed and now we lie in it.”
Despite such absurd leaps in logic, Keller’s loopy self-righteousness speaks to the heart of the so-called cult of the reborn virgin. Although she doesn’t seem to be a Bible thumper and she never inveighs against premarital sex, she nevertheless is a missionary, even if she isn’t much of a thinker. Beneath her soothing self-help salves, it’s clear she wants to spread the word and build a movement. Just as feminists like Germaine Greer espoused sexual libertinism for all women, so too these moralistic proponents of celibacy push it as the best possible solution. But that’s just the problem. Sex movements — especially those aimed at curing female ills — often seem to be more based upon the private needs and desires of their leaders than their usefulness or value to all people. Ultimately, how and when and if we have sex remain deeply private, idiosyncratic choices. They defy simple formulations of good and bad, healthy and sick, spiritual and base.
In a world of profoundly conflicting messages about — and consequences surrounding — female sexuality, it’s easy to get frustrated and just opt out of the whole enterprise. But while celibacy may seem like a safe boat for someone in a sexual identity crisis, the problem doesn’t always lie within the act — or suggestion — of sex itself. Identity is dynamic — how you see yourself is most of it, but how other people see you is also, to some degree, part of who you are. Many women still feel damned if they do and damned if they don’t. In some cases, perhaps the problem isn’t so much sexual activity as environment. Therefore, the solution might be more a matter of positioning than abstaining. Weeding out hectoring, judgmental anti-sex jerks on the one hand or sleazy manipulators on the other might be just as effective in recovering one’s dignity.
Celibacy is a perfectly valid means of sexual expression. Sometimes refusing sexual activity says more about your self-respect and sense of worth than the most extravagant erotic acrobatics. If only its advocates were so reliably eloquent. The benefits of celibacy — focus, moral rectitude, healing — can be all-too-easily distorted from personal choice into political platform. That, in and of itself, is a caveat to consider when deciding whether or not to Just Say No. Let the impetus be a sense of propriety, not self-righteousness.
Lily Burana's shoes are pictured above 
Blue toned picture a a young boy silhouetted by the light falling through an old window. Has film grain at ful size.(Credit: Duncan P Walker) 
