The bitch is rich!

I got my first royalty check ever today: 895 whole dollars, US.
I still owe money to the publishers of my other two books; the difference is that they paid advances. U of Iowa Press, publisher of The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, did not. So I have nearly $900 free and clear. The book is in its second printing. The only way to go is up.

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Red and Black

As a kid, it seemed that everyone else had gotten the guidebook. The other kids knew what it meant, for example, when someone asked if you were a Texan or an Aggie. They knew whether it was polite to eat fried chicken with your hands during school lunch. (They did not hunch down and eat behind their lunch kits.) They knew what the raised middle finger meant ("something about those bathroom things," H guessed in 6th grade, and I wasn't sure whether he was close or not) and how the car blinker knew when to go on. They knew what game we were playing when we wore bibs called pinneys and stood in front of "goals." They also understood Red and Black, which was a ritual at summer camp, the reason red and black bandanas were on our packing list, along with t-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes.

I think the whole camp was divided in half, and we won team points by doing activities. I barely remember, but I know I was confused. I didn't understand the purpose. I have an inkling of the purpose now: It was the last week of camp, so Red and Black got everyone all excited, knocking them out of complacency or boredom; it was a way to meet kids in other bunks and bond with them; it inculcated us into the dog-eat-dogness of the Military Industrial Complex awaiting our older selves. Red stood for Red, and Black for Black--we weren't talking Socialism and Anarchy.

And yet, the paradox is that Red and Black week was all about the communal. The Red Team worked together (I guess, but it must have been unwieldy) and so did the Black. We're talking about that sacred American institution, the team. Team spirit. Team player. The alleged ethos of our camp was carved out on a board nailed over the entrance to the mess hall: God-1, You-2, Me-3. The individual wasn't that important. Your friends were. Your teammates.

I can't remember being on a team, a real team. We must have had them so that we'd know which side of the volleyball or badminton net to stand on in gym class, but I don't remember any team consciousness. At least I wasn't always the last kid picked for a team; I should have been, since I was so ungainly and confused, but there must have been girls more outree and unfortunate than myself. I don't remember suffering in that way and I carry grudges.

In high school, for the very first time in my life, I was a little bit better than some others in a physical skill. I jogged longer and faster than a couple of other girls. I collected ribbons for accrued distances. They were printed in different colors and featured a running cardinal, our school mascot. Junior year, Title IX was passed, the law guaranteeing equality in sports, and one of the gym teachers began arranging a track team. I thought for a moment of joining, but I didn't. I have asthma that's aggravated by exercise, but I also have tremendous lung capacity. I could have been a contender.

I have rowed three times now. I do not look forward to competing with other clubs. I do not care if our scull goes faster than the other one. (I'm brought out of the boat for informal races, so that a more experienced rower can help the scull move forward--or to put it another way, so that my choppy oaring won't impede movement and others can get a workout). I'm competitive but also indifferent. If no one expects anything of me I do well. The other side of the experience is the encouragement. Practices are a mix of: Perfect! Much better than last time! and imperatives: Watch M and move when she does! Put your oar all the way in the water! Bring it on in! Watch S! Take your oar out! Push off with your legs! Sweep all the way back!

I know we should all be working together; I'm not coordinated enough to do that all the time.

Have you ever been on a team before? I asked M last week at rowing practice. No, she said, and I said No too. This is rehabilitation for us Boomers Who Were Left Out. Someone else made off with our slice of the American Dream. We want it back. No questions asked.

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Trust

I am sitting at the dining room table in the house of strangers who are vacationing in Oregon. I have never met them, but they left their key for me in the shed and have encouraged me to eat the perishables in the refrigerator. They took their computers with them but they've left two TVs and a stereo and just a few earrings on the earring holder in the bathroom. (Did they hide the valuable ones?) I am in Madison, Wisconsin, and this was supposed to be a getaway weekend with L. We'd planned it around a reading and workshop I did today at Gilda's Club in Madison which is really in another nearby town. Then L's mother was diagnosed with a melanoma on her leg and he went Downstate last week to accompany her to her appointment with the surgeon. He's going back on Monday so he can go with her on Tuesday to the surgery. He had too many vacation days and now he's worrying that he won't have enough. So I am on the getaway alone. I put an ad on Craig's List looking for a Madison-Chicago house swap, and was contacted by the owner of this house, who asked if I wanted to stay there, swapping cash for her house. I said yes (still thinking it was for both of us) and now I'm get-awaying by myself.


At Gilda's Club my audience was small and I wasn't sure who they were, what their backgrounds were, so when I told about having my scalp decorated, I didn't tell them that I'd had US OUT OF IRAQ painted in the middle. I was afraid of losing them. I talked about this with J this afternoon. She does programs for corporations and non-profits and says she can't be her whole complete self in these circumstances. She's right. In nonfiction workshops I talk to the students about different levels of formality and disclosure: You're more casual and intimate with your ... intimates than with your boss or with people interviewing you for a job.

I used a page from Joe Brainard's I Remember as a template. (See Brainard's photo, above.) For some reason it is so much easier to list aspects of an experience if you begin each sentence with I remember. Or, as Georges Perec did, with Je me souviens. in his book W (dedicated to Brainard). We went around the room and read from a page in Brainard's memoir, nearly every sentence beginning with I remember. When I was in Oakland I was pretty sure that my audience was the standard-issue East Bay Feminist, so that I could use words like patriarchy without explanation. Here I didn't know where we could and couldn't connect and I was surprised at myself for not knowing. I don't want to categorize people but that is what I do.Sometimes people laugh when I read from the book about it being axiomatic for liberal Jews to be Buddhist. Either they think it's so odd they laugh or else they laugh in recognition because it's so true. I've had both responses. Sometimes people laugh when I read the part about Amelia, my ex-best friend, and our rivalry and how I wanted every book in the world to be written by me alone. Sometimes they don't. Today they didn't. I am being so self-concerned here instead of quoting the moments of revelation when they read their own sentences aloud.


Before I leave Wisconsin, I hope to effect the Great Midwestern Pill Bottle Exchange. I have some empty pill bottles and I thought it would be a waste to throw them away so I advertised on Craig's List in the Free section. An artist wrote that she was interested in them, but in quantity. I put the same ad on Craig's List in Madison, because I could easily bring my empty bottles with me in the car. I heard from one Madisonian who's been saving hundreds of bottles. I hope I hear back from her tomorrow so that I can pile the pill bottles in my car and take them across state lines, where they will be welcomed.

We don't know what stage my mother-in-law's melanoma is in. The surgeon will cut down two centimeters and will test her lymph nodes. Hers is a relatively rare form, nodular, which is fast-growing. She happened to mention that a growth on her leg was bothering her when she was last at her internist's. It seemed to come from no where and we hope it will go back there soon.

Melanomas develop most often in people with fair skin, light eyes, and a history (however short) of sunburn.

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