The Secret: Hang around Fun Folks

My nephew Miles graduated from high school yesterday. In this far-flung American life of ours his relatives came in from coast to coast.

His father, the irrepressible impresario Warren flew in from Venice, CA, where as usual he has found himself the center of attention among the hip culture of that city. Warren, always fashionable and wearing gorgeous comfy looking red clogs, lives on a houseboat and currently earns a living by selling jewelry. He greeted me by calling me "ageless." Thanks, Warren, tell that to my 63-year-old organs.

It's interesting to watch who hangs around who at parties. Miles was quite often in the presence of his long-gone daddy. As was I. I got a chance to share a story about a transgender individual with Warren, a story I can't share with my homophobic boyfriend, whose response is just to look away and say, Yuch! (with the requisite Jewish pronunciation of the 'ch')

Seems that family doctor Sheldon Berkowitz felt like he was trapped in a woman's body his entire life. Happily married and with 2 grown kids, he got counseling and decided to undergo treatment to become a woman. First he had hormone infusions and finally facial surgery to feminize his manly features. Although he doesn't despise his manly parts, he is saving money to undergo surgery to have a woman's sexual organs.

Now known as Dr. Deborah Bershel, he was surprised to find his wife no longer wanted to remain married. Hmmm. Let's say Scott decided to have a sex change operation and become a woman. Would I enjoy sleeping in the same bed with him? Hell no!

Dr Deb found out she is attracted to both men and women. So she's bixesual. She is currently dating a lesbian. For more info, check out this excellent video.

One thing about our family: we are very open and can talk about anything. I was very moved by a conversation I had with another family member I'll call Maria, a young woman who had a troubled life due to the drug addiction of her mother. Maria is fine now, became a physician herself, and will soon marry the man of her dreams.

She found out about the death of my ex-husband Millard and was absolutely distraught. I hadn't realized the depths of her caring about people. It moved me deeply. She cannot stand that people die. That they die young. That they die because they are manhandled in operations like my ex. Or die of natural causes when they get old.

Maria, I said. This is the human condition. Bury yourself in people you love and the work you love. This is why people write literature, to console us about the eternal human condition that will never change.

She is marrying, as all people must, a person who will comfort her, who will soothe her during the inequities of life. Otherwise, why marry? Go instead to your pillow or your teddy bear. I have always said that for me, no man is better than a man whose spirit is dead.

To Maria, I dedicate my favorite poem, Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.