Big Sex Little Death_ A Memoir Part 22

I talked to Jon later in bed, the blanket over my head. "Nan's scared of her - the way I'm always intimidated by her - but we can't go on like this, with Debi the scariest part of the whole enterprise."

Later that night, I woke up when Aretha woke up. I looked at her long lashes and blew on them until they shut. She was my True North, and she didn't even know it. If I just did the right thing for her, then I would end up doing the thing I should have been doing in the first place.

I never got my chance to deliver my Almond Cake Realization to Debi. I didn't see her the night she flew in. I came home from work, nursed Aretha, and conked out in a coma myself, half dressed. Jon let himself in, after dark, just off his cab-driving shift. I could feel him pulling off my jeans and rolling me over like a jelly doughnut under the flannel sheets. "Humph." I never opened my eyes.

My door didn't have a bell; it had a loud bra.s.s knocker. People who knew me just rattled their knuckles on the wood. But at three am, bam bam bam went the knocker, like the Devil himself was paying a visit. I stumbled over a squeaky toy; Jon was right behind me.

I opened the door and there was a young man in a suit coat, a blue tie, and purple trousers.

"Are you Susannah Bright?"

Shades of Mrs. MacKenzie and Garneau Junior High. "Yeah?" I said.

"You've been served," he said, chucking a sheaf of papers at me and turning to skip down the stairs.

I looked the doc.u.ment and saw only a few phrases I understood: "Debi Sundahl ... on behalf of Blush Entertainment ... suing Susannah Bright ... fiduciary duty."

What time was it, exactly? Well, if it was going to be an all-night party, I was going to start waking people up, too.

I called Nan. 'Debi has just served me with papers ... it says you're suing me. Is this you, too? What the f.u.c.k!"

Nan could barely talk. I could hear her hands wringing; it was like a Pontius Pilate sound effect. "She made me tell her; she doesn't understand," she kept saying. "I'm sure we can work something out." She sounded worse than me.

I could hear her hands wringing; it was like a Pontius Pilate sound effect. "She made me; she doesn't understand," she kept saying. "I'm sure we can work something out." She sounded worse than me.

Debi's position demanded that I never write again, and that whatever I did do for a living, I would have to pay her 20 percent of my earnings because I had abandoned my "corporate" duties. Given that all three of us had done everything except give blood to On Our Backs On Our Backs for the past seven years, it was hard to imagine what the rhetoric referred to. for the past seven years, it was hard to imagine what the rhetoric referred to.

The next week was my last one in our editorial offices. Debi took down all my artwork from the office and disappeared with it. My old Mac disappeared from my desk.

On Friday, she confronted me with a box that had arrived in the office mail from the Mitch.e.l.l Brothers' O'Farrell Theater with my name on it.

"What is this bulls.h.i.t?" she asked. "You're going to open this in front of me, right now."

I had no idea what it was. In my mind, I was thinking, Something from someone who's died. It looked like a brick. I didn't touch it. I didn't know what she might do.

She tore off the thick cardboard flap. Two small framed photographs fell to the floor, with a note from Jeff at the O'Farrell theater: "Jim thought you would want these." We'd taken the photos years ago, when On Our Backs On Our Backs was accused by the Anti-p.o.r.n-Feminist-Whomever of running a white slavery ring out of the Mitch.e.l.l Brothers dungeon. I'd been in Artie and Jim's poolroom one day, opening some hate mail, and I said, "Why don't we make a parody of this? Let's do a tableau where I'm some horrified prisoner of your evil empire." Our staff photographer Jill Posener grabbed her camera. I posed Jim to look as if he was going to putt a golf ball into my v.a.g.i.n.a as I lay spread-eagled on the floor, in leather fetish wear, while I asked Artie to hold up my head by my ponytail so I could shoot a look of open-mouthed horror into the camera's eye. was accused by the Anti-p.o.r.n-Feminist-Whomever of running a white slavery ring out of the Mitch.e.l.l Brothers dungeon. I'd been in Artie and Jim's poolroom one day, opening some hate mail, and I said, "Why don't we make a parody of this? Let's do a tableau where I'm some horrified prisoner of your evil empire." Our staff photographer Jill Posener grabbed her camera. I posed Jim to look as if he was going to putt a golf ball into my v.a.g.i.n.a as I lay spread-eagled on the floor, in leather fetish wear, while I asked Artie to hold up my head by my ponytail so I could shoot a look of open-mouthed horror into the camera's eye.

On top of the photo, we wrote a caption in black Sharpie: "Contrary to the rumors!"

Debi stared at the photos she'd dropped on the rug.

"You know what I remember the most about that photo shoot?" I asked. "Artie was worried that he was pulling my hair."

"Anything that comes into this office belongs to the corporation," Deb said, and walked into her office and slammed the door. Her wallpaper samples were strewn all over the shipping tables.

I didn't know what to do next. I wasn't leaving OOB OOB for another job. I didn't have one. Of course, I had the same freelance stuff I'd been doing all along. I was the only one of the three of us who worked outside of for another job. I didn't have one. Of course, I had the same freelance stuff I'd been doing all along. I was the only one of the three of us who worked outside of OOB OOB to pay my bills. But there was no sudden call to fame; no one had asked me to sell my Rolodex and become a lesbian superstar. There were no lesbian superstars. At that time, Ellen DeGeneres was inconceivable. to pay my bills. But there was no sudden call to fame; no one had asked me to sell my Rolodex and become a lesbian superstar. There were no lesbian superstars. At that time, Ellen DeGeneres was inconceivable.

My reason for quitting - motherhood - was a truthful reckoning except for one thing, my anxiety about Debi. I didn't want to work with her, this new apparition. I couldn't keep "painting the roses red" every day.

Yet for all Debi's delusions, I could blame only myself - because I never said, "Enough!" There was always some part of me that believed her, that believed we really would run away and become ballerinas, and her husband would pay everyone's bills, and Steve Jobs was going to be our best friend, and there was big money in being lesbian p.o.r.nographers, and ... I just kept playing through.

If she could have sued me for being a gutless, codependent, naive nail-biter, she would have had ample cause.

I needed a lawyer. Of all people, my male-chauvinist neighbor, Mr. Hera, counseled me. "Anyone can sue you for anything, no matter how preposterous, and if you don't sue back, they win." He gave me the name of his lawyer, Ron Murri, who worked in one of those Montgomery Street skysc.r.a.pers that I hadn't seen since I worked as a temp my first year in San Francisco.

I rode the elevator up to the top floor with three men who looked like John Gotti. I was probably leaking milk in my lavender wifebeater. I had never been to an attorney's office before; my only context was television, and Murri's suite lived up to the celluloid dream. Everything was ma.s.sive, mahogany; gorgeous quiet women dashed around getting things for talkative men in suits.

My new attorney listened to my tale of woe and handed me a Kleenex box. He was very experienced. As I talked and cried, he looked through my copies of On Our Backs On Our Backs that I'd brought him and burst out laughing. In delight. that I'd brought him and burst out laughing. In delight.

I knew that laugh - it was one of the reasons I loved doing On Our Backs On Our Backs ... because people who'd never seen it before had their minds blown. I knew that my magazine was the most interesting forty-eight pages of anything in his entire multimillion-dollar office. ... because people who'd never seen it before had their minds blown. I knew that my magazine was the most interesting forty-eight pages of anything in his entire multimillion-dollar office.

It took Ron a while to realize the state of our a.s.sets. Minus zero. The cash flow: nonexistent. Everything was based on potential. Our second distributor had just gone out of business, writing off five figures in debt to us. We hadn't paid the rent in months, and the printer was holding our film hostage. I was one less mouth to feed. I would never get back the money I had put into the business. I didn't care; I just didn't want this psychotic tin can attached to my tail for the rest of my life. Never write again? No way.

Debi had sent a message through her lawyer that perhaps my writing "fiction" would be allowed - with attendant extortion, of course. I had no idea she thought of me as such a cash cow. I certainly hadn't done anything to warrant it.

Ron moved the tissue box off the desk between us and folded his hands on the table. "Ms. Bright, I'm going to take care of this for you."

"I haven't even asked you what this is going to cost. I just have to -"

"No, not at all. I am going to take care of this, myself. Don't think another thing about it."

"But what -"

He just shook his head and waved his hand at me, as if a small child had tried to pick up a bar tab. "It's going to be fine. Forget about it."

"How can you be so sure?" I wanted to believe him so badly. But that was what had gotten me into trouble with Debi in the first place.

"I will tell you why," Mr. Murri said, glancing at his watch and then looking straight into my eyes. "Because one day your adversary will have a bigger problem than you - and when that day comes, she won't be able to get rid of you fast enough."

It was time to do the laundry again. I had five loads and a giant bag of quarters that I was going to let Aretha play with while I cleaned every last rag. It was a foggy day in the Mission, and I was walking around the corner for a candy bar when I ran into Spain Rodriguez, my neighbor and Zap Comix Zap Comix cartoonist friend from down the block. cartoonist friend from down the block.

"Hey, baby," he said, giving me a big hug. He didn't know about On Our Backs On Our Backs. He had some flyers in his hand. "Do you know anyone who wants to swap pads and live in southern France for a few months?"

I had to burst out laughing. "Yeah, me! I don't have a job anymore, and I don't know what I'm doing next."

I called Spain's French American friend, Maureen, who was part of a minuscule American expat community in France that consisted of retirees from COYOTE, the first prost.i.tutes' rights organization, and other Zap artists like Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. It turned out that Maureen knew Honey Lee from waitressing, back in the day. Now she needed a house swap so she could care for her American parents and finish a novel. Her home in Languedoc was part of a tenth-century stone fort, alone among miles and miles of farmland and vineyards. I felt a little guilty that all she got in exchange was my freeway-adjacent cottage across the street from a 24-hour gas station.

Maureen's fort was quiet for an American like me with a little baby. On those rare occasions when I met people who spoke English, I knew they must've hailed from North Beach in the sixties.

I worked on a book. I charmed my neighbors with "pancakes" and my little angel, Aretha. I'd draw coal up from the "cave" under the fort to heat a stove every night, and the Mistral blew through and chilled the fort's stone walls until they were like blocks of ice. Eventually, I got pneumonia. The French midwives in our village came to my bed and gave me shots in the b.u.t.t. I got better. If there was ever a case of the "kindness of strangers" ... I was deeply grateful to the many new friends I made. Little Romper grew up fast. I loved her so much.

One day, I got a long-distance phone call from my attorney's exquisite a.s.sistant in San Francisco. "They're settling today. Ron just went to court to sign the papers; you're all done," she said.

"What happened?" I asked. "What's going on?"

"Ms. Sundahl is apparently in Marin County Jail booked on a.s.sault charges."

I faxed a friend, Sukie, who sold red-haired bud to Debi's dear husband back in their courtship days. Debi never touched the stuff.

Sukie faxed me back: "OMG! Yeah, he cheated on her, all the time ... and when she found out, she beat the living s.h.i.t out of him. I heard her mother is driving from Minnesota to come get her and take her home."

Take Debi home? It had been so long since I had thought of her Minnesota origins. What had happened to her son, whom she had spoken of the first day we met? He must be a teenager now. Where was he? She loved him so much.

I rocked Aretha and watched a Star Trek Star Trek rerun. My phone machine rang but I didn't pick it up. I could hear the ca.s.sette tape taking the message: "Yeah, Susie, this is Gina's girlfriend. Listen, I don't know what you heard, but Debi and her old man got in a big fight, he left the house but he came back and found her in the pool about to slit her wrists with razors and he took her to Marin General and they put her in the psych ward and wouldn't let her out until someone took responsibility for her; then her Mom - ." rerun. My phone machine rang but I didn't pick it up. I could hear the ca.s.sette tape taking the message: "Yeah, Susie, this is Gina's girlfriend. Listen, I don't know what you heard, but Debi and her old man got in a big fight, he left the house but he came back and found her in the pool about to slit her wrists with razors and he took her to Marin General and they put her in the psych ward and wouldn't let her out until someone took responsibility for her; then her Mom - ."

The tape cut off.

There was no dress for it, no fitting end. I could see Debi's mother, her car wheels spinning on the highway, cigarettes in her purse, taking her curly-haired woman-child away from all of this, back to where she came from, back to all that deep snow - and something else, something I'd never figure out.

Santa Cruz

Stupendous and unheard-of splendors await me below, and I shall seek them soon.

- H. P. LovecraftWhen I came back to the States, I got an interesting offer. My old faculty adviser from UC Santa Cruz, Carter Wilson, called me and said, "We're so proud of you. The Community Studies Department wants to know if you'd like to come teach a cla.s.s, for summer session. What would you like to do?"

Wow. I thought about it. I loved the road show I'd been touring, "How to Read a Dirty Movie", which was inspired by Vito Russo's Celluloid Closet Celluloid Closet. I decided I'd love to do an extended version of erotic forensics.

"Ten weeks is a session, right?" I asked. "I want to do something like ... 'The Politics of s.e.xual Representation.' Yeah! I don't want to use cheap code words anymore, like 'erotic' or 'p.o.r.nographic.' I want to make students figure out what we're really saying when we look at s.e.x."

Carter loved the idea. The department loved it. I called Jon and started talking up Santa Cruz in glowing terms. "I was bored silly when I was an undergrad there," I told him, "because I didn't want to jump in the waves or hug a tree; I just wanted to run to another all-night meeting in San Francisco."

Jon laughed and I could hear him flop down on his bed. "Yeah, I bet you can't wait to get your arms around a tree now.

What mother of a four-year-old wouldn't agree? I didn't want to stay up late anymore; I wanted to sit in the sun and watch Aretha chase seagulls. I could write a syllabus for a cla.s.s I'd always dreamed of while I basked in the sun.

Jon and I started packing. We decided to live together for real, no more keeping barely separate households. We kept whispering to each other: "It's ten degrees warmer down there." I could feel the sun on my shoulders already.

Two days before the moving trucks came, I got another phone call from Carter.

"Susie, something awful has happened. The dean of our division, Murray Sabre, has just written the department a memo, saying" - I could hear Carter shuffling papers - "'Susie Bright will only teach at the University of California over my dead body.'"

What did the dean of the Social Sciences Division have against me? I recalled he was an antiwar leftie back in the day, the kind of guy I had met a million times in the IS. Was he just like Kitty and Andrea, a leftie George Putnam, enraged by "the dirtiest thing" he could imagine my presenting in a cla.s.sroom? Would I perhaps hold up a picture of "a woman's private parts"?

I couldn't bear to tell Jon or any of my San Francisco friends. The moving-van wheels were in motion. We'd already broken our backs carrying a 1905 upright piano down two flights of stairs. We had to go forward.

I drove down to Santa Cruz on my own, along the scenic coastline of Highway 1, always a meditation in California enchantment. Dark blue waves, deep ravines, wildflowers everywhere, rocky cliffs like castles. My dad knew the history of every Indian creek and mountain name from here to the coast of Mexico.

It's a road made for singing, and I was belting out "Always True to You in My Fashion," when an enormous tan buck jumped in front of me just north of La Honda Road. I saw the white of his deer eye; he saw the white of mine. I hit the brakes hard, and everything in the van came crashing toward my head. Don't swerve, don't swerve - that's what they always tell you - take the beast head-on.

The buck, floating in the air, came down, glanced off the right side of my b.u.mper, and kept bounding. He was alive! I was alive! The front seat was buried under every fragment of loose belongings we'd stuffed in the back. My head was wet, I hoped with sweat.

No one was behind me - the luckiest bit of enchantment yet. I put my foot back on the gas, accelerated to twenty, twenty-five, thirty miles per hour. Maybe that was the way to do it, slow and easy, count each artichoke in the fields as I pa.s.sed.

When I got to the Santa Cruz apartment we were subletting, there was a crayon note on the door, from one of the a.s.sistants in the Community Studies Department: Sad News/Glad News! Murray S. has had a heart attack and will NOT be returning to campus anytime soon. Cla.s.s is ON. See you next Monday - bring everything.

Aretha came running out of the apartment with Jon, who'd arrived earlier in a separate truck. She had a red plastic bottle of soap bubbles in her hands, shouting, "Look at this, Mommy. Look!" She blew a bubble the size of my head. A pair of lungs to be proud of.

It really was ten degrees warmer in Santa Cruz. I looked up at Jon. "You would not believe what happened on the way down here - twice. You're going to forget all about carrying that piano."

"Even the water's softer here," he said, holding up a pile of sheets. "And there's a surfboard in the garage."

"Do you have to drive back the city tonight?" I asked. I felt like I could sit on this stoop for a while, maybe until "p.o.r.no 101" began on Monday.

A white goose, don't ask me from where, waddled across the front lawn ten feet in front of me. Every animal familiar was greeting me. I was Saint Francis, and they were all paying me a little h.e.l.lo.

"Yeah, I'm working tonight," he said, standing in a flurry of Aretha's bubble making. "I'll drive back tomorrow. And then -"

"Yes, then!" I said, opening my arms wide to the sky for a mountain lion appearance, a bear, some coyote scat.

Jon said, "Yes, then, I think, we can start the rest of our lives."

One of Aretha's iridescent soap bubbles floated toward my face. I stuck my finger in it. The surface tension was just strong enough that it went all the way around my finger and never popped.

Acknowledgments.

I'd like to thank the following family, friends, and colleagues who contributed so much to this book with their insight, memories, and support: Kim Anno, Jon Bailiff, Larry Blood, Larry Bradshaw, Aretha Bright, Phyllis Christopher, Honey Lee Cottrell, Greta Christina, Greg Day, John Everett, Donna Gala.s.si, Ariel Gore, Judy Grahn, Andy Griffin and Julia Wiley, Rebecca Hall, Steve Harsin, Nan Kinney, Michael Letwin and the Letwin family, Joel Levine, Jessica Lockhart, Chris Mark, Lise Menn and family, Caitlin Morgan, Mariette Pathy Allan, Jill Posener, Shar Rednour, Nora Reichard, Gayle Rubin, Cory Silverberg, Jane Slaughter, Brooke Warner, Barbara Winslow, Jill Wolfson, and my agents Jo-Lynne Worley and Joanie Shoemaker.

Notes.

The Red Tide and and On Our Backs On Our Backs, respectively, were significant publications with hundreds of people involved over many years, dozens of whom were my close friends and colleagues.

For my narrative purposes, I have changed the names of many people who never became public figures. I also made composite characters out of individuals who each deserve their own special edition. Time was greatly compressed in this story, and snapshots have been taken of long campaigns. I hope many of the figures I remember from these years will add their own memoirs and biographies to our history.

The histories of The Red Tide The Red Tide, and On Our Backs On Our Backs are not well doc.u.mented. are not well doc.u.mented.

For research purposes, the best place to look at The Red Tide is an Internet archive of all the back issues and relevant doc.u.ments, which Michael Letwin has curated. is an Internet archive of all the back issues and relevant doc.u.ments, which Michael Letwin has curated.