Playing at survival

We hiked up to the lake, and picked our way through the warren of trails along the edge to what we deemed was a good camping spot. The sun was setting, catching the hooked peak of the rock face opposite us. Louis got out his tent, and I asked if he needed help setting it up. No, it’s fine, he said. Then I’ll make a fire, I said. I scrounged around in the shadow of the mountain scrub for what I needed, collecting what seemed to be a rather paltry heap of small twigs with dead needles attached, one fallen log, and part of a rotting, damp trunk, which made a line in the dirt when I drug it back to camp. I squatted by the ring of rocks built at some earlier time, leveled the ashes, methodically constructed a tipi out of the bits, forked stick on forked stick, dry needles in the hollow of the mound, and set the log above it on the rocks, placed the wet trunk to the side, where it would dry from the heat of the fire. I lit a match, angled it down so the flame rose higher, caught the needles once, twice, and watched the thing start to crackle. Louis finished setting up the tent and turned around as flame leapt upwards and set the log ablaze. “Nice fire,” he said. “I did it with one match,” I announced somewhat smugly, although I was secretly more impressed at the flammable quality of the beneedled twigs than my own skill. We made dinner slowly: a motley assortment of instant potatoes from the store; beef stew and pound cake from an MRE, and then we roasted kosher hot dogs over the coals. We cleaned up and I hung the bags of uneaten food on a tree outside camp. It was dark by then, and getting cold, so we crawled in the tent, into our respective sleeping bags, talked for awhile, and then tried to sleep. “It’s so quiet,” Louis remarked drowsily.

And then I lifted my head and listened. It was not quiet. Something, out there, was going clomp, clomp… clomp clomp clomp. Louis saw me tense, in the moonlight filtered through the tent, and lifted his own head. He heard it, too, and his first instinct was to roll over, put his arm over me and half-cover me with his body, draw his knife, and point it at the tent opening. From the crook of his arm, I tried to remember when someone had last made any motion to protect me to the possible detriment of his own self; to challenge whatever came at me with the force of his fierceness, up to his whole life, even symbolically. I could think of nothing, unless I cast back to my childhood. And at the same time, I tried to decide what he (or we) would have a better chance of fending off: Crazy North Idaho Drunks Out For A Good Time, A Fat September Grizzly Bear, or (less likely, but still possible, given our location) A Pack of Wolves. Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp. We held our breath, waiting. It got a bit quieter, and I told him I wanted out of the cloister of the tent; wanted to know what it was; wanted to face it in the open. So we put on our shoes, and crawled outside, and we stood together behind a large boulder, scanning the line of trees with our headlamps, both of us with knives in hand. Here was this well-muscled, bearded man beside me, wearing shorts, wool socks and combat boots, a dog tag from wartime still rammed into the laces of the left foot. If I were going to pick someone to fight against an unseen foe with nothing but a hunting knife, he wasn’t a bad choice. Only his hearing was damaged from the blasts of artillery shells, so I would have to be his ears. And when I heard something in the underbrush, I pointed. Louis stepped in front of me, and his headlamp caught the white eyes of a large creature not far away.

“It’s a deer,” he said. And we both let out our breath and laughed a little. “Go away!” said Louis, waving his arms. The deer turned tail and loped off, clomp clomp, clomp clomp.

We crawled back inside the tent, and Louis promptly fell asleep. I, however, heard the deer (or perhaps another, unless it was something else) come back repeatedly, and between that and the hard ground, found it difficult to sleep until dawn began to break, when I could tell myself that nocturnal animals would be bedding down. Everyone knows that the monsters under the bed are afraid of light. So I slept for a few hours, my head burrowed into my sleeping bag the way I used to burrow into my blanket when I was six years old and afraid of pirates.

Later, I told Louis how much I appreciated his protectiveness; that he could be so protective, but he let me be independent too; let me be myself; half girly-girl and half fighter, even in quick-paced possible life-or-death. And in return, he told me that he liked that I could make a fire. I laughed at that.

“Have you ever seen The Road?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said “I didn’t like it. It was depressing.”

“Well,” he said “sometimes, I think the world could end up like that. And it’s nice to know that you can make fire.”

Sociopaths and authoritarian lifestyles

For a long time now, I’ve been reading personal stories of people who have been hurt by hierarchical relationships and the cultures that surround them. Now, hierarchy exists in many forms, and in many cultures, and it’s something that we actually reduce to points on a scale sometimes — we cite Geert Hofstede, for example, to describe the difference in “power distance” between a typical man and woman in the Netherlands, as opposed to a typical man and woman in the United Arab Emirates. Cultural study is something I’m sort of supposed to specialize in.

But subcultures are typically more fascinating than the mainstream, and one that hits close to home is the courtship culture. The idea behind it is that by involving family or friends in a blossoming romantic relationship, we can protect naïve individuals from becoming entangled with men or women who would hurt them, or who are in some way unfit life partners. And that sounds pretty reasonable. We would do well to pay attention to what our families and friends think of this person or that person, particularly if they’ve spent quite a bit of time with him or her. This is assuming, of course, that our family and friends are wise, and kind, and have no agenda of their own.

There are times, however, when the “courtship” model, and hierarchy in general, actually contribute to the thing it’s trying to prevent — becoming entangled with unfit life partners. Sociopathic and certain other aberrant behavior is relatively easy to mask in such situations, and in structured environments where there is an obviously-expected answer, it’s harder to spot falseness.

Perhaps most importantly, sociopathic traits are actually encouraged in certain courtship circles. This is not to say that people who court are automatically sociopaths (far from it), but it is to say that what might otherwise be a warning sign gets glossed over as normative in some cases. Take a step-by-step breakdown of the sociopathic personality and how this may go unnoticed:

1. Glibness and Superficial Charm.
Staying superficially charming is easy when you have only a handful of people you need to seduce (e.g. the girl and her parents, and possibly her pastor).

2. Manipulative and Conning. Though they appear to be charming, they are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
However, they can very easily spin this dominance into “biblical headship,” and claim that any hesitation you have regarding their behavior is a problem with God-ordained gender roles.

3. Grandiose Sense of Self. Feels entitled to certain things as “their right.” May state readily that their goal is to rule the world.
This may be spun as a desire to take dominion of the world, or their particular area of it, in the name of God.

4. Irresponsibility/Unreliability and Pathological Lying. Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
Lying is not well-received in the Christian canon. However, this is not the sort of fibbing that most people catch on to unless they dig into something other than, say, the doctrine the person claims to espouse or what the person claims to be from one year to the next. These people actually believe themselves. They can be wildly inconsistent and still believe they’ve really got it this time. They will be offended if you call them out on their unreliability, and claim it is due to e.g. their busy schedule and the great demands put on them by others. Most often, they will claim that their unreliability is actually your fault and/or that they didn’t actually say what they said.

5. Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt.
The sociopath will probably admit to anything he’s caught red-handed at. He may be extremely eloquent at expressing his regret and will pad his Christian image with confessions of sin. But watch to see if he actually apologizes to his victims and, if so, how he treats them an hour later, or a year later.

6. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
Once this comes to light, it can be hard to ignore. But this may be hard to spot unless they’re pushed. One thing that might clue you in is a lack of deep friendship in their life, or the fact that the only friends they have are that one guy they call to have someone’s website hacked and that one girl they call when they want anything else. Another thing that might clue you in is their lack of long-term history with people, or a habit of being extremely vindictive to people who exposed them or let them down in some way.

7. Shallow Emotions/Callousness/Lack of Empathy. Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims. When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
If your darling, who five minutes ago was singing your praises, viciously lashes out because you interrupted his study time — and doesn’t have any trouble plotting the destruction of that guy who lashed out at him once — do not assume he is just expressing his God-given masculinity. Do not assume things will be better when you’re married. Do not assume that this is your cross to bear and that all Christian relationships will be hard. Do not assume that you just need to submit and all will be well. Assume he is an ass.

8. Incapacity for normal love, but excels at adoration and will become your ideal mate almost instantaneously.
This is dangerous in a movement that accepts as normative the late expression of love — that says you need to have doctrine first, and love later. By the way, threatening to demean you in some way if you leave him, or hinting of his own self-destruction, is not an acceptable expression of love.

9. Need for Stimulation. Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature. Parasitic Lifestyle.
The need for stimulation can be mental as well as physical. Sociopaths tend to frequently reinvent themselves. They may have a garage full of toys they no longer use, garnered through numerous thrill-seeking phases. They probably won’t talk too much about their past phases, though, particularly if they were at all deviant. They may have problems with money stemming from impulse buying or gambling. They probably won’t tell you about this either. Ask how much money they’ve gotten in the last few years from parents, for example, and why they needed it.

10. Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency.
If he jokes about his cruelty to animals or classmates as a child, watch out. And don’t buy his quick assurance that he’s repented and changed. Why is he still laughing at that stuff if he’s repented?

11. Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired. Conventional appearance. Goal of enslavement of their victim(s). Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim’s life. Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim’s affirmation (respect, gratitude and love). Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim.
Once again, this can be spun as a desire for “biblical headship.”

Perhaps one of the scariest parts of this is that anyone who is believes that his girlfriend, wife or children really should obey his whims, however odd, inconsistent or dangerous, with no regard as to how they feel about it, is submitting himself and his family not to the headship of a loving God, but to the headship of a psychopath. In his grandiosity, he becomes “like God,” and thus demands idolatry. Opposing this is not opposing Christianity, unless you believe Christ was a madman.

Amway Christianity

A year or so ago, I befriended a girl from Eastern Europe who had moved across the country to marry a local boy, whom she had met online. During a walk around the park, she told me that she’d found this great job, also online, that allowed her to stay at home with her nine-month-old son. From the way she described it, it sounded vaguely like data entry for a company that had required that she “go through a series of interviews” to work for them. She wasn’t totally clear about it, but I chalked that up to the fact that English was not her first language, and that this topic of conversation was sandwiched in between childrearing and hair dye.

But I commented that that was nice, and I’d been looking for a flexible second job.
“If you want, I can ask if there are any openings,” she said politely. Sure, I said, why not? So when she called me and told me the good news, that they were in fact hiring and that I could talk to her supervisor about it, I said OK. And though there was something that seemed a little weird about the whole scenario, I agreed to meet them for coffee.

She had described her supervisor as a highly savvy businesswoman, but the minute I saw her in Starbucks, I took a dislike to her. I was pretty sure she couldn’t be more than 24 years old, and she had about three inches of makeup plastered on her face (the better to consume her discounted cosmetics, no doubt). She sat down and rubbed her hands over her thighs, a bit nervously. She had come with what appeared to be pamphlets. Yeah, whatever this is, I’m not doing it, I thought, sucking down my chai.

What followed was a long but convoluted monologue describing this online marketing venture wherein you recruited clients and bought products yourself for a discount, since you were your own distributor (or did you buy someone else’s? Maybe? That wasn’t quite clear). You made your own little marketing website from the template they provided. All within this great community of hierarchy-based business-minded individuals who invested their entrepreneurial wisdom with you out of the kindness of their hearts (Maybe? Or for some other reason? Also not quite clear). And the great thing was, it totally worked. If you invested time (and friends), the payout was bountiful. If you believed, you could have anything you wanted.

“What do you want?” The supervisor asked “Travel? A house?”

I paused from passive-aggressively running my tongue along the sharp opening of my chai lid. “I’ve got a house and I’ve traveled quite a bit,” I said. “Honestly, I want a family.”

That threw her for a second. I grinned internally as she switched gears from her money, money, money-money-money spiel to add that the company was totally family-friendly, totally family-compatible. I glanced at the brochures she’d handed me and tried fishing for more information. Oh, she said, come to another meeting and my own supervisor, that bastion of business acumen, will tell you more. She congratulated me: the company was interested in me because I was obviously a punctual and reliable individual, given that I had shown up to this “interview.” That’s a frighteningly low barrier of entry, I thought, and this is the last of these meetings I’m wasting my time with.

Half an hour later, I googled the company name and a light clicked on. I had never heard of Quixtar, but I had heard of Amway.

My ex-husband was raised in a family that sold Amway. I heard quite a bit about those days… like how they were told to put a photo of the boat they wanted on the refrigerator door to motivate them to evangelize their message of prosperity. How they were told that poor people were lazy idiots, and that school meant nothing because teachers were poor. If you were poor, you were nothing. If you didn’t earn a lot of money, you were nothing.

Like how at every rally they went to, Christianity, the Republican party and the pursuit of wealth were presented in one helpful pre-wrapped package. How they were encouraged with stories of “real men” who “packed up” their protesting wives to attend Amway events. The alternative to being a “real man” was being a “mouse,” by the way. And I heard my ex echo this to himself verbally: “Are you a man or are you a mouse?” In fact, I heard echos of every part of this upbringing in our life together. Amway products still littered his family’s house, down to a special “wash” for fruits and vegetables.

To a large extent, I think that when critical outsiders think of American Christianity, they have a vague outline of Amway in mind. They think American Christians are rabid GOP members who get their facts from some angry white guy on a podium. They think American Christians are obsessed with appearances but have little regard for real internal peace; people who would sacrifice friends and education for their warped view of reality, defined by their love of material “success” and their hatred of almost everything else. They think American Christians are hypocritical, tyrannical, irrational, classless, gullible, and probably fat.

Actually, I was quite pleased with my coining of the phrase “Amway Christian” until I did a quick search and discovered it is already in existence, and the idea has even spawned a spoof article.

So back to the story. I dodged calls from my Eastern European friend for awhile after that, sad that our friendship appeared to be based on nothing more than her desire to make money. And possibly that’s unfair, because she really did seem nice. But self-preservation won out over loyalty, and I never even had to tell her I wasn’t interested, because she got the hint pretty quickly. Quite possibly, that means she wasn’t completely cut out for Amway herself.

More migraine theory

One day in late June, I thought it would be a great idea to go for a run, so I did, came back, and cooled down with some yoga. About half an hour later, I noticed that I was starting to get tunnel vision. No, I thought, impossible. I’ve already had two migraines this year. Didn’t my brain get the memo?

It had not. I took some meds and went to sleep, angry that my body’s response to normal strain was to scream like a petulant child. I don’t think it was the running per se, but I was dehydrated and still jet-lagged, and the run couldn’t have helped.
Today after staying up late I spent five hours on the water, wakeboarding and drinking a minimal amount of liquid, every inch of my skin covered with cloth or sunscreen. I believe I was the only person on the boat not to get fried. But then, after spending the rest of the day working on my yard and biking to a friend’s house, I noticed once again the sudden onset of tunnel vision. I informed my friends that I was about to get a migraine, and spent the next hour lying in a hammock with my jacket over my head, emerging to down Excedrin and about half a liter of Club Soda and lime juice. I am assuming this was my brain protesting the day’s sunlight-dehydration combo.

Still, a “normal” brain would not have cared too much. Both times, my fatigue, solar exposure and lack of hydration were within reasonable boundaries. I wonder how in the world I could have survived as a peasant-farmer who was expected to work in the blazing sun all day.

There’s a reason my little brother claims I am actually a vampire: I avoid direct exposure to the sun to the point that I stay pale all year round. This in spite of the fact that I like outdoor sports. My body can handle them (to a point), but my brain may not. Since I was a kid, I have gotten migraines while running, while playing softball, and while driving out to go hiking. But I am stubborn, and I insist on doing something besides sitting inside all the time.

I wonder, too, why super-sensitivity to temperature change and sunlight and smell and food and so on is present in the genetics of my ancestors. There’s got to be some advantage. Well, sure there is. I’ve probably benefited from it as much or more than I’ve lost from it… super-sensitivity has made me take steps that prevent skin cancer, has kept me from over-eating sugar-filled foods and made me avoid too much of any chemical substance, from caffeine to aspartame to MSG to alcohol. It’s even made me avoid stressful situations and polluted airspaces.

On a side note, I bet that ancient people really did suspect migraine-sufferers of vampirism, given their hatred of pungent smell, light, and many other irritants. The migraine-suffers may have also attacked them tooth and nail for being so offensive, especially if they had no medication. Even today I wanted to punch everyone who was talking too loudly. The migraine-sufferers may have also been uncommonly youthful (read: svelte and un-sunburned) due to their particular sensitivities.

Europe 2011

From the beaches near Barcelona to Foixarda to the canyons outside Perpignan, I spent a good portion of my trip to Europe with climbers. It was delightful.

After the conference

I wait in the station for my train to Perpignan, the languid, humid buzz of Barcelona present in the low-swung shuffle of sandaled feet and ballooning fabric. I people-watch. Backpackers, the elderly, chic white-clad youth, confused women with high-pitched voices. The duration of my wait makes me pensive. I wonder at the clashing ethos of stillness and urgency reflected in the conflicting pieces of my life and in those all around me. I think every time I come to this continent, I come half-expecting to find some lost sense of myself, and either the expectation or the place delivers it. I find smothered, ill-formed inspiration. I ask myself what I am doing and what I will do next. I belong wherever I go and I belong nowhere. Either I find some sense of myself here, or I discover that I am the cat that walks by himself and that all places are alike to me.

But all places are not alike to me. As I sit on the train as it crosses into France, listening to music from days gone by through my headphones, I feel as if I am time-traveling. The very air touches my skin in a way that calls me to remember things I have forgotten. There’s a word for this: nostalgia. The rattle from the train, sounds of a hundred people, maybe more. The sea dips off to my right, behind the red-tiled houses like others I knew once. The sight of vineyards brings to mind the days I spent cutting grapes not far from here.

I travel back into the past, and into the future. Funny how the past is always sharper than the future, more certain, though the future is the only choice you have between the two.

I speak in French the rest of the day, and for the days after that, words tripping over themselves in their haste to get out after being locked up in another culture for six years. I have fallen in with a group of French couchsurfers, and I explore the hills with them, swim in the sea with them, picnic with them, eat their bread. I wonder why I don’t still live here. I try to wax philosophical about life, the human race. That is more difficult than talking about food and climbing and where I’ve been. My vocabulary limits me and I feel vaguely like a cretin. Going beyond small talk seems all the more personal when the words don’t come as naturally.

And, then, inexplicably, it is difficult to go back even to small talk in English. I miss the structure of French, the ritual. How do you greet someone when you’re speaking English? How do you say, yes, I would like that, without being awkward? How do you contradict someone without being impolite? How do you ask for what you want, exclaim over how much you like something, express your appreciation for people you know only slightly without being it weird?

I think I’m experiencing reverse culture shock. Yet I love my own country as well, and in the plane above the mountains, in the cooler shades of warmth that is this northern summer, I tell myself that almost nowhere I have been is as beautiful as my own home.

First day in Barcelona

Friday morning
I sit cross-legged on a mattress while the rain drips in staccato melody from the eves, charged on café con leche and sleep deprivation. I took to the streets shortly after 6 this morning, wandering towards the old city, watching the street sweepers and a pair of lovers kissing passionately under an arch. I watched the bakers wiping their windows in preparation for opening. The streets into the old city ran narrow, smelling of urine, yesterday’s graffiti next to stones that had been there since the Romans came. I got lost, several times, although I told myself that being lost was all a matter of perspective. When it started raining, I sought shelter in a café-bar, ordering coffee and a croissant in terribly accented Spanish, and I pulled the croissant apart and sipped the coffee, and both were excellent.

I found my way back to Santa Madrona street around 8, and let myself in with a three-pronged key. Ismael was still out; there was some party he’d arranged, and he’d invited me, but I’d fallen asleep before he’d even left. I lay down in the quiet and wiggled with joy. Odd, I thought. It was partly the familiarity of the space, with its narrow, tall windows; narrow, tall doors; narrow, tall passageways; the buzz of mopeds, the cobblestones. It was partly the unfamiliarity of the space, and the feeling of discovery, of exploration. Europe does this to me. I lived here, and the nostalgia, the possibility, the anonymity, surrounds me in womb-like, concentric rings.

I came here with colleagues, and I left them at the airport, and took public transportation to a couch surfing host while they got a taxi to their rented apartment. This is less about budget than it is about feeling the city as it really is, the smell of piss and the heat of the subway and the broken English of someone who welcomes me and immediately hands me a key to his apartment so I can come and go at will. He has crooked teeth and is careful to tell me not to wear shoes in the house. He tells me he doesn’t like America, although he has never been there. I tell him I live in a town where there are mountains, and he tells me he loves the mountains.

I think back to the mountains of the place where I live, and I think of how nearly everywhere I go there, I know someone. It seems at times like a cozy, beautiful house of cards, Sandpoint. Mortgage, job constraints, the conflicting personalities of small-town life. Tidy, now, but one flick, and it could all come crashing down.

Friday evening
Late. I am tired, and have blisters from walking far in the rain.

-30-

My 30th birthday is tomorrow, and in many ways, I do not feel much different than I did at 25. Stronger, maybe; more capable, and also more fragile. I know the simple comfort of tucking myself into bed at night, in my own little house. I know the flush of blood pounding in my ears as I strain, after a time when I could not strain. I know the depths and heights of solitary late-night creation when the floorboards creak and the furnace spurts on in the freezing cold. I know how easily life shatters; how joy and hope can grind to a halt and how sorrow floods everything like a choked-up engine, when all you can do is sit and wait for it to dissipate. I know what it is to experience what you once thought impossible. I know what it is to be repulsed by good intentions. I know more, and less, than I ever did. I am more, and less, than I ever was.

As a child, I thought several things would have happened by the time I turned 30. Naturally, I would have my own children. 30 was ancient and I would have been married for at least a few years, would have a home that was warm and inviting and probably littered with brain-building toys and stacks of books in every direction.

But of all things, this seems the most difficult to attain. To build the home I envisioned for myself at this age, you need the kind of love — the kind of partnered souls — that makes the stars seem brighter. And in real life, even in the best of circumstances, romance comes and goes; it is the most fickle and ornery of all loves in the world. I am happy to be single. I am sad to be single. C’est la vie. To grasp the hope of this too tightly is to become desperate, needy, prone to being with someone merely to avoid loneliness. Everything you cannot do if you want this truly, and not some shadow of it.

I’m not sure why, exactly, I thought marriage earlier than 30 was necessary, since my mom get married at 30, and my paternal grandmother got married older than that. Both had many children; my mom had five, my grandmother had four. In my grandmother’s case, I heard delightful stories from her single years: Her college days, working in fashion in New York, traveling to Europe, working in Paris. Perhaps this was part of why for most of my 20s I wanted to see the way things worked before I settled down and had a family; that, and the fact that I’d helped raise four younger siblings and knew I wanted a break from infants for awhile. If I was going to raise intelligent children I adored and could provide well for, all the more reason to wait.

In a more amusing vein, according to my younger self, I would gradually have gotten better-looking throughout my 20s, and I would hit my peak at 30. I’m pretty sure this was based on photos I saw of my mother, who seemed to follow this pattern. Funny or not, I suspect I’m better-looking now than in earlier years. I’m not the epitome of physical perfection, but heck, overall, I feel pretty good. Some days, for sure, I still feel like an acne-prone, flat-haired weirdo, but in a society obsessed with youth it does seem amusing that age has allowed (relative) beauty rather than stealing it away, and that this was not accomplished through surgery or expensive facial products or anorexia or even triathlons. It came naturally, on its own, emerging in part from comfort with myself, combined with my genuine likes and dislikes. Climbing and dancing and movement I enjoy; sunscreen will save me from pain; caffeine and too much sugar bother me. Stress must depart and friendship must remain.

Because fortunately, I have friendship. And to see into the soul of another human being, and to see kindness and honesty — that has an eternalness to it that few other things do. I think even romance falls short of this sometimes. Overall, thanks largely to the friends I had, to the family I had, 29 was a good year. So I say thank you, to all of you.

Ho, ho, ho

Once, on my way back from buying groceries, covered from neck to ankle, I was called a whore by a group of post-adolescent men. In their culture, I suppose, I looked like I was asking for it. I wasn’t wearing a headscarf; I wasn’t veiled. I wore color. I was obviously foreign. Hence I must have been promiscuous.

I wasn’t; I was a virgin. I sucked my cheeks in, and had I not been afraid I would have laughed out loud at them. They continued yelling at me, in French, as I walked away from them. Venomously disappointed that I hadn’t stayed, I suppose; they probably didn’t encounter many unveiled women. All that walk back to my hotel, men kept stopping to try to talk to me, ignoring my repeated rebuffs. Because by being out alone, even in broad daylight, even on populated streets, even to take a quick jaunt to the grocery store, wasn’t I just asking for it?

This was in Tunisia, a relatively liberal Muslim country, a few years ago. It gave me some perspective on the whole being-called-a-whore thing, though. And hence when anyone remarks about a girl: she was really asking to be raped, I react.

Yeah, I think women can dress in poor taste. Yeah, I think girls who get dead drunk and pass out in a stranger’s bathroom are probably not being as smart as they should be. Yeah, I’m not personally a fan of caked-on make-up. But what I deem caked-on make-up is probably pretty normative in the southern states, for example.

Here’s the reality of the thing:
Caked-on make-up is not consent (the Mary Kay ladies will tell you).
Hotness is not consent (the naturally beautiful will tell you).
Showing skin is not consent (the swimmers of the world will tell you).
Being flamboyant is not consent (the exuberant will tell you).
Enjoying a beverage purchased for you by another person is not consent (the business meetings of the world will tell you).
Kissing is not consent (the Latins will tell you).
Having a reputation is not consent (the tabloids will tell you).
Finding yourself in another person’s house, trailer, tent, or hotel room is not consent (the Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you).

Wearing jeans and a baggy sweatshirt is not consent (the foreign girl in Tunisia will tell you). So I get the SlutWalks that have been sweeping the globe in recent weeks. The message we send by saying slutty women are “asking for it” is totally, and completely, offensive. It says that if I can find a girl who looks and/or acts “slutty,” or what is deemed to be “slutty” in my culture, she deserves to get raped. Because as a man, I’m just a wild animal, and outward beauty is an invitation to marr it. Because as a man, I can get away with manhandling women, if they’re the right (wrong) type of women. Everyone knows that women who may or may not have some kinship with Mary Magdalene are not worth anything!

Some people, of course, can’t fathom the idea that women in short skirts aren’t just asking for it. The same way that those Tunisian men couldn’t fathom that I wasn’t asking for it by not wearing a black veil.

Ars longa, vita brevis

When we were young, we had a collection of movies that my mom had edited for language and adult situations. She even edited “Aladdin” because the parrot had a bad attitude. At the same time, we knew plenty about anatomy, due in part to our plentiful medical and art books dissecting the human form. When I went to college and took a first amendment law class, the special dispensations given for science and art in the realm of free speech made sense to me; science and art, in theory, did not cater to prurient interest. And they didn’t get edited out of movies.

Someone asked me once, when I was about 8, what I thought about the fact that a painting of me as a naked infant was up on the walls of a museum in Indiana. I shrugged; I didn’t care. Who cares about that sort of thing? It’s a nice painting.

As an adult, I’ve posed for a few art classes… not nude, but not in street wear, either. I was totally comfortable with this unless someone who was not supposed to be there wandered into the art studio. The intent artists’ eyes caught form, light, skin and muscle over bone, the drape of fabric. I was captured (perhaps briefly) in the generic black-and-white of chalk, of charcoal. I focused on not moving, counting to a hundred in French or in German. Not moving for 20 minutes at a time is hard work.

One of these sessions spurred another painting that was accepted into the national Oil Painters of America show, which opens June 10 in Coeur d’Alene. I suppose it’s a bit funny to know the person in any painting, because suddenly the painting is less the painting and more some version of the person. Perhaps that’s why so many works of art are idealized. And why so many people hate paparazzi and bad photos of themselves.