Starbucks Opens its Bathrooms

The policy has officially changed

So there might be a silver lining to that racist scene involving two Black men in a Philadelphia franchise who tried to use the bathroom while waiting for a business colleague and wound up in police custody. Starbucks has now announced that, unlike other capitalist enterprises, it will officially make their bathrooms available to anyone who enters their premises, whether or not they purchase anything at all. 

It's about time as far as I'm concerned. Why should libraries and hospitals be the only institutions that cater to the public biological needs? Those of us in the tiny bladder brigade salute them.

Restroom philosophy varies depending on the country and culture. Public markets and spaces in Mexico usually have bathrooms available for a small fee. They are run as a business enterprise, kept clean and waiting for customers. It can be a drag to always have change available but it's well worth it for the easy access.

However, sometimes paying to pee is a slap in the whatever. In Peru, at Machu Picchu you have to pay an arm and a leg for admission and then pay extra to use the pisser. This is an unfair tax on women and old people. If you spend, say six hours, there (and it's a big place where it's easy to spend the day) you might, if you're like me, have to go three times. In that case you should be able to purchase an express pass or something. But if you're like my partner Deborah, who is a woman with a super-sized bladder, you may only have to go once. It's simply unfair.

Then, there's Paris. Well, it's different everywhere but in Paris most cafe/restaurant owners were not thrilled if I snuck in to find a toilette. I had to be single focused and pretend I didn't understand them when they used that francophone logic in a futile attempt to deter me. It's not that I'm cheap, well maybe a little, but ordering another drink of something because you have to pee too often is counterproductive, to say the least.

Ah, but Madrid, my beloved city. Any haven for drinkers of wine and beer will inevitably be heaven for perpetual seekers of the aseos, their name for the old servicios where you aseo belongs.  Spanish bathrooms are plentiful and easy to find. They have a lot of small rooms with full walls for privacy. In fact, most espanoles find the type of public restrooms in the US, that consist of a row of stalls, disgusting and invasive, a kind of TMI of bodily functions. In Spain, even in hotel lobbies, people will kindly point you to your destination, even if you are not a guest.

So Starbucks is making its mark on US restroom history finally providing all Americans that proverbial pot to piss in. We have lost so much of late, it's the least they can do.

When Cultures Collide

I ran into an ex best-friend today at N. Waterfront Park in Berkeley. It was an unavoidable meeting, both of us walking different directions on the same, rather obscure, path. I know it was unavoidable because, in the past ten years that we haven’t spoken, if I saw her from a distance, I would find another route to avoid her. This time she came upon me fast. Worse yet, my partner, who is still Facebook friends with her, said hello. So we all said hello and briefly compared notes on retirement and moved on. No big deal. But it was painful nonetheless because of the cloud under which we parted ways, the one that ended our friendship of thirty-three years.

We first met in a CR group at the Women’s Center on Brady Street in around 1976. I was an emotional wreck just surviving after the untimely death of my mother in 1973 and the suicide of my grandmother that followed the same year. I was alone caring for my sister in a strange city. Cathy wanted to be friends and I needed friends desperately. Although her class background was similar to mine (lower middle class) she was very different. Her ethnic background was WASP and very self-contained. Especially so because her mother had acute mental illness. She didn’t want to talk much about deep stuff and neither did I so we were a perfect match.

We talked feminist politics which evolved into leftist politics. I was careful with her as though I was walking on eggs. Instinctively knew that my unleashed, assertive, blatantly Jewish-style of interacting would scare her. So I kept it at bay. This took the form of censoring and toning down my feelings and impressions. I don’t have to be tacky and uncouth just because my family was, I told myself. Cathy was smart and loving when she decided to be but her rules were strict and inflexible. She would counsel me on dating situations telling me when to call a potential date, how many times to try, when to send a card and what consists of an appropriate gift. These rules of etiquette were helpful for me because they were so completely absent in my coming of age experience.

Time may not heal all wounds but it does diminish them. That’s what happened to me as the years passed. Partly it was because I was meeting other lesbians of my own ethnicity who I related really well with. They were proud of their backgrounds and didn’t hold themselves back. As I grew freer, more secure in myself, I began naturally reverting to the style of interaction in which I was raised. It’s more of an organically grown conversation where one thing reminds you of another so you move on to the similar thing and the other person responds with more information about their experience and it builds organically from there. It involves both speaking and listening. Just trying it out made me feel better immediately. For Cathy that was not the case. She felt unheard, not listened to. Cathy believed that every addition I made to the subject was a subtraction from her perspective. She insisted that heavy exploration of a personal subject must consist of one person holding forth while the other is absolutely silent. Of course I hoped that, after all those years, we could work it out, that she’d realize it was just a difference in cultural styles not in emotional worthiness.

Later, I would post articles on my Facebook page about Jewish conversational styles and how the dynamics of social interaction are culturally determined. But later was too late for Cathy and I. We made many attempts at compromise and a number of aborted attempts at connecting. It would work for a while and then I would slip back to my natural state. She blamed it all on me and I took on that mantle too. After all, wasn’t I the one who changed? The blunt truth was that she liked the person I’d pretended to be quite a bit more than the one I actually was. And I could not settle for anything less than my genuine self.

The last time we spoke was at her place, the very same house I had convinced her to buy with a lawsuit settlement so many years earlier. Before leaving I said, “Well, this is it. I guess that unless one of us is dying of cancer or something, we won’t see each other again.” She said nothing. We haven’t seen or spoken a word until today when I was filled with that same old feeling of loss and sadness; a coming to terms with the fact that not all conflicts are reconcilable.

Music and Cultural Misunderstanding in Cuba

A music group on the streets of Trinidad, Cuba

There are so many new things to learn when you visit a country for the first time. Many are subtle. Our first night in Havana we made some mistakes from simply being unfamiliar with local customs.

We were exhausted and overwhelmed from travel. Because the money exchanges were closed by the time we arrived,  we'd only changed a little bit of currency. Luckily Ubaldi, had a friend who could do the exchange under the table. His cousin owned our airbnb apartment and he'd picked us up at the airport.

We were coming from having drinks with some new friends we met on the plane from Cancun, a lesbian couple from New Zealand. One of them had a bad cough so we broke up early and Deborah and I headed off to find a light dinner.

We went upstairs to a budget restaurant with a terrace overlooking Obispo, the main thoroughfare, a pedestrian-only street in Havana Vieja.  As we ordered our meal, we noticed a huge band setting up to perform on a stage area. We were the only customers in the place. I thought, how sad it was that they have this four-person band with singers and everything for such a deserted restaurant. They began singing and playing. We smiled. They tried to engage us in their songs.

All Deb and I wanted to do was talk and debrief about the plane, some immigration issues, our apartment and our new friends. And, of course, look out from the terrace to the bustling street. It was amazing being there, so near yet so far in every other sense. The music was good, but it was more of an interruption in our present state. We were being polite and waiting for them to finish their set. We were also eating. Finally, after many songs, they began packing to leave.

The woman singer approached our table and asked for money. We gave them a little bit, but we didn't have much because we needed to buy water for the room and were planning to change money tomorrow. All we had were Mexican pesos, because we'd spent a week on Isla Mujeres and had heard it was cheaper to change pesos to Cuban currency than dollars. The singer was a bit pissed, but she and the group departed.

Later, we did figure out how the music scene works in Cuba. The musicians travel around to restaurants. This group must have seen us go in and followed us. Then, you have a choice point. You can either smile and welcome them, which means you are willing to pay for the music. Or politely shake your head no, which signals them to go elsewhere. The restaurants, for the most part, don't have resident bands or groups but the groups who are the biggest draw tend to play at the biggest, most popular places.

It took a few days for us to figure out this system. After we did, it became quite easy to enjoy or choose not to listen to the ubiquitous musicians who are continually looking for people to entertain. But it was a bit of a misunderstanding because of our unfamiliarity with customs that are second nature to Cubans and to international visitors who are familiar with the system.

Hasta la Victoria Siempre.

This phrase in Cuba means "until victory, always and symbolizes enduring commitment to the values of Che's revolution which celebrated its 58th anniversary this year.

So much unabashed joy,warm welcomes and friendship. Old classic cars and crumbling infrastructure. The common bond of socialism. The proliferation of poverty. Visiting was both a thrilling and devastating experience. The Cubans people are intense and passionate. They talk loudly and use their hands. A tremendous commonality exists in a diverse society where races mingle without the level of  tension that racism breeds here in the United States. There is so much music, art and theater that creativity is an integral weave in the social fabric. I am still processing many conflicting feelings after my visit.

Their economy uses two currencies, one for the paychecks of the people and one for luxury items like hotels and restaurants. The national currency of the people is worth about 1/24th the value of the upscale currency, which is roughly based on the value of the US dollar.

Tourism is huge in Cuba. Many Americans don't realize that the rest of the world has been visiting regularly for quite a while. Yet, with the US embargo, the tourism-reliant economy is not enough to keep the people's economy afloat. Folks earn very little. A medical doctor makes around the equivalent of thirty dollars a month. Their rents and mortgages are paid by the government and food allotments of lower quality merchandise are given to everyone daily but those who can afford better quality items, buy them.

Houses can now be bought and sold. Higher up the hillsides and often near the ocean are nicer homes. Following purchase, all living expenses are paid for by the government. People who rent rooms in their homes or turn part of their homes into restaurants for tourists can supplement meager wages. I didn't find a classless society, but it is one without homeless people that has a safety net for the very poor.

The people we talked to said there are forms to fill out for everything. We saw a store in Havana where large appliances and sound systems from companies like Panasonic were in boxes. The woman who ran our pension in Trinidad said is a very regimented and it takes a while to get permission to buy things. People are used to waiting. The lines for the bank and the money changing office wound around the block.

Restaurant food is very simple. Cuba doesn't have salsa or tortillas or even potato chips. Homemade crackers with a mayonnaise-garlic-mustard sauce is a typical appetizer. The sea food is good and relatively cheap. Portions are small, which is a very tropical climate works well. If you ask for salsa, forget it. This is not Mexico. But they will gladly bring you oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. So, if you like salads, you're in luck.

We didn't find any supermarkets or tiendas in which to buy instant coffee or milk. What they call markets are startlingly stark. There is a lot of alcohol of all kinds and Cuba produces at least four brands of beer, all very tasty and cheaper, for tourists, than water. The people don't pay for water. Cigarettes and soft-drinks proliferate at the bodegas and there are no anti-smoking laws anywhere except museums.

In spite of the intense heat, there is very little air conditioning. Fans proliferate. I did get more used to the heat as time went on but it is painful to walk outside in the April sun during the day.

The penalties for drugs or violent crime are harsh. Marijuana use can bring 35 years. They still believe that weed leads to hard drug addiction. The streets are safe, even for women at night.

Music is everywhere. Traveling musicians descend on restaurants and play in bars. Many are very good and the streets at night are alive with sound.

The internet is not generally available. At fancy hotels it is 30 dollars an hour. We learned we could buy cards from the phone company for the equivalent of three dollars that would connect us for an hour if we stood in the street in front of a big hotel that had Wi Fi.

There is no advertising and very little signage. Billboards are used to glorify Che and the other movers and shakers of the revolution. All things pertaining to revolutionary philosophy are called propaganda, a word that doesn't have a pejorative slant in Spanish.

Toilet paper is like currency. Bathrooms are not free. They cost between 10 and 50 cents a pop, er pee, and there is a person, usually a woman, out front handing out little pieces of toilet paper for your use. If you speak Spanish, you can usually talk bathroom attendants into not taking money in a restaurant where you are purchasing food. Or if, like me, you bring your own toilet paper and promise not to flush. The bathrooms are clean but only in the fanciest restaurants and hotels do the toilets have seats on them.

Gay male Cubans are visible but quiet about issues. We met one Afro-Cuban lesbian. I didn't see any transgender people. As an experiment I dressed butch one day and was taken for male as long as I didn't speak. We got harassed less as a straight couple. As two women we were pestered for taxis continually and everyone assumed we were lost and needed help.

Some people talked politics with us. Many were afraid to express themselves. The national bookstores had a few leftist works considered propaganda. The used bookstores were packed with a wide variety of non-fiction, poetry and novels. They have large public libraries as well.

All in all, Cuba was a mind-opening experience. It is a socialist country quite different from others like Sweden. It has positive and negative sides to the vision of equality. But the warmth of the Cuban people is undeniable. They seem to truly enjoy each other's company and to live life for so much more than material goods. I can also see why someone would want to leave and try life elsewhere. If and when they do, I imagine they feel very isolated and alienated.

Cultural Differences In Europe

 In Paris along the Seine

The traveling I have done in the past, if you eliminate the seventies, has taken place in what is commonly referred to as the Third World. There, of course, there are a myriad of cultural differences depending on the country and the culture. But I didn't expect to find much of that in Europe where Deborah and I were the downscale peons descending from the much derided and lauded USA.

But things are done differently over there in subtle ways. One that came totally out of left-field and was explained to me by a gay male couple we were staying with in Belgium was that people don't commonly use wash cloths for their faces there. They thought my request for one was quite exotic. This seemed bizarre to me because I had bad acne as a young person and my washcloth was a bathroom staple. "How do women take off their make-up?" I inquired. They just...and Paul pantomimed sprinkling water on his face with his hands. I did notice that tissue boxes were often next to the sinks as well.

Asking for tap water at restaurants can be a dicey proposition, even without a drought. In France they will do it if you ask for "l'eau du robinet" water from the faucet. It will never have ice though. Ice is reserved for mixed drinks only. In Belgium they will run you out of the country if you ask for free water with a meal, but the Belgians will run you out of the country for a lot of things. A coffee-shop owner in Bruges was not going to let me sit with Deborah while she drank her espresso without ordering something. I refused and told him he was being unrealistic. He became furious but did not call the police. I had the whole scenario in my head, "Tourist arrested for refusing to order drink." I told him I was just going to sit with my wife while she drank her coffee. He stormed out of his own shop when I suggested he lighten up.

Beer and wine tended to be cheaper and more readily available than water, even in libraries. By ten in the morning folks were politely swilling beer in cafes, especially in Amsterdam. Never ask to be directed to a "Coffee Shop" unless you want to smoke marijuana. Cafes serve coffee, coffee shops are smoke to get high joints. When our host, Indra complained that some travelers make her apartment smell like a coffee shop, I thought dark roast, yum! But that's not the smell she was referring to.

A true sore point for me in Europe has to do with the fact that I can't go for more than about an hour and a half, two hours max, without emptying my bladder. When we visited museums or historic sites, this was not an issue, but for exploring neighborhoods it was. Public bathrooms were only in cafes and many cafes would only let you use them if you bought something. Buying a drink is counter-intuitive if your goal is to pee less! Belgians were fanatics about this, the French might give in but the Dutch were the least rigid if you gave them a good reason. Department stores or clothing stores did not have bathrooms. It makes me wonder about the capitalist history of making the shopper comfortable which must have been an evolutionary part of US culture. One store that did have a restroom charged .50 euros to use it (about 60 to 75 cents, depending on the exchange rate, but you had to have exact change).

All in all, I did have a great time running around France Belgium and the Netherlands. But now that I've returned, I do have a renewed appreciation for the land of the free, bathrooms and water that is.

Una Gringa en Mexico

Statue in Guanajuato

There is no substitute for travel. It is a way to feel part of a world so much greater than yourself that opens up a vast array of cultural norm and shines a light on the things we take for granted and fact that these assumptions are not universal in nature.

Although many of their lives are harder, people tend to be much kinder in Mexico. They will readily help friends and family and go out of their way for foreigners. Folks put up with our grammatically flawed Spanish, answered our stupid questions and walked us to places we couldn’t find.  There is a warmth, a generosity of spirit, that is totally unlike anything I’ve experienced in the USA.

This is a laissez-faire capitalist country and hard-working people sell everything from folk art to food to bathroom use, which comprises a national industry. Imagine a job in the US where individuals spend their days giving out toilet paper and cleaning toilets that individuals may use for a fee of 3 to 5 pesos a shot (about 15 to 30 cents). The poverty in Mexico is astounding but so is the growth of a rising middle class.

When it comes to ethnicity, there is an obvious caste system. The darker skinned, indigenous people predominate in the service industry as maids, shop employees, lower level restaurant workers. Yet being an individual entrepreneur is pretty much unregulated. Folks can set up a artisan booth, a taco stand or a public bathroom without government intervention or guidelines.

Mexico is a place where you are on your own in many ways. Real estate taxes, even on mansions tend to run about 30 to 50 dollars a year. Due to lack of genuine police protection, the cops don't get paid much and there is widespread bribery and corruption. The rich and middle class create their own gated communities and hire private security. It is a libertarian dream state. It is left to the individuals to protect themselves and their property because, to quote Bob Dylan, “the cops don’t need you and man they expect the same.”

Deborah and I met up with a relative of a friend who had been living in San Miguel for over ten years. She had increased the height of a wall between her place and her neighbor’s because the adolescent males next door kept trying to break into her place. She said they were bored rich Mexican kids who just wanted a challenge. She also believed that the police had earmarked her as the problem because the family was wealthy and influential. And, in spite of the fact that she is of Mexican-American descent and speaks Spanish, she is considered a perpetual outsider.

That is the dark side of family bonding; the relative ostracism of the expatriate community which, in turn, tends to stick together like any minority group. To American eyes, there is an appalling lack of public safety regulations. Children ride in open backed trucks.  Everything you eat is at your own risk. The potholes in the street are treacherous and there is no such thing as a lawsuit for tripping and falling anywhere, even on government property. I can’t begin to imagine what disabled people must endure. Fireworks punctuate the night like gunshots and dogs run wild.

I have finally come to terms with the fact that I could never live in Mexico. As a long-limbed, big-footed, somewhat sexually-indeterminate, pink-skinned creature, I stood out in every crowd. I longed for the anonymity of blending and the luxury of simply seeing others on the streets who looked like me. I am very happy to be back home but also grateful for the cultural experience of Mexico our close, yet very different, neighbor to the south.

Closeted in the 21st Century

It still happens and not just in junior high school. LGBT people live double lives even today. My sister called me the other night so I could watch Jodie Foster come out publicly at the Golden Globe Awards. Anderson Cooper declared his gayness just last year. If it is still difficult for actors and media people to live proudly in the open, there must be a high degree of prejudice surrounding regular folks.

I have been completely out since 1970. Saying this is not meant to toot my own horn. In many ways this decision has caused me a whole boatload of suffering from outright job loss to social ostracism. I didn't want to be a token lesbian for the world to see, but I felt that I had to be. My rationale was that if I had learned anything from past persecution such as what took place during the holocaust, it was that huge groups of people can really despise you and those same huge groups can be wrong. I didn't ask to be born on the other side of the bed, or to be Jewish for that matter, it just happened.

The queers I have met who remain closeted are good people. I am in no position to pass judgement on anyone. An African-American woman I used to work with took two full years to come out at work even though about a third of her coworkers were openly gay and experiencing no problems. It was more difficult for her to make this move because, in her culture, there tends to be more religion and less support. She is in a more vulnerable position.

 A new friend I met in an predominantly heterosexual but alternative environment is a clandestine lesbian. Her language of origin is not English and she is from another part of the world. I respect her very much but still have trouble with this decision, perhaps due to some failing of my own.

I am certainly well aware of what it is like to be openly other in a society that prizes conformity and uses ridicule and contempt as weapons to maintain it. 

I wonder how straight people will learn of our rainbow of diversity if the most introverted and frightened among us remain hidden? Don't these closeted ones realize that Audre Lourde was telling the truth when she said, "Your silence will not protect you?" And Lorde was African-American and, according to her "biomythography," "Zami: a New Spelling of My Name," openly queer since the fifties.

Perhaps my need to have everyone be living openly is a selfish analysis. I can neither assess another's life decisions nor the cost of speaking out for individuals whose experience is different from my own. The best I can do is help to create a world of, not just tolerance, but acceptance, a place beyond the sad, and outdated artifacts of guilt and shame. Until then, I'll just keep in mind that, at any given time, we all do the best we can.

Heterosexism vs Good Medicine

Apples and Oranges?

We are not all the same. As members of various groups and identities, we are all different. As a child I was culturally confused by this frame of reference. Growing up equal worth was confused with sameness, especially in terms of color and ethnicity. Blacks are the same as whites, Jews are the same as Gentiles. But the existence of divergent cultural norms and styles should not imply better or less than or negate the existence of genuine differences.

I am a writer now so I can't continue believing in didactic shorthand for the sake of simplicity any longer. While I recognize that each individual is as different as one snowflake from the next, there are shared values that groups possess. Women tend to be more emotionally attuned than men. Jews are more often secular and left-leaning due to a history of persecution in Russia and Germany. And LGBT folks of my generation (boomers) created a culture that tended to be progressive and based on the notion of chosen, not biological, "family." Fear of lesbians is still palpable in the fifity, and sixty-something folks of my generation. And, in a very real sense, queer, although equal to is not the same as straight.

In my recent search for medical providers a weird dynamic has emerged. I find that the men who are not assholes seem more capable of caring behavior toward females than heterosexist staight women. I'm not using the word homophobic because these are not women who would deride a lesbian on the street. They are simply women who do not want to be confronted with any indication that they might also harbor to many feelings of tenderness toward women who are not their daughters and that all of our sexualities fall on a continuum rather than into a category.

This situation often leaves me looking for male medical providers rather than deal with a nervous and uncaring stance from a female doctor, nurse, chiropractor or acupuncturist. It's a strange position for a lifelong feminist. Between me and my most recent acupuncturist there was a cultural gap you could drive a truck through. And I liked her. She is a mom who immediately showed me photos of her grown children. A woman who took on her husband's name. It was uncomfortable because the fact that she was totally unfamiliar with lesbian culture meant that there were no easy bridges between us.

Medical providers, even alternative ones are in the position of being required to physically interact with clients. It is imperative that either they are comfortable with touching people of all genders and orientations or they only treat certain groups.

That decision, when it comes to equal rights, opens up an abyss-sized slippery slope.