Joyce Schon: My First Long-term Partner

Joyce Schon (1952-2016)

I seem to be standing at a crossroads where past, present and future intersect. Being on the receiving end of a nasty ending of a twenty year relationship has left me feeling sad and nostalgic so I looked up an old ex partner online. Our relationship was one that lasted fifteen years from 1980 to 1995. I’d heard more recently she’d moved to her home city, Detroit and became a civil rights and immigration attorney. Last I heard she was still a member of Revolutionary Workers League, the Marxist-Leninist group to which she had always belonged.

I was dismayed to discover that Joyce Schon died of metastatic breast cancer in 2016 at 64 years of age. We had totally lost touch by that time, but I did wonder why she changed her email suddenly and was no longer active. She was still a Facebook friend so I knew I could message her there. We are all immortal online. I located only a perfunctory obituary that was geared toward straight, conventional family only. 

The fact she was a lesbian was missing from the obit. All her years of union activism and leftist organizing had been erased. It was appalling to see Joyce reduced to a traditional woman without spouses, children or interests.

What can I say about our time together? I remember the early days when I was 29 and she was 28. It was a wild, passionate time. We went to political meetings constantly. We also had sex everywhere. In parks, on beaches in every room of our apartments. She lived in Berkeley and I in San Francisco and we were each too poor to own cars but fortunately, there was BART.

Politically we were quite different. Joyce was a member of RWL, a group I referred to as Really Weird Leftists. They were a vanguard Trotskyist party. I, on the other hand, was involved in groups like Lesbians Against Police Violence and Revolting Lesbians. That made us a mixed marriage of sorts.

Joyce worked as a Ward Clerk at SF General in those days and was one of the first to work on the newly created Aids Ward. She was also a shop steward and union activist extraordinaire. Thirty for forty was her slogan for workers there: thirty hours of work a week for forty hours pay. She spoke Spanish with such an authentic accent that whenever she used it her conversation partner would deluge her in the language so rapidly that she couldn’t understand a word. 

She was committed to getting the message of socialism out into the world. I remember when the SF Chronicle was on strike. At the time, I was a research librarian there, a member of the Newspaper Guild. Joyce spoke at a strikers meeting in the Warehouse district of San Francisco. There were about 7,000 people in attendance, members of the Newspaper Guild, the Printers Union and the Teamsters. She addressed the huge crowd without wavering. She spoke with passion and determination. 

Joyce had a beautiful voice and played guitar. She sang both union songs and “women’s music.” “The Woman in Your Life,” was a particular favorite of mine.

In 1991 when I was diagnosed with melanoma and scheduled to have an intensive skin graft on my leg, she took my tumor, floating in its vial, to the head of the melanoma clinic at Mt. Zion for a second opinion. That experienced doctor said that the major disfiguring surgery I was scheduled for in two days, was unnecessary for a forty-year old. He recommended a much less destructive re-excision procedure instead. I have the full use of my leg now because of that decision.

Joyce always wanted to return to her home city of Detroit. In 1995, by mutual decision, we broke off our relationship. Our paths had diverged. My cancer experience had changed me. I became a Buddhist and a more spiritual person. She was still devoutly political and wanted more freedom. We parted ways like two adults who cared for each other. It was an ethical, mutually agreed upon decision that didn’t involve one party sleeping with someone else. Joyce was always an ethical person with a high degree of integrity. I look back on that breakup fondly now, aware of how bitter and ugly things can get.  

After we split I'd given her a check for a thousand dollars as a promise to make good on buying out her share of our home. A couple weeks later, without speaking to me first, she went to the title company and legally took her name off the title, literally giving me the house. She did this because of her Marxist convictions. She knew that my family members were all dead or remarried and that I would probably never be able to buy a house again. She, on the other hand, was from an upper middle class family and her parents were still alive. The magnitude of this gift still makes me cry. Because of Joyce I believe in genuine kindness and compassion that transcends romantic love. 

I am old enough to feel death gaining ground. My life is beginning its final chapter. I must seek out the person I used to be. She is still alive inside me and has grown older, wiser, stronger, less afraid. I speak through her voice now. When I open my mouth the only words I'm able to utter are the unadulterated, unmitigated, unapologetic truth. Joyce Schon you taught me well. I miss you. 

Suicide / Survival

Robin Williams’ suicide is a devastating waste and loss. The shock waves reverberating around the world seem out of proportion for one comedian however brilliant, poignant and universally respected and loved.

This is a reaction to the big question that if someone like Robin Williams could end his life, how can the rest of us poor fools ever manage to trudge on? If wealth, fame and universal adoration aren’t strong enough reasons to compel someone to stay here on earth, what does that say about all our struggles? It compells us to imagine a depth of despair that is truly terrifying. It speaks to the immense difficulty of this life that someone can go against every survival instinct as opposed to just waiting for inevitable, eventual death, an experience guaranteed to every one of us.  

Death in our culture is very scary. In my sixth decade, I currently see more friends taken down against their will than because of it. That was not always the case. I’ve had friends and family members and friends who’ve ended their lives. My grandmother took pills. my high school friend, Jill hung herself with her knee socks when we were in our early twenties. In those years, my friend Liz stole her uncle’s gun and shot herself in the head. As one of those they left behind, I felt grief was overwhelmed by a sense of failure.What could I have done or said that might have made a difference? Couldn't I have talked them into one more pizza, one more movie?

Yet, I have certainly gone through periods in my life when I’ve considered suicide as an option. Fortunately, there is a vast abyss between thought and action. Taking your own life is a violent act that requires a high level of desperation as well as commitment. It demands totally abandoning the idea that things will improve, that tomorrow will be that proverbial new day.

The tragedy of suicide is that violence is perpetrated not only on the departee but on the survivors. I blame my mother leaving me because of ovarian cancer, but if it had been her decision to go it would have made my anger that much stronger. We all want to debrief with the dead but, except for dreams and visions, they are no longer available to us. Anger, frustration and fear are the collateral damage that suicide leaves in its wake.

So grieve for Robin Williams and for everyone who couldn’t bear to wait around for the grim reaper and instead took things into their own hands.It’s okay to mourn. It’s okay to be pissed off. But the best outcome is to support the people you care about right now and make sure each one of them can keep on keepin’ on!

Consciousness, Drugs and Dying

Whether any trace of our human essence survives during and after dying process is, for science, uncharted territory. In some documented instances, the essence of consciousness continues on without the biological support of a living body. Severe physical damage throws the body into shock, so it seems logical that the same thing could happen to the conscious mind, triggering a physical reaction that causes it to take refuge elsewhere.

My partner, Deborah had an out-of body experience as a student in college. In her case, she woke up in her own bed, in the middle of the night with a stranger on top of her trying to strangle her. What happens next she describes as a scream so powerful it emanated from her mouth as a filament of light that went straight up to the ceiling of the room. That light contained the essence of her consciousness. From the ceiling of her bedroom, she watched the attack on her physical being with a sense of peace and detachment that would not have been possible had she remained present in her besieged body.

Deborah was not murdered and returned to her body at a point when she was able to communicate with and escape her attacker. In true instances of near-death experience, when the body is badly wounded or killed, some essence is perceived to proceed onward to a dimension most describe as one of boundless peace and connectedness.

Now I tend to believe that religion is not only the opiate of the people but the scourge of humankind. Still, I try keep an open mind especially when it comes to science, biology and physics. I don’t pretend to comprehend of the universe, but since all these people worldwide have had oddly similar experiences, that there might be something to this that science does not yet understand.

In the surgical profession, there have been numerous reports of people who have flat-lined on the operating table yet were able to recall conversations, music and exactly what transpired during the period when they were technically dead.

I have to admit a large part of the reason I remain open to the existence of other dimensions is the fact that I did a lot of hallucinogenic drugs as a young person. While tripping on various psychedelics, I witnessed the universe broken down to a molecular level where mathematical pattern and incredible geometric design prevailed.

In that vein, I just read an article, Five Amazing Things ScientistsHave Discovered About Psychedelics , posted a few days ago on Alternet. This piece notes that besides helping the dying let go of their fear of death, psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin actually suppress certain parts of our brains. It is this more limited capacity that opens up our brains to new information, not the other way around. It’s as though the filter breaks causing incredible hallucinogenic sensations to rush in.

Possibly, this is the state that autistic people and, assuredly cats, inhabit their entire lives.  The filter ruptures, the world rushes in. The mind continues without the body. The universe breaks down into connection and light.

It all sounds remarkably similar to brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s electrifying Ted Talk, “My Stroke of Insight,” in which she recreates her amazing sensory journey, conveying the intensity, beauty and transcendent serenity she experienced when a stroke shut down her brain functions one by one.

No one really knows happens when we die. A dying brain could produce many experiences, but can a dead one? These questions remain unanswered. By the time we are sure, it seems we are no longer able to pass on this information. We know only that the trajectory leading out of this life is one that each of us must follow. Rest assured, if I get there before you, and I can, I will send you a sign!

Former Classmates and Mortality

I carry so much baggage around with me that, if you could see it, I would look like a bag-lady with the biggest shopping cart ever. A sizable percentage of that baggage comes from the experiences of youth, those formative years when everything seemed daunting and overwhelming. Family is a large component of this weight but high school and junior high loom large in my legend.

That’s why I was caught off guard when I looked at a web page of my high school classmates from the class of ’69 and saw the large number of folks who have already died (about 50 out of around 650). While this percentage isn’t huge, it still seems like a lot for folks in their early sixties. I know it will grow larger with each passing year. That really hit home with concrete evidence of my own mortality.

I remember hearing about Kim’s death in the late seventies. She was found hanging in a jail cell tripping her brains out on acid. She had hung herself with her belt. Neil was killed in a car accident. But these recent deaths were from more natural causes. I googled them for their obits and found out a little about their lives as well as their deaths. Studious David had run a bookstore in Seattle before his number came up and sexy Sarah had worked for a lumber company for 40 years then finally retired and died the same year.
 

These facts are neither earth-shattering nor startling. In fact, of the other living classmates I found online some moved away and some stayed in Ohio, had gotten married, divorced, had kids or didn’t, were prominent or impossible to find. Some others, like me, had even come out as queer. 

The ways they died weren’t particularly noteworthy either. They include the ways all of us will probably go. Marcia died from breast cancer, Donna succumbed to complications of lupus and with Carol it was Crohn’s disease.

Then I realized the truth: the kids who made my life a living hell as well as those who made it worth living were simply people, totally blown out of rational proportion because of the pressures and lack of perspective that are part and parcel of youth.

None of these folks caused me to feel inferior or less than the person I truly was. Even my misguided, neglectful parents didn’t do that intentionally. I still can’t figure out exactly what it is about being young that can make some people mean and heartless. When I read about the bullying that still happens at that age, I don’t find more clarity.

But I can find greater compassion. We all do the best we can with the tools that are available to us at the time. Can I humanize and forgive those who were imperfect actors in this short, one-act play called life? At this point, I think so.

Crosses are not Non-Denominational

Dead Christians Only?

This heading may sound like a real no-brainer but Christianity and it symbolism has become such a deeply engrained part of American culture that many people have blocked this simple truth from their awareness. I cannot tell you how many anti-war rallies I have attended where crosses were unilaterally carried to represent the dead.

Even the Lafayette hillside anti-war memorial is often referred to as "the crosses of Lafayette." Yes, and it certainly appears to be cross upon cross but, I am told, that there are a few crescents, stars of David and Buddhas amid the overwhelming number of crosses.

Many people tend to have these distorted memories of cemeteries as well. I remember reading an article that referred to the rows of crosses at Arlington National Cemetery. In fact, Arlington has rows and rows of tombstones, not crosses. Upon each individual stone there may be a cross, a crescent, a star of David and there is even the occasional pentacle from the Wiccan persuasion. There may be only a name with dates. It all depends upon the wishes of the deceased person or members of that family.

The fact is that the cross has become so pervasive it's actual meaning has been watered down to nearly nothing. For people who use it as a symbol of worship, this is a negative side-effect of the Christianization of America. A friend of mine visited a "women's spirituality" alternative house of worship. She described the room as having a cross over the podium but explained it was small and unobtrusive. She also told me it is a place of "non-denominational" worship.

Arlington: Tombstones, Not Crosses

A cross, no matter how petite and unassuming is not non-denominational. Growing up a Jew in an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood in the fifties, I often confused the cross and the swastika. Both were symbols emanating from a gentile world of otherness that I had been taught to mistrust and fear.

I'm not saying that this level of paranoia was constructive or healthy, only that it existed and it affects me still. A cross is a symbol of Christianity. There is nothing wrong with that. Just be mindful that it doesn't represent all of us!

Day of the Dead vs Halloween

Octavio Paz described Mexican culture as being “seduced by death.” Sugared skulls, and the skeletal figurines (colacas) of humans in every conceivable clothing style and occupation seem to confirm this sentiment. Day of the Dead is primarily a celebration of the ancestors. Unlike Halloween, the goal of the flowers, altars, candy and skeletal array is to pay respects in the more creative, fanciful style of the people who brought us magical realism.

America’s Halloween differs from Day of the Dead in many ways. Number one is that Halloween is scary. In American culture death is not a natural occurence common to all life, but a fearful, traumatic end. When the dead come back, they are not pleased. They haunt and frighten us by making spooky sounds and rattling bones. Like the ever-so-popular vampire and zombie legends, the moral is always that it is preferable for all if the dead remain buried. Our culture gives a high priority to everyone staying in their designated place.

In Dia de Los Muertos, the dead are revered, not as superhuman, but with all the frailties and imperfection of the lives they lived. Altars, the tributes to the departed, often include whiskey bottles and cartons of cigarettes. These are not the trappings of saints. It is a time of memory and celebration. If these deceased returned for a visit, it seems that their friends and families would rejoice not cower.

When my mother was dying of ovarian cancer, the primary emotions she expressed were fear and, more puzzling, shame Fear seems a natural response to the unknown but her shame was trickier to comprehend. In retrospect, I believe it was about relinquishing control in front of her children. Being invulnerable was a necessary part of that definition.

Of course control is also a primary part of our philosophy of rugged individualism. “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” was a quote often repeated by my father. To be so ill that you can no longer steer your own ship is not only considered tragic, it is a disgrace.

If my mother had openly acknowledged how sick she was it would have been a relief to all of us. We could have begun initiating closure much sooner; expressing emotion and saying all the things that need to be said.

I don’t know how her death would translate in Mexico. But, on her altar, I would place a copy of Simone De Beauvoir’s, “Second Sex,” a bottle of scotch, and one of Sanka, a can of tomato juice and one of asparagus spears, a slice of rye toast, a pack of Kent cigarettes, a copy of the New Yorker, a steno pad, a credit card and an old typewriter.

Do Negative Experiences Build Character?

The other day I was indulging one of my favorite downscale diversions, watching Judge Judy. A twenty-four year old woman whose dog had been killed by another dog was telling her tale of woe. Without wavering she described the death of her dog as the most painful experience of her young life. I both pitied and envied her.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love animals. When I was a teenager my cat, Saka died of poisoning. We found her in the backyard with her eyes open, forever staring into space. I was devastated. By the time I was twenty-four I'd also experienced the death of my mother, the suicide of my grandmother, dealing with the juvenile court system, alcoholism, mental illness, a whole raft of issues that for me and my friends were just par for the course. Would Saka's death have been my most painful experience? I doubt it would even make the top five.

Do I think that people with more difficult lives are better people? Au contraire ma chere. I actually kind of lean in the opposite direction but would be last to apportion blame. When I first had the opportunity to get to know "rich" people (who were actually upper middle class) I found them very nice...hard to get to know at first, but sweet, soft and fluffy compared to the razor-edged folks I was accustomed to.They might offer to do things for you like picking you up at the hospital after you had your impacted wisdom teeth removed. Their parents had often, but not always, modeled caring behavior for them. It was such an unusual experience for me, to feel nutured and appreciated.

My hard-scrabble friends' support was there but erratic. It was more dependent on the convergence of many factors, the ebb and flow of their personal lives. Sometimes they were pillars of support, sometimes they couldn't be found. Do they have more character? I'm not even sure what that means. They may have more resilience and stamina and now, as a writer, I can definitively state that they have more material.

Beauty, Humor and Healthy Pessimism

David Rakoff

David Rakoff has died at 47. The gay essayist, comic, avowed pessimist and self-proclaimed neurotic Jew has crossed over to the other side. His book of essays, "Half Empty," extolled the virtues of a realistic, pessimistic attitude when looking at the world.

The cause of his death was a tumor caused by radiation treatments he had for lymphoma when he was 22. Like any logical realist, his own demise was an option he was prepared to accept with the same humor and grace he used to write about his cancer.

Like Jewish tribal affiliate and fellow cancer survivor, Barbara Ehrenreich who wrote "Bright Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America," he espoused a realistic, rather than a sugar-coated view of life. Of late, psychologists and psychiatrists are arriving at the conclusion that this attitude is healthier for many people than a sunny-bunny perspective that leaves sick and depressed people saddled with guilt and blame for their own illnesses.

Like Rakoff and Ehrenreich, I too, am a cancer survivor. After my Clark's level 4 melanoma diagnosis in 1991 I contemplated for the first time the fact that my life might be concluding shortly. As a terminal Jew, healthly skepicism, i.e. pessimism was always been my modus operandi anyway.

But surprisingly, I actually came away from my cancer experience with a lot of practical and positive resolutions that a cheerier person may not have adopted. I made a list of concrete proposals to change my life just in case I survived the ordeal. That was nearly 21 years ago, so I was one of the lucky ones.

I promised myself that I would write and try to get my work published, that I would hold world travel and language learning as life priorities and that I wouldn't be consumed by the workaday rat race. Four years after my diagnosis, I took a part-time job and have never worked full-time for the capitalism dream-shredding machine again. Yet my overall, dark-sided nature has remained fundamentally unchanged, although in many ways I have definitely mellowed with my(unanticipated) advancing age.

True creativity is not born of sunshine and lollipops, it is a survival mechanism that comes from profound inner struggle mixed with existential angst and humor. Farewell David Rakoff, we will miss you and we will bear in mind that we are all coming up right behind you!

Turning Sixty: A Junior-Senior is Born

Aging is something that I never thought could happen to me. At sixteen I believed I might live to twenty-two. At twenty-two following the death of my mother, the suicide of my grandmother and the death of her husband, my grandfather, three months after that, I was sure that my life would be over within the year.

But life is funny. The survival instinct is overpowering. If you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, time passes. There is always one more dinner, one more drink, one more joint, one more line, one more TV show and one more movie. So it goes. What some refer to as "substance abuse," I now think of as self-medication. It saved my life. There was my sister Lori, to care for, she hadn't yet finished high school. And my old friend Barb who I'd run into at my mother's funeral. She was living in a trailer in a campground. Having worked as a bartender, she really knew how to "entertain." She claimed her life in Ohio was going nowhere fast. So, my sister, Barb and I set off in search of a sea change in the wide open promise of California.

When I tell folks I came out here to live thirty-eight years ago, they look at me with the kind of dismissive disbelief with which I used to regard old people. Sometimes it feels as though every sentence I speak is loaded down with time. I'll say I lived in San Francisco for fourteen years, but now I've lived in the East Bay for twenty-one. These are huge numbers. The folks who are the "right age" now were born in the eighties. When I was thirty-something, I admitted to myself that when I looked over a crowd of people, I only saw the ones in my age group. That seems natural for the young. It must have to do with mate selection and sex drive. I'm sure Charles Darwin could explain it.

In two years I'll qualify for Social Security, if we still have it. I work half-time now, not completely of my own volition, but sometimes even that seems like too much. I'm still strong and healthy but my energy level is not what it used to be. I remember working full time from 8:30 to 5:30, picking up a burrito on the run and then attending a political meeting that lasted until 9:30 or so. Following that meeting, we'd often go to a bar to drink and play pool until closing.

Ah, youth, definitely wasted on the young. If you'd told me then that one day I'd be blogging about it, you could have proved the existence of a parallel universe on a time/space continuum. And, speaking of physics,  if Stephen Hawking can make peace with his limited body, I'm sure I can learn to accept mine.