the stormy leather god, estrogen, and vietnam

It was a very long time ago, but I just got jolted by it again.

He, the Vet, had walked into my office. There was already a student in there and she overheard him say, "I could have killed you ..."

I think it opened the conversation. But before I knew it, the student had told the Chair, and the Chair had told Campus Police, and the Chief of Police went undercover in my class, day one. A clear misunderstanding. It was a class on Gender and Anthropology. The cop was a pretty good student; raised his hand, took notes, asked interesting questions. I think the whole thing was just a great excuse for the Police Chief to take a class on gender...

The Vet wore army fatigues every day, camo pants, and T-shirts all with references to the war, like "Vietnam, Take One" with a picture of a movie camera filming the horror. Loud noises made him jumpy. He sat by the door, in case he had to run out at any moment. It didn't happen too often. But it did happen.

He had an arsenal. But so, apparently did a lot of other students.

I liked him instantly. We swapped war stories. Only my war was only six days long. And I hadn't killed anybody. All we'd really done was commandeer an empty bomb shelter (with wall-to-wall mattresses), lock ourselves in and fuck like bunnies the last three days. That one became a rabbi. Or a psychologist. Or both. I think both. Point is, it wasn't Vietnam. Far from it.

I remember one year the Vet and I traded outfits. I got to wear his old dress uniform. He borrowed my Stormy Leather for a while. He got me a belly dancer for my birthday once. It was a friendship based on exploring the potential for transformation. And an appreciation of the power of mythology. And on the search for the ritual that might reverse the rage, ease the warrior's pain and make things right again.

So, when I wrote about embodying God, he really has had a lot more experience in this regard — in the other sense of God. The Stormy Leather God.

Here's what he wrote:

"I was God when I was 20 years old. I ripped and I tore. I did decide who lived and who died. 20 year olds should not be God, though I am still being told that others 'would follow me into hell' — no shit, old team mate really said that and it is being taken as a compliment.

"However, for me being God it is not what it is cracked up to be. I was not very good at it — it really fucked me up..."

Right. So I stand corrected.

That's the other kind of God. The one I wasn't talking about. Makes me sound so warm and fuzzy speaking mommie-god, garden-god... But that's not how men embody God, is it?

He found an antidote. Estrogen. Estrogen and belly dance. And years later I got to see her transformation. And what I'd like to say is, in my book, that was God. He Created a Her he could live with. She could calm the rage. And she could dance. And I was jealous.

He could have killed me. But he didn't.

"My cardiologist," he said, "took me off Estrogen because it was beginning to weaken my blood vessels. Unfortunately, the more it diminishes in me, the more I am returning to a creature I do not want to be again, [that kind of] God. So, I finally decided to say screw it... I've been living on borrowed time for years, so if the Estrogen is going to kill me, let it ... at least I will, I hope, return to a place of semi-peace before it or something else takes me down."

So, here's to our warriors, and a remembrance of what war does to them. And how hard they struggle (if they do struggle) to undo all the harm. I salute you, and I salute what you've become. And I honor your bravery when that war is finally done.

And here's to the Estrogen God, the mommie-gods, and yes, the gardeners too. I'll stick to my story, after all. To Herakles, warrior-slave of Omphale, here's to you.

the he-man/skeletor debate

Is conflict necessary? And how long have humans thought about that problem? And is it a problem? Darwin, Freud, Kropotkin, Erikson and so many others have weighed in on the subject. Marvin Harris. Napoleon Chagnon. Fanon. Some of my favorite thinkers. Maybe everyone has weighed in on this one, or some version of it. Such as in the question: When is conflict necessary? Which in its very structure preempts the idea that we might not need it at all.

So, thinking about this, and having a bookcase full of experts positing their arguments on a multitude of conflict themes, you'd think I wouldn't have been surprised to hear my kids immersed in the debate. Actually talking it out.

The conflict, if I may be so bold, was that Big Brother wanted Little Sister to play He-Man with her, and she was holding out. They were sitting in their usual places at the kitchen table munching on their afternoon snack. Raw baby carrots, hummus to dip them in, and some fishies. Big Brother really wanted to play. Little Sister was being obstinate.

"Why do I always have to be Skeletor?" she complained.

Big Brother looked at her, struck to the core. He was He-Man. How could you argue that? It was a fact of nature. After all, Grandma had given him the action figures, not her. He was just inviting her to play. He argued to this effect.

"Well, why does there have to be a Bad Guy, anyway? Why can't we both be He-Man?" she persisted.

Big Brother was beside himself. Little Sister was clearly unclear on the concept. He then went into a stunningly lyrical portrayal of life on planet earth, the nature of storytelling, and the basic dynamics of the human condition. He even, as I recall, threw in the social life of the neon tetras in our 35 gallon fish tank, to punctuate his point. He actually used the words Protagonist and Antagonist. Our private school dollars at work. He was eight years old. She was four.

He explained to her that every story on planet earth had protagonists and antagonists. And that every game there was to play, had the same. It was a rule. There was good and there was evil. That's just how it worked. He gave example after example, laying down the foundation of his argument carefully. Using examples from her own experience to make his point. He was eloquent and he was thorough. She remained unmoved.

Finally, Big Brother quite literally threw his arms up in dismay, and said to her, "Okay, fine. You name me one single thing we can play that does not involve Protagonists and Antagonists, and I'll play it with you!" He was almost shouting in his exasperation with her.

She turned toward him, looked him in the eye, and without missing a beat, said,

"Barbies."

He stormed out of the room in a rage. She just didn't get it.

teaching bunnies to fly

I had this student once — I wonder how many tales start that way — and it was a very long time ago. When I was obsessed with being a boxer. Yah. I wanted to box. And nobody would teach me. And I wanted it bad. Just to see what it felt like, to hit and be hit (in some kind of controlled environment). Once. Just once. Let me say right at the outset, that I lost interest in even the idea of boxing pretty quickly after the bunnies...

I was teaching this class at the time called Cultures and Conflict, or maybe it was Cultures in Conflict, I don't really remember anymore. And discovered one afternoon in class that I was a fraud. With a show of hands, every person in the room had had a fight, at least one, physical fight in his or her life — except me. And three quarters had guns, even the nun in the front row. And I was teaching this class?

What I knew was theory. Theories of conflict. I don't actually do conflict itself all that well. Better, I always say, just to run. Just keep running. Passport in hand. After all, we've been doing it for centuries. Millennia, really. It's worked out moderately well, hasn't it?

But this time, I wanted to learn how to fight.

So. At the end of the semester, this student, he told me he wanted to give me a graduation present. That's what he called it. It was, after all, his graduation, and he thought it would be fun. He came up to the City and decided to teach me to fight. Not boxing. Martial arts. My student became my teacher. But that's not what this tale is really about — it's just how it started.

Eventually, he invited us down to his ranch. Me and my kids. He taught my kids to ride the horses his family bred. What I remember most about the ranch were the guns everywhere, leaning against things. Stuck in mattresses, just in case. I watched my kids reach out; little private school urban Jewish children, reaching out ... He offered to teach them to shoot. He was a born teacher.

Mostly though, my kids were drawn to the bunnies. And the bunnies won out over the guns. And at some point, I overheard him telling my kids that his mom taught bunnies to fly.

Driving back, my kids were all about flying bunnies, and they didn't let the subject drop until I promised to find out more. After all, if his mom could teach bunnies to fly, so could theirs. I was a teacher, right?

The life of bunnies, like that of all living things, is a precarious thing. Or maybe, the life of bunnies is more precarious than many of the other creatures who live on the ranch. They require protection. And his family was pretty good at it. Pens and fences and shotguns to keep the bunnies safe (and sure, everything else safe as well). But fine. Safe bunnies. Got it.

But when one died of its own accord, his mom would take it from the pen, holding it up by the feet, climb up to the top of the ridge the ranch stood on, and fling the bunny way out into the wilderness below. And they flew, they really flew. And the coyotes were grateful. His mom, he said, was an expert at teaching bunnies to fly.

And I realize now, although it didn't occur to me then, that boxing or no boxing, martial arts or no martial arts, fieldwork or no fieldwork — and no matter how much my kids might want me to teach them — there was one thing that I would never ever be able to teach, and that was ... teaching bunnies to fly.