oshun and oya, in private

Sometimes I wonder if Oshun really gives a damn about Chango.

I mean, there's Oshun. Keeper of the hearth and home. Happy to keep the home fires burning. Happy to hold it all together when Chango is off fighting the good fight, being dramatic, charismatic, and good.

Oshun, I think, is in love with love. Maybe even the idea of love. And she is not at all ambivalent about children and kitties and dogs. She pours out love and caring. And she's very attached to that house.

But Chango?

I mean, I think it's probably a relief for Oshun when Chango goes off awandering. She gets a little time to herself to contemplate the principles of love, without having to deal with the pain in the ass who's very nearly never there.

The women of Medjerda were thrilled when their husbands were away.

They got the courtyard all to themselves then. They could relax. They were not beholden. Multiple wives —polygyny, in other words — was prized, even by the younger women, even though by the time I got there polygyny had been illegal for about 15 years. Bummer, that. I mean it. Multiple wives. How cool is that — for the women, I mean.

Be stuck with Chango all by yourself? Well, no. Having a co-wife or two would make living with a man who thought himself a god (not to mention, taking care of his mother as well) more bearable. Polygyny would ease the terrible burden. The young women I talked with (rural, marriageable fellahi girls) were uniformly not looking forward to being stuck with some preordained husband of their own. Partly it was the geezer factor. It was only the older men who could afford marriage at all.

And love wasn't what it was cracked up to be, either.

The problem with love for these Medjerdiya girls was that the young men they might fancy were almost certain to be unemployed and likely unemployable. There wasn't any land left to distribute. And only one son might inherit his father's lot, and still not own it. They had no education to speak of. And getting a passport to work abroad usually just wasn't in the cards. But many of them did get out. Basbor de la lune — passport of the night. Sneaking over the border to Libya. Well, that's not going to happen again any time soon.

Of course, the women of Medjerda are not devotees of Oshun at all. They put their trust in Allah, and they do their part resisting. I think they'd find Oshun a tad unrealistic.

Romantic love can only get a person into deep shit.

But the love of the household, the children — well that's a pretty safe place to be. And when Chango's off with his Oya, you can relax into knowing the place is all yours. And the kids are too. And you build an obligation in them, so that when they're grown and there's no place else to go — they'll take you in. But if you yourself try to leave before they're grown, you can't take them with you, and so when you and they are young there's no place you can go.

There's a law in Tunisia, still on the books I believe. About foreign women who marry a Tunisian man. Should they divorce, the children are his and his family's. She cannot take them out of the country, not even for a visit without his leave. Family law wholeheartedly supports patrilineal privilege.

The Imazighen of Morocco, have it just the other way around. When a man leaves, the children stay with their mother. Matrilineal, still, to the core, the Berbers are. But it's not at all the law.

Heartbreaking either way. Staying. Overstaying. Leaving. Falling in love. Dangerous stuff, these.

Oshun. She believes in love. Embodies it, as if it will keep her safe. She's needed there at home. Who else will do her job? You can't fire her, right? Disaster would ensue.

But the Changos of the world do fire her. Or they leave her there to figure it all out on her own. For the Changos of the world, the adventure is with Oya. The larger issues. The global affairs. High drama, intensity, and the cause of justice in the air.

Most likely I've misrepresented Oshun here.

And that's me — who can Oshun as fiercely as the next person. Tiger-mummy extraordinaire. I can do that. I do do that. But my Oshun still comes out looking a whole lot like Oya. Just like my chicken soup can't help ending up a minestrone, heavy on the lemon.

But I can't stand an Oshun who is beholden. Who sits at home and waits for Chango's return. Who doesn't stand a chance in the realm of grand adventure. Who has nowhere else to go.

And yet, look at all those altars! Oshun, that's what people want. Find me a mate, Oshun. Bring me children, Oshun. Give me your life, Oshun.

It's not like anyone's asking for Oya's favors, unless they are very, very desperate for a dramatic change.

Oshun wins inside the public imagination. She's got a hold, a grasp Chango's not willing to let go of. Somebody's got to do it. And she does it so bloody well.

Oya walks away, or rather, she turns and runs. You're not going to tame her the way you tame Oshun.

Strange thing about Oya is that she too has to live someplace. Strange thing is that Oya can do Oshun all by herself and do her really, really well indeed. I think there's not a soul on earth who thinks that but me. Okay, you say, but that's not love. Okay, I say, but maybe it is.

I mean, Oya's got to come from somewhere and she's got to go home again too sometimes. And Oshun might be afraid of adventure. But Oya finds it all divine.

Sometimes I think I'm more like Oya. Sometimes there's no question I do Oshun. Maybe it's Chango who's overrated. Time to think more about Ogun.

key moments in baby dyke awakenings

'Baby dyke' is just another stage of life, isn't it? It's just a question of how long it takes to get there, right?

What comes to mind, strangely enough, is spending time with old women in North Africa, especially after they'd been widowed. These were women who had never had a choice of whether or not to marry — let alone who to marry. The happiest women in the older set that I knew in the 1970s were those women in polygynous marriages. They were just fine, thank you, sharing (the burden) of one husband. Grateful as could be at not being stuck with him (and his mother) alone. The freedom felt by widows was not just palpable, it's visible even in photographs.

And the younger women (we're talking rural sector here) complained that polygyny had been outlawed. And therefore, they'd be stuck with some old geezer doing all the labor for him and his brood. They were not at all grateful for the 'liberation' from polygyny.

Not exactly baby-dykes, I agree. And I know that women are also sorrowful at the loss of a lifetime mate. But what I witnessed were women relieved from the burden of serving men. Content to be an elder themselves, served by their younger generation. And the unhappiest old woman I knew was being forced back into a marriage by her son. Long story. Hishma!

But in our country, and in urban life, surely it shouldn't take until widowhood to discover one's own gynephilia. But sometimes the signs are there and we just plain missed it.

Upon reflection, I think I've had five little moments of awakenings that I just clear somehow missed at the time. Not including obvious baby dyke moments like crushes. Or that feeling when getting strapped into a black leather corset for the very first time.

No, these moments were a bit more nuanced. Just a bit.

In chronological order:

the sonny-boy incident: Fifth or sixth grade. I was running back home after getting a 'pixie' haircut (that's what it was called at the time). Ran across the street without looking. And this man (who almost hit me with his car) hollered out his window, "Watch out, sonny!" And I was mortified. It downright scared the butch right outta me. Oh well. Think of all the years that coulda been different if I had risen to that occasion.


the Electra moment: The Greek film Electra came out in 1962. I was fourteen. My mom took me to UC Berkeley's Wheeler Auditorium to see it. And my jaw dropped. It was the moment that Irene Pappas, in an act of defiance and grief, finds a private corner and cuts off her long tresses, and is shorn, ready for mourning. A truly orgasmic moment in film making. But my own butch moment had already passed (see above), and instead I spent years trying to personify Pappas' Greek anguish. Mostly I practiced the intensity of her eyes. Failing miserably, of course. But I fell in love for the first time without even noticing.

the kd lang/cindy crawford Vanity Fair photo shoot: I was up skiing with family and friends. Staying back one afternoon to grade (yet another) set of exams. I had the whole condo to myself. Took a break in the middle of a set, and picked up some magazine lying around. Flipped it open. And almost fell to the floor. kd lang! I believe the correct contemporary expression would be OMG!

There's more, of course, but why go any further than kd lang?

My point is that there are these moments when we can choose to know ourselves, or choose to not read the signs. Or, I suppose, we can read the signs, and choose to change or not to change. Or we find ourselves waiting for the life cycle to come round and hand us a form of liberation (as older women do in North Africa). Or we never discover who we are or what we want.

And in some cultures or communities it is just plain too dangerous to display this kind of awakening. Too life-threatening. And so we hide. Or suppress. Or repress (which might be be the best option to live with under some circumstances).

And in other cultures or communities it's not too dangerous to awaken. And we find ourselves wide awake, with another new world to explore.

And why think about all this now?

It was a chance email from North Africa that sent my mind back so many decades ago. Thinking about what happened to the girl who dared wear pants, ride a bike, carry money — in a village where these acts were considered aberrant if not obscene for a teenage girl. It was downright cross-dressing. A form of transvestism there. The boys threw rocks at her. Shouted at her terrible insults of gender confusion ... But her father indulged her. She was one of the girls decidedly in favor of polygyny — so as not to be stuck entirely at a man's whim. And then her father did something no other father in the village had done.

He taught her a trade. And got her out of there.

And with this email, I thought of her. And these moments when we discover ourselves. These moments when we choose either to be or not be what it is we really are. And I thought of the courage it takes to not compromise. And I thought of Irene Pappas' defiant, smoldering eyes. And kd lang.

And I still think it's a life cycle thing. To declare ourselves (or not). And it just takes some of us a whole lot longer to get there.