Without Fear iPhone App

At the end of most chapters in the book, “The Four Hour Work Week” there is a section called “comfort challenge.” The idea is simple: do something out of your comfort zone as a means to emotionally prepare to enjoy your newly acquired lifestyle of simplistic freedom. I like this idea and as you’ve probably noticed in many of my posts, I love the book. It kick started my virtual lifestyle and I’m a believer.

You might also have noticed that I’m not much of an international traveler. As of yet, I’ve only been as far as the Bahamas. One embarrassing thing has always kept me virtually landlocked — my discomfort and often flat out refusal to fly. It has never been comfortable. I’ve had extreme panic attacks while flying. Because of this I’m the one who has driven from NC to Chicago, from San Diego to Seattle, and coast to coast three times. My daughter was born 3 months premature in Honolulu and I am convinced the emotional stress of flying over the ocean sent me into early labor. I could have stayed in Hawaii forever.  I did not want to get back on that plane.

As I’ve now created a virtual lifestyle that allows me to work and live wherever I want to, I increasingly see that where I want to go will require getting on a plane regularly. In March, I flew to California with family. I prepared myself with meditation and a great iPhone app produced by Virgin Airlines that I saw on The View. Whoopie Goldberg apparently overcame her fear of flying with the app. The California flight went well and I was proud of myself, so why not take the next step?

I’m going to take a random trip of 3 days and 2 nights to an as yet undetermined city. I’ll arrange my flight and hotel somewhat blind by using priceline to bid down to the bare bones cheapest rates.  All of this is the ultimate comfort challenge for me. Fear of flying is often a deep-seated fear of losing control. I will not know when my flight leaves until last minute. I won’t choose my hotel.

I’m going to fly alone.

Wow. I’ve never flown by myself. Because I have such fabulous travel buds in my family, I can’t ever recall just going “see ya!” We’ve always just gotten up and headed out together— mostly by car, occasionally by train, rarely by plane. So this will be different and I need your help.

Pick the city that I will visit for my challenge and you might win a gift card for your time.

1. Go on my Facebook page and look for my comfort challenge link. “Like” to join if you haven’t already, so that you can comment.
2. Suggest in the comment box, a city within the continental United States that you think might be cool for me to visit for a couple of days. I prefer if you tell me a reason or two why you’ve suggested this place but if not, I’ll just enjoy the surprise. Also the location must be where the plane lands. I won’t be driving a bunch of miles to another city from the airport.
3. Only suggestions on the FB page will be considered! No emails or other posts will be counted.
4. It’s fine to suggest someplace already mentioned. That’s your entry and this just increases the odds that I’ll go there.  Once the suggestion period ends, I’ll write your name on the back of your suggestion, put them all in a hat and draw the place I’m going to.
5. The person whose name is on the back of the winning suggestion slip wins the gift card.
6. I’ll head off for 3 days and 2 nights and tell the tale when I get back!

So, head over to the page and tell me where to go!

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Part Two of this essay (link)

I quickly proceeded to lose the dating game. I heard the questions asked of me, but I was focused on the woman I had just met in the dating line. Rochelle. I answered questions in ways that I hoped would make the woman in the audience show me the smile that I knew I had fallen for.

After the game ended, I was nervous but certain I would have to speak with her again. She had started to play pool with another woman. As I watched their interaction, I could tell that this woman was also interested in her. I sat on a couch a few feet away with my friend Mona, driving her crazy with questions about how I might get Rochelle’s attention.

“How?’ I asked point blank.

“Just go up to her. Don’t be so nervous.”

“What should I say?”

“Just introduce yourself again. Just start talking.”

“You think she’ll like me?”

“You’ll never know until you try.”

A few moments of silence. We both watched her lean over and take a shot. The soft fullness of her breasts seemed evident, slightly spilling over the top button of her Armani shirt.

“Oh…” I exhaled in surprise. “ How big do you think those are?”

A smack on the shoulder from Mona. “Stop! You are such a boy!”

Then an appreciative aside, “At least a 36C.”

After the game of pool was over, I watched Rochelle get ready to leave. I knew any time I had left to chance was closing fast. She was standing in a corner of the room, in front of boxes set up with names of single women there that evening. Purple slips and short pencils sat in front of the boxes, inviting those who were interested to put their name and/or number on the slips that said, “A kiss from…..”

Rochelle was writing on a slip and, Oh my god!? Did she just put a slip in my box? Here was my moment! I walked up and she turned around and smiled at me. I reached in my box and pulled out her slip. The only one in the box.

“A kiss from…Rochelle”

“Wow. Thanks.” I said.

She smiled, and then said, “Oh. I was just putting slips in all the boxes that didn’t have anything in them. I didn’t want anyone to be left out.”

I must have blushed because I was instantly and hotly embarrassed. But still there was a push not to give up.

“Thank you anyway.” I stumbled into the silent space between us. I didn’t know how to do this. I blurted the first thing that came to my mind. “So… what do you do for fun?”

Another smile, but this one looked less sincere and I could see an almost pained and most certainly confused look on her face. As if this was the first time she really noticed me. She looked me up and down. I immediately became self conscious of what I was wearing: black slacks, clunky shoes and a skin tight sleeveless body shirt with the word “fabulous” embroidered over my chest with fake stones. Let’s not forget the Wal-Mart tie I had around my neck. Still holding her smile, she raised an eyebrow and looked at me as if to say, “Are you kidding me?”

“Um. For fun?” she began. “Well, I like to go to the club. To the parks….” And wow, before you know it she was talking to me. Before she knew it she was writing her phone number down and saying goodbye. I was left on cloud nine pumping my fist at the night air, holding my little purple slip like it was a golden ticket.

The next day I continued to find myself in an unfamiliar position of pursuer. I called and left 3 messages on her line because I couldn’t stumble my way to one complete message that would hold all I wanted to say to her. When she returned my call and asked me to meet her at a local park while she walked her dogs, I cut my legs after hurriedly shaving in anticipation that I should put my best attribute forward. This time I wore a much more conservative outfit of jeans “skorts” and a polo shirt. I was correct in thinking she would like my legs, and she accepted a story that our cat (that was actually declawed) scratched my leg. As we walked through Piedmont Park, we found that we had things in common and simple things in our lives clicked with each other. We left the park that day with the promise that this would not be the last time we would meet up, and it wasn’t.

My worries of inexperience and shyness did not seem to be a liability. This seemed to intrigue her. As we dated, I would go from instances of a quick spoken “goodnight” while running from her car because I was afraid to kiss her for the first time, to being quite comfortable in expressing my emotions. On one night‘s date, I was just simply overwhelmed by her. The way that she cared for me, opening my car door after we arrived at the restaurant. Her movement. Smooth and visually sensual. The way she gently touched the small of my back and guided me to my chair. She had an assertive femininity and a passive masculinity that was an intoxicating and unfamiliar mix for me. She often wore black and the contrast between that and her eyes and skin often caught me off guard. After we settled in and ordered our food, wine was brought to our table. I was feeling flirtatious.

I spoke. “I want to say this before I have any wine because I want you to know I’m completely clear headed. You are just so beautiful.” She blushed, eyes sparkling, but with a confused look on her face as if to say, “who is this woman?” Or, maybe that’s just what I was thinking of myself. I was growing. Blossoming. Learning.

Many nights later we went club dancing and Rochelle seemed nervous that she would run into an ex. This was another learning experience for me. The proximity of ex’s is an issue to be maneuvered in lesbian communities. Because many communities are small, you tend to have to make peace with an ex and often times work through to friendships where you remain close. If you cut off a spoke in the wheel of a community because of a finished relationship, you could lose connection and become isolated from a larger part of your friendship and networking base. A close friend might now be dating your ex. That close friend could also be your ex. The carnal knowledge noose can get very tight. Second, because you might have worked to a friendship with this ex, you might have to figure out a way to negotiate the new love with the old. Lesbian ex’s have an earned familiarity in their interactions. Often the lines are blurred and expectations can make this past partnership seem like the real long-term relationship. This coupled with the general closeness of female friendships can create challenges. Many long-term couples have faced this awkwardness, and for primacy, survival and importance of the relationship, they might dwindle contact with ex’s. This was a hard lesson for me to work through, particularly having lived a heterosexual experience where this is far less necessary, and far less common. I must say that you really haven’t felt a pressure cooker until you find yourself seated at a dinner party surrounded by four of your girlfriends ex’s. But this was not our experience on this night and she relaxed as no ex’s showed and our time was ours alone. We danced with no interruptions and she grew more relaxed, spooning me on the floor dance after dance. At 4 am the party ended and we were alone on the street contemplating the next move.

“Do you want me to take you home?’ she asked.

“No. I’m not quite ready yet.” I replied.

She drove me to a vacant field near her apartment, where she said she liked to sit and watch for deer. No deer appeared this morning, and as our windows grew foggy we stopped looking for them. She looked over at me, trapped this time, and unable to run off out of the car. She leaned in and kissed me with soft lips and with a quick, smooth click, surprised me as she put my seat back and moved on top of me, smiling, and winking as my inviting lover to be. Only kisses that night. Nothing more.

Within a month we became intimate. Our first time was my first time with a woman, but I didn’t tell her this. I hoped she wouldn’t notice. Although I was nervous I felt very much a mature sexual being. We had come back from dinner to time alone in her apartment and somehow the evening had grown too late for me to consider driving home. I would spend the night and she had one bed. She changed into a sheer black nightgown and walked past the front of her bed, hands in the same focused repose as the moment I first saw her. Clearly, she was about to give me her full attention. I was terrified and it showed. I had changed into a gray shorts onesie buttoned up to my neck. She came to bed, pulled the covers back, took one look at me with that increasingly common puzzled look on her face, and let me be. We slept through the night with few touches, but in the morning something changed and she invited me into the shower where I learned what lesbian lovemaking is. It is about being connected to yourself through someone who is like you. It is about touch and breath and pleasure that only you can understand how to give because only you know what it is that you yourself want to receive. It is about reflection. It is about emotion. It is not about procreation and birth. It is about coming home and returning to ones soul.

This was the first time that I had even come close to connecting my body to another person’s in an act of sexuality, openly giving myself. The intimacy released waves of fear. As time went on, our relationship recognized this step of intimacy and everything changed. As I saw her grow to care for me I grew nervous. Once I woke her up from a mid day nap and I must have startled her, because when her eyes opened they instantly reflected distress. When she focused and saw that it was me, a look of warmth and utter trust so clearly came over her eyes that it made my stomach fold over in knots of anxiety. Even though I had said this was what I wanted, someone special in my life–was I ready for this? Could I handle this?

Though I came to this relationship with my own specific challenges, ultimately I think we all come into these spaces with something to deal with. While I silently dealt with mine, Rochelle seemed to also be working with shedding fear. Having been open as a lesbian to herself and friends since she was nineteen, she had experienced heartbreak and disappointment over the years, and was nearly a year past a significant and painful breakup. She had arrived through much work, at a solid point of personal strength. The point where being alone is perfectly fine and actually feels pretty good. She was not looking for another relationship, but of course isn’t that when one shows up at the door?

I think she recognized early on, the balance that we created for each other. Perhaps it is that she is a Leo, the fire sign, dynamic, stable and slightly Type –A, while I am an Aquarius, the sign of water, creative, moody, and full of wanderlust. One alone or with the same might be dangerous and over the top, but together we checked each other, while making sure to allow the best of each other to mesh in just the right amounts. Many things we had not done before we experienced as firsts with each other. She would make me conscious enough about my presentation to thoughtfully work on coordinating my often goofy wear (no more ties). I would press against her boundaries, once getting her to not melt down when her clothes got rained on after an outdoor concert. I pushed her comfort level onward to the adventure of driving home in our underwear—but on the way, I convinced her to place an order at a drive thru with her coordinated Victoria Secrets in full view.

The intimacy. The growing trust. The balance. The increasing list of “firsts” that lay between us and for each of us, becoming a unique thread of connection to each other. These all helped create the inevitable affection between us. We were falling in love in spite of our fears. Or perhaps because of them.

Travel became an instant staple of our relationship, and on a random getaway, we took a significant step of no return. It was morning, my time of day to arise, dream by day, and shoot out of bed with a burst of energy set to accomplish those dreams. On the other hand, Rochelle is a night person. The only two things she thinks of in the morning are sleep and sex. I had neither on my mind, so I popped up and ran out to get our breakfast. When I returned, the room was still mostly dark but was now lit by candles. Playfully, sensually, Rochelle lay in bed with only a smile on. We touched, kissed, and the mood heightened. Something in those kisses brought a shift in me. I recognized that I was happier than I had ever been. I was at a place of peace that I had thought would never come for me. It was more than just being with Rochelle, no one person can do that for you. It must come from within. But for the first time in my life I felt my heart respond in a way I was having trouble refusing, even as I tried to. I was coming full circle from the dreams of women I had when I was a young girl. In those dreams I hovered above them. In this moment, I was above Rochelle. I felt her emotions change as well. She reached up and touched my lips,

“Make love to me.”

Such intensity. Such fear. “ I can’t”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“I love you too. And it’s okay.”

My mind raced. It’s ok. It’s okay to love? Yes. It’s ok.
This was the first time that I had said to a lover, “I love you.”
July 17, 2001.

Four years later the subject of marriage came up. Since that day in July of 2001 when we had committed to each other, we had grown individually and as a couple. Although I continued the difficult journey of understanding my past triggers, a lingering though less constant disconnect to intimacy continued to challenge me. Still, I felt emotionally sound enough to consider marriage as the right step and one I was really ready for. In Rochelle’s case, legal marriage had never been an option available to her. In her past, a commitment ceremony would have been a difficult undertaking because she had never told most of her family or her employers that she was a lesbian. Only her Godmother had been told and this was only a few years before we met. While some might have assumed that the women she shared apartments with over the years were more than “roommates,” she never came out at work or to family by sharing her life as a devoted partner in a lesbian relationship until we met. Her family welcomed my daughter and myself and has always been wonderful. This new freedom over time allowed Rochelle to think about the step of commitment and family acceptance that marriage can be symbolic of.

It seemed that we were both open to the idea and so I jumped in one afternoon and said, “Why don’t we get married?” Her first and my second. The suggestion was not received as I expected. There was a lot of conversation about how she understandably wanted to have family at her wedding. As we lived in a state that did not allow same sex marriage, this would be near impossible. Would this mean we could not get married? I dropped the subject, but I was deeply hurt. It seemed like such a simple thing. Why not just go to Boston and do it?

It wasn’t that we had never considered a ceremony. While at the time only one state offered legal marriage, it is the predominant option in most states for same sex couples to have a commitment ceremony. We had talked and fantasized about this, but we wanted a marriage. I had not lived through the disappointment that same sex couples have had when the light of a possible marriage law is snuffed by legislation or popular vote. Many gays and lesbians are shell shocked by this hope rising only to be crushed. Many are sensitive of taking the chance. Not me but again, I hadn’t lived all those years with the obstacle of not being able to get married. I took in all of this and understood her hesitance. But it was our time. It was time to get married. Somebody had to propose. With no gender traditions present, I figured since I brought it up it would have to be me. Not a problem.

The Rose Garden in Raleigh was one place we had considered for a commitment ceremony. Part of an arts theatre, it has an outdoor stone amphitheater leading to a pristine rose garden. Many are married there. It is lovely. The night of my proposal, I gathered Rochelle and we set off for a mystery drive. When we got near to identifying areas I asked her to close her eyes. She’s good at this. Even in my evolved state, that would be too much of relinquishing control. I could never be told to do so and not actually peek at my surprise. We pulled up and I told her to keep her eyes closed and I would be right back. She pushed the car seat back, asked how long I would be, set her internal clock, and relaxed.

Five minutes later I returned and escorted her (eyes still closed) down the hill path to the Rose Garden floor. Leaving her standing at the entrance to the wedding aisle, I ran off to the matrimony gazebo and called out softly to her, “Open your eyes.” There she stood surrounded by lit tea lights, and dozens more lit the night path down the aisle to me. As I watched her patiently walking down the aisle, smiling and taking this all in, I wondered how I could have ever made the idea of our getting married a casual conversation.

“Will you marry me?” I asked.

A few months later we arrived on the steps of City Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts ready to get married.

Our minister was an hour’s drive away. We dressed at his farm home and walked to the gazebo on his property to the start point of the ceremony. Rev. Fine was happy that we desired to write words and include scripture in our wedding. He told us that since Massachusetts’s marriage legalization, many same sex couples simply wanted the legal aspect added to long-term relationships. Few seemed to want this time to include any reflection to the meaning of the moment beyond that.

As the ceremony began he gave a us a big smile and said with perfect tone and reverence, “The Apostle Paul wrote: ‘If I speak with the tongues of humans and angels but have not love, I am but a sounding gong or a tinkering cymbal. Love is patient and kind. It does not envy; it is not proud. Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking, is not easily angered. Love keeps no record of wrongs. It does not rejoice in evil but delights only in truth. Love always protects, trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails. Now abide faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

We began our vows. “I will cherish our friendship and love today, tomorrow and forever. I will trust you and honor you. I will love you faithfully through the laughter and the tears, whatever may come. I will always be there for you. As I have given you my hand to hold, so I give you my heart, and my life to keep together in love and to discover a deeper, fuller life. This is my vow.”

We placed rings of platinum and diamond on the ring finger of each other’s left hand. Furthest from our minds was thinking of how a feminist colleague had remarked how surprising it was that we could be so “traditional” in the desire to wear rings. Something that in her opinion signified the worst of heterosexuality—ownership. It did not mean that to us.

We looked into each others eyes and said,

“With this ring I encircle you with my love. I present it as a symbol of my constant faith and abiding love. With this ring, I pledge my love to you and give you my heart today, tomorrow, and forever more.”

And before the minister pronounced that we were legally wed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this 17th day of July, 2005, he reminded all who would question this moment, “Through your statements of common spirit and the exchange of rings, you have done what in truth neither State nor Church can do; you have joined yourselves in a shared destiny. Whom love has joined together as kindred spirits, let no one break asunder.”

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Part One of This Essay (link)

It was not long after my breakup with Drew that I thoughtfully considered the path that I had chosen in our heterosexual relationship. My experience with him had to a point, opened me up in many ways. I had grown as a sexual being in our relationship. There was nothing he would not do if I asked him, so in this sense I had the chance to experience a varied and full sexual experience with a man. He was strong, good looking, sexually capable, my equal in intensity, and in the end loving. It seemed clear to me if there was a right guy to wash away my inner desire towards women it would be him. Yet, it did not. Second, because we had gone through so much together, parts of my emotional self opened up. I saw that I was capable of caring in ways that I had not known I could before. I began to want a good relationship in my life. I felt I was ready to take the steps to get there. For me, this meant that I would have to come out.

Many people wrongly think that coming out is a one step process. It is not, nor do steps come one after the other. Often they are in motion at the same time. Still, the very first and most obvious step for me was to come out to myself. I had to release myself from pretending to be someone that I was not. I was not straight, and I had to deal with this and stop being such a bitch.

When you come out to yourself, you have to make peace with who you are in a world that overwhelmingly says that you are deviant, sinful, and psychologically damaged for no other reason than that you are gay. You have to decide if accepting who you are also means accepting what many cultures believe about that part of you. I had enough independence and growth at this time not to take on this burden anymore. In fact, coming out to myself was wonderfully nourishing to my mental health. I quickly noticed my anger slip further away from my day to day. I smiled with genuine purpose. My man hating days seemed quickly diminishing as well. I suppose I felt I no longer had to play “the game” under falsity and duress. Once I felt I did not have to be available to heterosexual banter and “the dance” to men as their sexual partners, I felt free. I was now comfortable to interact with men and confidently refuse parts of myself that they had no providence over.

Another step to my coming out process was that of being ready to live the experience of being gay. This meant becoming ready to intimately interact with others like me in community, and at some point to engage in sexual relations for the first time with someone of the same sex. A person can be gay, never do this, and not be any less gay. After all, straight people who are virgins still have an understanding that they are straight. But living the experience I feel, is an important step to building supportive and healthy relationships both non sexual and sexual. This took a while for me to do. Partly because I had so many wounds to heal in my psyche that I needed time to just get to know myself before getting involved with community or a lover. I wasn’t naïve enough to think that all of my neurosis would just go away with my transition. I knew that I had baggage from all of these experiences. I had to find more solace and room in my head before I took that step. I was also enjoying the emotional freedom that coming out brought to me. I was feeling fully formed and not masked anymore. This was an individual joy that I was ready to show, but not fully ready to share.

At best, this time while I was in grad school, was about exploring community with hopes of connecting to the outside what I was beginning to feel on the inside. This meant slowly exploring options that were available to me. I went to local GLBT meetings and functions that began to show me a network of new friends within the small community where I lived. I started hitting the gay clubs and partying hard with this new group and that led to coming out to family. This was not an easy task.

My mother was the first to learn, but I didn’t come to her with the news. On Fridays I would drop my daughter off with her grandmother and head to the coast for a weekend at the clubs. Neither of them were happy with this arrangement. My passive-aggressive daughter grew tired of being regularly left with a stern grandmother and after a while started taking a small tent, setting it up in her corner of the house, zipping it up, and in general refusing to leave it until I returned. This of course angered my mother who was already on edge because I was not telling her what I was doing. I was an adult for sure, but the casual mother/daughter conversations over friends or what I was doing had stopped. I was clearly hiding something significant in my life. Something so significant I didn’t even bother to discipline my little tent girl for her behavior. Mom knew something was up and curiosity was getting the best of her. Late one Sunday evening after a typical weekend, I returned to pick up my daughter and her tent. After I was done packing the car, my mother motioned me back in the house and asked the question.

“Are you a lesbian?”

She was rarely indirect, but this bluntness sent my mind spinning. Even though I was, I had never actually said it out loud. My new friends wouldn’t say, “Here’s Spencer; the lesbian.” No man I had been with had ever questioned my sexuality. No one had ever asked me this before, but damn if didn’t have to come first from my mother. It was a word that hung in the air, waiting for me to grab it and pull it down close to my chest if I dared to do so. Would I? I reverted back to childhood and began to calculate if it might be worth lying to her. I could just say no, get in the car and live my life. But wasn’t this the lie that I had been living for so long? I knew what that life felt like and if I were to be right, this had to begin here. I remember sitting down and just giving in. “Yes. I am a lesbian.”

Without saying a word she left the room and I heard her bedroom door close. I was too drained to push, so I just left. A couple of days later she called. I think it was easier for her on the phone, or maybe it was for me. Either way, the surprises kept coming. She told me that my brother James had come to her years after his own coming out, and told her that he suspected I was gay. I must have been a young adult at this time. She told me that she was just waiting for me to come to her, but she assumed since the men were present, that my brother was wrong.

I listened to her views on homosexuality; stereotypical, yet poignantly altered by her love for her children. She said she wanted me to be happy, and promised to truly support me. My brother had come out as a young man and was met with a begrudged family support. She believed that this lead him to a life of separation, loneliness, and promiscuity, which in her view eventually led to his death from AIDS. Strangely enough while she recognized the same in me, she believed that being a lesbian would protect me from that ultimate fate. Wrongly she believed that lesbians didn’t contract STD’s, and that being with a man opened me up to infidelity and violence not seen with women. She seemed at peace with my coming out and tossed one last stereotype my way:

“Well, at least now I know you’ll be okay. You’ll find a nice rich white woman and the two of you will be just fine.” No Mom, homosexuality isn’t a rich white person’s folly. But at the moment, my mom was okay with me, and I let the rest go for another day’s conversation.

Telling my daughter was a more momentous task as I, like most parents, considered myself to be perfect with few issues of personal struggle visible to her. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my sexuality. It was more that I worried my daughter, then a 12 yr old, had formed intolerant views at school through friends. It didn’t seem to be the case, but it would have been heartbreaking for me if my own child turned her back on me for this part of myself.

I sat her down on the couch and started the stumbling conversation.

“I have something very important to tell you…” I began.

She could tell it was so, and seemed to get very still. I was starting to sweat, made little eye contact, and for what seemed like several minutes, stuttered through warning salvos such as,

“I don’t want you to worry,” or

“It’s going to be okay,” or

“Nothing will change between us.”

How silly of me to torture the poor girl. In fact, it was so much confused torture that she blurted out,

“Are you dying??”

This immediately set me on the right path of understanding that a child’s darkest and most primal fear is not that their parent is gay; it is the fear of losing them. If I could convince her that this was not the case, it seemed we would be fine. So, I summoned up my courage and said, “No, I’m gay.”

Can eyes actually exhale? Can the panic of the body, shown in wide pupils actually take a moment and relax to their normal size? That’s what it felt like happened to her as I said this and held eye contact with her to see the response. It was an exhale. Then her body completed the act as she shrugged backwards into the pillow cushions emitting a non-verbal, but nonetheless clear, “whew.”

I wouldn’t have this conversation with my father until many years later. He seemed as open as my mother was, except he had a concern that he had something to do with my orientation. While there are more gay boys on his side of the family than I can count, he wasn’t concerned with genetics.

“ I was wondering if my being an asshole as a parent was the reason.”

I told, him, “Yes you were an asshole– but no, that’s not the reason.”

When the time came to experience a much larger community, the chance came in the form of a job in Atlanta, a city that proudly claims one of the largest black gay and lesbian communities in the country. I was offered a teaching position at a historically black college for women (yes, that one). I had always been completely professional in my teaching positions and in the classroom, but I was also always out to my students. By the time I arrived in Atlanta, I had been teaching at other universities for several years and I had always come out at some point. All of my students always knew, and I believed this should be no exception simply because I was at a woman’s college.

While it may have seemed that this was a perfect moment for a newly formed wolf in sheep’s clothing to arrive on a campus full of beautiful women, this was not the case. Grad school had sharpened my respect for feminist infused intellectualism, and I loved being on a campus full of strong, intelligent, black women. In the coed universities that I had taught at I had heard male professors speak of students who would come to their office and say, “I’ll do anything to pass this class.” To which they would reply something like, “Anything? Well, how about going to the library?” Overall, I think this flirtation happens to many male and female professors. Still, I wasn’t prepared for some of the vixen like behavior that would come my way at this college. Perhaps because of my open sexuality. Perhaps because of the sheer ratio of women. Perhaps, it was just my time.

One afternoon a student came to see me in my office to discuss her grade. I closed the door momentarily because of privacy issues but when she leaned across my desk, fingered the line from her neck to her cleavage, smiled and said, “You seem so shy up close,” I’m sure I started the “oh shit” shake. I directed the conversation via open door for the rest of the conference. Rising to escort her to the door at the end of our talk, I was stunned when she swept close and kissed my neck.

Bad news. Fully rebuking her, I realized that my sexual orientation could be a liability in any environment if not carefully handled. There is an unfortunate curiosity that my sexuality adds on to the regular challenges of the student/professor dynamic. Doors were never closed again. I remained out in the classroom, but in many ways I was much wiser after.

The rest of my time at this college was uneventful and remained a great experience with no more challenges like this. Fate would have my office phone ring one afternoon with a familiar voice on the other end. It was Drew. Hadn’t seen him in years and now he lived in Atlanta. He had googled me and was amazed to find we were in the same town. Having said goodbye to sexual relationships with men but still not having had my first “below the neck” sexual encounter with a woman, I was also celibate. I wasn’t tempted by the thought of Drew in a traditional sense. I understood what sex with men meant to me. It was always more than anything the actuation of my emotional instabilities. Part of me wondered if I was really past this, and if his presence would trigger my negatives to take hold again.

I agreed to meet Drew for dinner. We walked in at about the same time and he crushed me in his hug. I had forgotten that he was more than a half a foot taller than me. My memories of him meshed with what was in front of me. Older. Less muscularly cut, but still very handsome. From the responses of the men and women at the restaurant, I assume he looked like a football player to them. He was doing well. Single but not playing the game as much anymore. He sat back in the booth, spreading his big body out, flashing both lashes and a smile and said, “Spence…Spence…Spence,”

Dinner went well. We caught up and reminisced. When the time seemed right, I told him of my transition and he didn’t seem to be shocked. Was he surprised? Had he suspected? No, on both counts.

“Seemed to me like you were enjoying yourself,” he chuckled.

Little did he know.

Apparently his stay in Atlanta had schooled him on many sexualities and he expressed an unexpected understanding.

“You know Spence, I figure it this way. Some things a man just can’t do for some women. I’m okay with that. I’ve seen women together, and it’s sexy as hell, but I know that they don’t always want a man in the mix. If they do…I’m there, but I think women can love each other and be with each other without a man. Hey. Love is love.”

Turns out he was not the “box of rocks” that our friends had called him after all. We never saw each other again.

Settling into Atlanta and dedicated to putting these dramatic moments behind me, I went about “looking for the lesbians.” They weren’t very hard to find, but I did have a sense that I wanted to find a good social group. My best guess at this was to join Zami, a local long-standing organization seemingly filled with intellectually conscious, confident, activist, and “out” lesbians. By attending events and listening carefully, I learned many lessons about being actively part of a community and being a lesbian.

I learned the lesson that saying you were part of a “lifestyle,” or “the life,” was more about how you lived your life as a lesbian, than speaking just to your sexual orientation. Were you involved in the community? Were you coupled with family? Did you go to the clubs? Were you out at work? Were you proud and active? These answers might herd you into groups not unlike those for straight people who also have their party go-ers, families with picket fences, and moms that meet other moms for lunch. Childless couples. Golfers or bowlers even. That’s a lifestyle too. But I learned that although this makes sense, many culturally confuse when gays say “lifestyle.” Some assume they are saying that their being gay is as changeable and fluid as deciding to start a fitness regimen, and it is therefore a choice. Everyone who is gay has had to answer this question on choice, but mostly because it is asked from the straight world. When you’ve lived your life, you already know the answer, or you really don’t care. You are what you are, and it seems irrelevant. Still the question persists.

Then there was the sex lesson. Trying to understand lesbian sexuality through the lived experience of my heterosexuality left me at a loss. I knew there was only one way to really learn, but until then I tried to understand it through ways many coming from my formerly straight perspective do—through porn.

This, I was quickly told by my new mentors was a big mistake. Most porn with women on women is through the eyes of two perspectives. One, where men are placing the women in behaviors and actions set to please the male libido. Women shoot, write, or produce only a small percentage of what is considered to be lesbian porn. While this isn’t a requirement, it does help make something mostly misunderstood, more realistic. The other perspective is where women are placed in images of what is said to be lesbian sex. Few of the women in the films are actually lesbians and I’m told, the message is lost. I needed to stay away from porn anyway– clearly a bad addiction from my past, so I didn’t fight this lesson. I was given a copy of the apparent expert written source, “The Whole Lesbian Sex Book” for the nuts and bolts, and was told to wait my turn to fill in the blanks.

One mentor decided that one way to throw me into the realm of possibility of meeting someone special, was to place me as a contestant in the organizations fund raising version of the dating game. I wasn’t too keen on the idea, especially since I was one of the women having to vie for the date. I wanted to be in the more passive position of asking questions and looking coy. Instead, I would have to compete with more experienced women, and that made me very uncomfortable. It wasn’t that I was passive, but I didn’t want my inexperience to become an embarrassment.

The day of the event I arrived early to help with set up and to take time to calm my nerves. To consider how I might work this. I was at the front of the entrance hall leaning over the bar when I felt something odd. It was as if someone had passed me and caught the attention not of my nose with their scent, not of my eyes with their appearance, but of my spirit with their own. I stood up puzzled and looked around, but no one was there. I walked to the event doorway and no one looked as if they had just come in. I was about to turn away and return to the bar, when my attention was pulled to a woman with her back to me at the far end of the hall. She was dressed in black slacks and a tailored black blouse. About my height, she was slender and athletic looking by her stance. She wore her hair slicked back in a short neat ponytail. There was a presence about her. She calmly spoke to the woman next to her, and as she turned I saw that she spoke with her hands in front of her body with fingertips touching, almost in prayer. It felt as if her attention was respectfully focused on that person in that moment, giving her full attention. Something about that intrigued me.

The MC for the evening broke my thoughts and announced that we would begin the evening with an introduction line. All the women arranged themselves in two lines and spent the next moments introducing themselves. I couldn’t wait until we were face to face and I could see her clearly for the first time. When my chance came I stepped to my right in front of her. She was striking. Dark hair, thick rich dark eyebrows, and dark lashes were set off by light skin. Light skinned women weren’t my particular cup of tea, but something about her dark contrast was different. Exotic. Up close I could see light brown highlights in her eyes. Remarkable.

She smiled in a full and welcoming way, extended her hand and said, “Hello, I’m Rochelle.”

This essay is part two of three. Please look for part 3 of “Get Me Out of This Straight Jacket.”

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Just a quick interlude to tell the story behind the video above.

My wife is half Bahamian and often speaks romantically about her childhood on the island and the roots of her love for seafood. I don’t share the intensity of that love. When she talks about conch fritters I have no connection to them other than wondering if that’s the thing that comes out of that big shell I have in the garage. You know, the thing I picked up and brought back from vacation? I’ve also never been into lobsters. I actually have no idea what they taste like. But they are clearly something she loves.

I remember being amazed years ago when we went to Orlando’s Boston Lobster Feast. I couldn’t understand why it was such a big deal to have all you can eat lobster. I was taken aback when my wife– who worries about phantom spinach in her teeth and at times obsessively wipes her mouth at dinner, allowed herself to don a bib and let butter drip down her cheeks while wolverine-ing down a plate full of lobsters. I feel the little guys. I’ve noticed too many times how in the supermarket when you walk by their tank, they’ll scurry to the back as quick as they can. Are they afraid of us?

But she also likes to cook. This spring (right after I turned vegan) she discovered a great Asian market. With lots of live seafood, this place would make preparing baked stuffed lobster something she could do at home. The process of making this dish essentially requires that you have a live, fresh and not boiled lobster. The market would take the live lobster and cut it up for her, making it easier since she was uncomfortable killing the lobster herself. Driving home with a live lobster was also out of the question. Her past experience of being attacked by a bag of live crawfish while she was driving home one day, kind of knocked out that option.

example of live crawfish

So off we went to the market, and the lobster was chosen. The employee cut two claws and a tail off the body. He remarked that the parts were jumping, but they were packed in ice and given to us. We drove 45 minutes home, and another 20 minutes elapsed before she began the preparation.

The rest of this story can be told in screams:

The first scream came when she was cutting the tail open and the bottom fins shook hands with her.

The second scream, accompanied by some whimpers and a Fred Flintstone jump into my arms came when the flesh in the newly opened and exposed tail started throbbing.

Now at this point I was in full, “see….you should be a vegan” mode. I tried to convince her to throw the lobster out. That this was surely a sign that she shouldn’t eat it. Didn’t work. She said she spent too much money on it to waste it. She also was rationalizing away the movement.

The third and final scream came at least 10 minutes later when she put the tail on a cookie sheet and seasoned it to go under the broiler. It was in full throb mode and would not stop. Did the seasonings irritate it? That’s when I grabbed my iphone and recorded.

Three screams and you’re out. The tail went in the trash.

The late essayist David Foster Wallace wrote a book of works that included the essay, “Consider the Lobster.” In that essay he addressed some of the questions people have about boiling, cutting, and eating lobsters. Our experience with the tail left us traumatized. The rest of the day was like a knot had formed in our stomachs. We didn’t talk about it. It was just creepy. This is one of those exercises in “meet your meat.” If we could really get close to the moments after death of live creatures what would we see? What would we feel? Would we still want to eat them?

Rochelle hasn’t eaten lobster since that day, though she still eats seafood that is a bit more removed from death then the lobster of that day. I still hold out hope for a vegan wife. But you know. …those Bahamian folk sure love their seafood.

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Understanding the contextual relationship between sex and love can be a complex, life long journey. I’ve struggled with the meaning of both. Sexuality has always been central. At five I was taken to see “A Clockwork Orange” on a family movie night. I clearly remember being confused by the graphic sexual images and leaning over and telling my mother, “my heart is beating down there.” A diet of pornography found in my fathers closet when I was 9 further skewered my views of sex. Detachment and isolation as a result of living in an “anti-Huxtable” household had created a cloudy film over my heart, and thus my own understanding of love. To add to my particular stew, from the beginning of my sexuality as a child I dreamed of having sex with women. What a wonderful additive to the flames. In my dreams, I was always on top, hovering over them. Kissing them. Loving them. I would awaken quite terrified after many dreams, yet I had no knowledge at the time of lesbians.

My only understanding of homosexuality was my gay brother, and I didn’t know women could be gay. As time passed and with no reference point in my imagination, I self analyzed as worried teenagers tend to do, and thought that my dreams held a hidden desire to be a boy. Perhaps all of the porn with men and women triggered in me the need to be “the man?” That didn’t feel true as I certainly didn’t want to be a boy, but I wasn’t intellectually developed enough at the time to question why with the same pornographic images I just didn’t simply attach myself to the women’s roles. Why not just want to be a sexual being with men as the women were? Why instead did I want to make love to the women? I just assumed that the dreams would go away if I stopped looking at the porn. They didn’t. Real live women around began to intrigue me. I was so frightened by these feelings that I did what I dare say many who are unable to face the reality of their sexuality do; I tucked those thoughts away and proceeded to wreck havoc on the boys and men in my life.

When I was a younger adult , I thought of sex as control, detachment, and anger. When I thought of love- well, I rarely thought of love. Young woman go many directions with this. As a young woman hiding from my true sexuality, I struggled to understand the dynamic of what was expected of me as a “heterosexual” youth. I gave it a good shot, but in reality it just stoked an inner rage that would play out in my disastrous attempts to fit into a straight world.

I lost my heterosexual virginity a few months after my 16th birthday. I had been academically promoted two grades in my schooling. Not because I was extraordinarily intelligent, but because my family moved so often and chose schools for me that had no spaces mid-year. Twice I had been tested and placed forward. This only added to my isolation–moving constantly, rarely connecting with friends, and importantly becoming more socially immature than my appropriately aged classmates. On a regular school day I was easy to find, but certainly hard to talk to. If not in class I was sitting alone, far from the masses. Maybe eating lunch, and seemingly oblivious to everyone around me. Perhaps this fascinates boys and men of all ages. Perhaps they see this as playing hard to get? I wasn’t. I was simply used to self-imposed isolation and was completely in my own head. I did see that first guy coming though. Across the courtyard of the cafeteria he came, smiling at me. At first I looked behind as if to say, “he can’t be smiling at me.”

But there he was. “I see you everyday over here by yourself, “ he said. “Can I sit down?” And so it began.

Carlos was my first boyfriend and my first sexual partner. There were a few more: One was just a moment in time in the form of an old high school friend that I looked up just to show what I had learned from Carlos. A couple of one night stands. 3 more who were more than one nighter’s time wise, but were actually nothing more in my mind. There were 3 that could be seen as “relationships.” The first real one was Marshall, a light skinned mamas boy who would become my husband and who is my daughter’s father. Seven years older than I when we met in the military, Marshall just seemed to fall into place. There was nothing remarkable about him. Nothing romantic. Nothing sexy. Nothing lovely. I was 18. He started staying over at my apartment after we watched basketball games. I can’t even remember our first time. One day he pulled out his little black book and as I sat on the couch watching TV, he called each of the entries within and said he’d met someone special. He then came over to the couch and asked me to marry him. Ok.

Strangely, although I certainly had a searing image of how sick marriage could be in the example of my parents, there was something like a savior in Marshall and the idea of marriage. We prepared for the courthouse wedding, and before I knew it I had a new name and a new life. It felt like a painful chapter in my life was over and life would be well. He seemed like a nice enough guy. I could do this. I remember sleeping like a baby the night we got married. No worries. No nightmares. Just pleasant dreams, and not one included women. Months went by, and soon I awakened to the reality of life. I wasn’t happy. I struggled. He was no savior or sexual converter.

I take full responsibility for the failure of our marriage. I wasn’t there for him emotionally or physically. I remember that we didn’t have sex very often. Who knows who left first or perhaps never arrived? He cheated. I cheated. He cheated more. I packed up all his belongings one day and took him to the bus station. Back in Cleveland, he called and cried daily. He came back home. It was worse than before. We eventually put it to bed and divorced.

Trey was next. I was the older woman at 27 and he was just a babe out of high school. We met when I was a Cleveland Ohio EMT. I was finishing up a call and he was finishing cleaning up a bloody hospital floor. He had remarkable arms. Rippling muscles worked that mop. Really, that’s what caused me to notice. He also had a mature seriousness as if something was on his mind all the time and he wasn’t really there. Kind of like me. A couple of days later when I returned to the ER, he was there and asked me for my phone number. Seemed we immediately went from hanging out, to dating, to sex. It went quick with Trey. Six months, a broken bed, and much aggravation later we were so through with each other that we could travel to a pre-planned Bahamas trip as friends, knowing we would never see each other again when we returned.

When you play the game, men can be predictable and easy. They throw out a large net. They honk. They smile. They ask for phone numbers. They flirt. Once you get them there you can just mash and trash them alive as long as you do two things: Feed them and fuck them. I liked what control I had over this part of the game, though I knew something was missing. I needed something different, and of course, it came.

There was something about Drew that I quickly got caught up in. He was an incredible challenge. A man’s man. A proud chauvinist. He had been born and raised in Cleveland and went off to the military a 6’ 5” thin reed of a boy who returned home a changed man. Buffed up and muscular at 260 pounds he was a gorgeous specimen. Perfect shoulders. Small waist. Smooth skin, long eyelashes, and a toothy smile that hid a broken heart. He was divorced, having found and lost love in Germany. We both worked as EMT’s and met as we engaged in training to become full paramedics. He was also I perceived, not very bright. Co- workers called him a “box of rocks.” Days spent in the classroom seated next to each other produced a strange childlike tension. Although I tried to avoid him, he always managed to get in my space, or say something that ticked me off.

“You know women are the weaker sex right?” He would tease, but thoroughly believed in the tease. He would call me “Spence” against my objections.

“Let me get that for you Spence. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself Spence.”

He would swagger down the hall, bowlegged, ass shaking, cocking his head to the side and singing James Brown at the top of his lungs. “It’s a man’s world.”

By now it was clear to me that my relationships with men were about control and conquest. I had stopped thinking about women regularly. I just focused on being unhappily straight. As a result of this unhappiness, I think I would have appropriately been called a man hater back then. I despised them and their perceived weakness for vaginas. Yet I was envious of the “power of the penis.” Resentful of the strength of a male dominated “man’s world” that would make it so impossible for me to be sexually free as a woman and do what I wanted to do with my own vagina. So the sexuality that I felt forced into became a mask and cobra like. I rarely started the interaction with men. Most times it seemed to aggravate the hell out of me when they stumbled into my space. Once they were there though, my psychosis seemed to kick in and I played. A friend would once remark on this disturbing potential in me saying, “God help us from you clever mind fuckers.” So when Drew bellowed, “it’s a man’s world,” he had no idea what was coming.

I asked Drew to lunch and while there made a pretty decent indecent proposal.
“There’s something going on between us.” I began. He smiled and stroked his chin with that J.J. from Good Times, “you know…what can I say?” movement.

“I think we should do something about it,” I continued.
“Sex. No strings. That’s what I want.”

The days and days of tension between us had already created the foreplay, so why not just get to the point? He tried to play it cool. He was a player after all. Single men that looked like him often were. He laughed. Looked at me. Looked around. Laughed again. I could tell he was calculating somewhere between “Is she serious?” and, “Is there a hidden camera somewhere?”

I was very serious. The rest of the day I remember feeling like I was breathing hot air. I wanted to tear him down. I watched him. The way he moved. Planning what I would do to him. That evening we met at his place and before long he was breathless, laughing and pleading “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa, Spence…let me catch my breath!”

We went on like this for weeks. Months. Sex everywhere. No strings. Some days after both of us worked a 12-hour night shift he would pick me up and we’d go have breakfast to gain our strength. At the table he would ramble on about idiotic things. Ask questions about things I learned from books but that he learned from TV. I would look at him and answer politely, but in my head I would say to myself, “ You are making me so sick. I’m gonna fuck the hell out of you.”

Our co-workers marveled at us and placed bets over who would be broken first. The player, or the quiet smart girl? A beautiful couple they said. Both of us fit, strong and two who would make “pretty babies.” But still, a couple who were playing a dangerous game. Who would win?

There must be something seductive about a woman who doesn’t seem to care if you “belong “ to them. There must be something that draws a man in. Drew fell first. We had started sharing soap. I was staying over more often.

“Spence,” he began one morning after I had awakened him from sleep for a long sex bout.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“Mmm Mmm.”
“ I’m not either.” I’m pretty sure I held my breath here but I don’t recall.
He said it.
“I was thinking that maybe we could be exclusive.”

Then he waited. I turned over and looked at him. I remember this because of the way that his lashes blinked so slowly. The way he was lying there naked. Exposed in every way. A giant of a man opening himself up to the void. I let him fall in it.

“ You know what I said, ‘No strings.’”

Not seeing anyone else doesn’t necessarily mean that strings are present. It’s all a state of mind actually. You can have one fuck buddy and no other. No strings. But I knew where that was headed. I wasn’t there. I writhed and sweated under and above Drew, but my pleasure was psychological. I loved taking him there. My way.

I think that he was probably hurt by that moment. I suppose anyone would be, but especially a man’s man. What was he to do but try his best to make me want him in the way that he wanted me? We started seeing each other in more ways and the strings started to appear even though nights when I returned home alone, I tried to cut them away. We would go to dinner. Go to baseball games. Go to the lakefront and sit for hours. Sleep next to each other without having sex. He gave me a key to his apartment and one day when I came over to wait for him, I noticed my lingerie hanging on the shower rod, a perfumed soaked sex letter I had written him propped on his dresser. Then one morning as he slept, I watched him do so. On his stomach he lay, body magnificent, strong and nude. The sun came in through the window and in time crossed over his back. I reached out and touched him there. Like I had touched something I shouldn’t have, and as if I had caught myself feeling something I should not have, I yanked my hand away and whispered, “Fuck!”

I kept my cards closed to view, and we went on for months more. By now Drew was fully engaged. Fully bewildered. Fully hurt. Moving away then back again. It seemed that we were heading to our end. Sex began to take on a whole new context. What I classified as good sex was controlling him, and I didn’t feel good doing that anymore. To him, I think my sexuality was a tortuous disconnect that he didn’t know what to do with. I liked being with him. I found a place in my mind where I was comfortable. I can’t describe it in any other way.

Things reached their peak one hot summer day at our favorite private spot on the lakefront. An afternoon of making out on blankets while hidden by his truck from public view left us tired, loose, and lazy. I was lying on my back, eyes closed from the sun’s glare. He was lying on his side next to me. It seemed as if we were falling into sleep when he whispered to me, “ I could see you as my wife. I could see you having my child.” I said nothing. Did nothing. Not even move. Once when I was telling this moment to a friend she asked, “How could you not move…do something!?” I told her I felt like the person who is trapped and about to be eaten by a bear. Play dead and they might go away. With no response from me, I felt Drew eventually sit up. I secretly squinted at him as he looked out to the lake, his gift to me taken by the tide and washed away into deeper and darker water.

A few days later we were having pizza and wine at his apt. He said he needed to run to the store for something. He didn’t come back until the next morning. Strange, but never once did I feel he was in harms way. I knew. When he came back, I was in bed. As he sat down on the edge I said to him,

“All you had to say was it’s over.”

“I was hoping that you would be gone when I got back.” He replied.

“I’m sure you were. That’s why I’m still here.”

He let out a long exhale. “Damn Spence.”

This essay is part one of three. Please look for parts 2 and 3  of “Get Me Out of This Straight Jacket.”

Travel and Leisure Magazine recently named Charleston the second most romantic city in America behind Honolulu and in front of classic cities like San Francisco and New York. That would seem to be a pressure position to be in. Is it a romantic city? With its palm tree lined streets, shopping districts, and peaceful park-lined water views, it certainly seems to hang with the best of them. On a recent getaway I joked that these features, coupled with a 40% chance of summer showers might lead us to break into a chorus of Neil Sedaka’s lovely classic, “Laughter in the Rain.” Sure enough, on our first walk through the city we found ourselves running through raindrops and huddled under southern awnings, romantic moments broken only when I ran off across the cobblestone side streets to buy umbrellas at a 150 year old general store. The fact that we walked slowly back to our hotel under the umbrellas through streams of sunlight and bursts of humidity, let me know that this place was a special one to exhale in.

Choosing to stay at the Marriot Renaissance in the historic district, we found ourselves steps away from King Street, one of Charleston’s oldest streets. It runs far north through one of the cities party centers, down to the historic district with its diverse shopping and restaurants, and all the way south through homes and ending at Charleston Harbor and White Point Gardens Park.

Most of our walking experiences were based in this area but we were at no loss for things to do and of course, eat. On the north end, 2 blocks off King St., we enjoyed our first taste of Charleston at Alluettes Café. This is a family owned business and owner Alluette Jones-Smalls acts as your personal chef in the cozy café. She came out and discussed wants and needs with customers and went back in the kitchen. There she prepared our exceptionally delicious, holistically healthy soul foods in her “no pork” kitchen. Fish, shrimp, organic meats, vegetarian, and vegan choices were available. Alluette also owns and operates a jazz café on Calhoun St, between King and Meeting Streets. We spent one of our evenings with other jazz lovers listening to an excellent live house band, while being served even more of Alluettes menu items. It was a relaxed atmosphere with romance and joy infused into the night. Couples danced. Singles shared drinks. The band played “Lost Without You” by Robin Thicke twice. Perhaps they did this because during the first time, I left my table and grooved solo next to the keyboard player. Did they (and Rochelle) want to see that again? Who knows? It was just a great night.

Juanita Greenberg’s, also on King Street, brags out front that they have World Famous Margaritas. I had to try them. Not very tasty, but they were very tequila loaded which is probably why they gained their world status. It took no time at all before we were smiling from their effect and accepting of Greenberg’s unfortunately ultra sparse menu selection. We spilled out into the night air and realized that it being near midnight, King St. was beginning to come to life and party goers were wandering up and down the corridors. We were swept over to the sounds of House Trance music and discovered Club Pantheon, the centrally located club with a door sign welcoming those of “alternative lifestyles.” I know what that means and I embrace it, but this night in Pantheon, the alternative looked more like a place were people of all ages, races, and sexualities could dance into the night until the lights came up and the bouncers yelled for everyone to spill back onto the streets.

When you fall asleep with tequila and dancing running through your system, you awake ravenous and seeking of big grub. Lucky for us Hyman’s Seafood was a few blocks from the hotel and is the quintessential big grub spot. Owned by five generations of Hyman’s, this is the place to recharge and we wound up eating there every morning of our trip. While it is a space for seafood lovers, there were a few filling items on the menu for crafty vegans. One brunch visit I chose fettuccine with marinara sauce. Great grandson Eli Hyman noted my plate, and admitted this would not have been his choice of a meal. When I explained my veganism he remarked that I must be a dedicated friend to sit and watch Rochelle eat salmon and grits, oysters, crab cake, shrimp, pork laced collards, and hush puppies. It was not a problem. I enjoyed my pasta, as well as the great okra and fried green tomatoes from our other visit there.

You can’t visit a place like Charleston without dipping into its history. We chose not to take traditional tours that focused on the supposed romanticism of the plantation era. I am sure that my ancestors fought hard for love and family during these times, but I am almost certain this is not the romanticism discussed on the tours. We instead took a Black History tour offered by Al Miller of Sites and Insights tours. Al has been doing driven tours for 23 years. I found it sad that this excellent tour requires a bit of searching on a tourists part. It’s not listed in Frommers Guides and there are no brochures sitting around the hotel lobby. But this 3-hour tour of Gullah and Geechie culture, a rich mixture of African slaves and the generations that followed after them, is so worth experiencing.

And speaking of dipping, what of those long beaches that Charlestonians flock to? We asked our concierge which beach was best for relaxing and we were told that Folly Beach across the harbor was the place that locals go to relax. It was a windy day but we enjoyed sitting and doing a whole lot of nothing while watching the tide rise and eat away at our sandy shoreline. We didn’t leave until the water had risen to the vegetation, leaving us no choice but to leave. Still, we had moments of romance. Realizing that worrying about our coolers and blankets getting waterlogged was preoccupying my mind, I decided to put them on the other side of the sand wall and came back to sit on the moving sand. “Come sit with me.” I said, and for a good half hour we sat and allowed no worries to be entertained while the waves came in and out and over us. Touching the sand as it washed around me, letting the incoming and retreating waves push my seated body whichever way it wanted to was a relaxing, relinquishing heaven.

Our last nights dinner was at Basil Thai, a small restaurant with a city feel, securely meshed in the southern charm of King St. The food was amazing. The atmosphere eclectic and jumping. Loud and bustling. A perfect setting to turn romance not into words but into unspoken body language- hand touches, smiles, winks, and promises for the walk afterward and of the last evening of Charleston’s goodbye.

Be sure to check out some pictures from my Charleston trip here, and on the photo journal feed box in the upper right sidebar.

The Links– Both Mentioned and Suggested Ones:

Romantic Cities List (link)

Folly Beach (link)

Hyman’s Seafood (link)

Marriott Renaissance (link)

Alluettes Café (link)

Alluettes Jazz Café (link)

Juanita Greenberg’s (link)

Basil Thai (link)

Sites and Insights (link)

Club Pantheon (link)

The Sprout (link)

The Four Hour Work Week on My iPad as a Reminder to Stay Efficient and Enjoy the Ride

Before I read Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week, working from home and online seemed the ideal route for me. Four years ago when I began my transition to online, I was juggling two other teaching jobs. One part time at a local university. The other a full time assistant professor position at another university. The full time position required me to be at faculty meetings, prep, and teach several classes during the week. The part time position didn’t require as much commitment, but did require a drive somewhat longer than I was used to. My new online teaching position offered a new kind of freedom that intrigued me. The idea of doing my course responsibilities from anywhere seemed like heaven. Somewhere the seed grew in my mind that maybe, just maybe I could do the online gig alone and sever the tethers to traditional office hours and classroom antics forever. Once that was done, I relished being able to do my work in my pj’s, devoting about 30 hrs a week to students. I had no idea how something so good could possibly be better.

In 2008, I read Timothy Ferriss’s book, “The Four Hour Work Week.” A major component of the book is in how Ferriss challenges the reader to shift their concept of needs, wants, and dreams, to how work plays into all of this. It is possible he argues, to focus on the things that are most important to you, and shape your work choices around that to ultimately achieve them. While I enjoyed a 30 work week in pj’s, Ferriss and the 4HWW showed me that the focus of enjoyable work was still eating up time from an enjoyable life —and I could make that much better.

A principle of the book is to be able to cut the amount of time you spend working, so that you can spend more time living. I used the principles of the Four Hour Work week, not to create an online business that would fend for itself (even though I did; see model here), but to take what I do well (teaching) and turn it into an online occupation that frees up my life to explore and enjoy.

Even now years later I still have days of wonder, and think…”Is this really happening?”

Most days I get up and go to bed when I feel like it.

I work best in the early morning so I will probably get my online work done in the morning when I’m most focused and have fewer distractions. This allows me to have the entire day to read, write, and just be.

I have the freedom to let my day breathe. If I want to sit and read most of the day I can. If I want to go Trikke riding I can. If I get stuck in traffic I don’t worry, because I don’t have to rush to get anywhere.

I have a lot of time to think about what it is that I want from my life and importantly, work on how to get it.

I can travel mostly without consideration to my work. I can work from a laptop in a hotel, on an iPhone on the beach, and now also from my iPad in a coffee shop.

Work is satisfying, not because of the moment I sit down and work on that screen, but for the moment I get up and walk away…out into my life!

At best I do have a four hour work week. It is my belief that without the tactical changes I made in my work, it would take me 30+ hours a week to do these tasks. Now I’ve cut the time by more than 80% and I do what I feel is a better job. Better for my students because of the focus I give them. Better for me because I live a more engaged life.

Over the years I have learned how to do my online work with a focused precision. Ferriss speaks of this time management method as the 80/20 Pareto principle where if you figure that of 100%, 20% is vital and 80% is trivial. If you can give 100% to the vital components and not waste time on the trivial, productivity can be focused and skyrocket. I apply this to my online work. I give attention to students as needed. I do my work with care and give feedback to make the learning process optimal for them. Still, by intently focusing on what has to be done, I am able to treat this precision as a means to gain freedom of time and space that I so love as my main currency to spend.

My 4 hour work week and the application of the principles look like this:

I have two days a week where I am “off” and not responsible for being in the classroom or responding to students at all. I chose to make these Saturday and Monday. By sticking with this, my students learn when it’s best to communicate with me and structure is formed in habit.

During “discussion” weeks, I am responsible for being present 5 days. Being present means coming online at some point during a 24 hr period and responding in a dialogue fashion to students posts to discussion forum questions. I have a certain amount of posts I am required to make. If I’m quick and focused, meaning I don’t get backlogged with reading old comments because I haven’t checked them regularly, I can zone into my students most current and pressing ideas and spend no more than 30 minutes engaging them with new questions or answering responses to ones I posed the day before.

During “attendance”weeks, I do not have to post because during these weeks students are working independently on assignments. My job during such weeks is to check their individual forums 5 days a week to see if anyone has a question or problem to be addressed. If no questions are posed I can usually scan all of the students forums in a matter of minutes and move on. Ferriss discusses this concept in relation to email. We spend an inordinate and wasted amount of time checking emails throughout the day. For me, one focused and careful attending to them per day accomplishes the same thing. By coming online at the same time daily I ensure that students are looking for me, and that I can catch all posts that may come in during a 24 hr period.

Discussion and attendance weeks alternate, so potentially, if no questions are posed during attendance weeks I have a week with an even smaller work load. This is when the appreciation of the time I have rises to the top. If I have a lighter work week, I don’t feel guilty and try to find a way to stay “work-busy.” I step back, exhale, and go find something that fulfills this extra present of freedom.

I have to grade submitted work within 48 hrs of the due date. In most cases this can all be done on Sundays.

Each Sunday I spend the bulk of my online work week grading and posting assignments for the following week. This is my most time consuming day. Depending on the number of students I have, I can still get it done in 2-3 hours. If I have plans to be out of town or my Sunday is inflexible, I can split this time up during the week, and save all my grading and posts as drafts to be released on Sunday. Focused efficiency is the key!

Working online and from home is something I hope more and more people will come to realize as a viable option for them. Teachers. IT experts. Life coaches. Grant Writers. SEO experts. Web and graphic designers. Artists. Writers. Even Apple customer service reps are working out of their homes now. It’s all possible. If you have an idea about your own dream of doing it, drop me an email. I would be glad to help you with the considerations.

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General Tso's Seitan- Springs Rolls Restaurant, Raleigh NC

The first time I had Seitan (SAY-tan) was in Palm Springs California at Native Foods. Native Foods is a completely vegan restaurant and its owner Chef Tanya Petronva came out to our table and explained to me as a vegan newbie, what Seitan is. It is wheat gluten created by mixing protein packed (1 serving has approx 30g of a typical 90g daily recommendation) and starch free wheat gluten with seasonings and water, then kneading it into a roll and slicing it to serve as a textured meat like substitute. Yes, it does have a kind of funny name. In fact in her cookbook, Chef Tanya describes passing out samples at a farmers market. A woman spit the food out when informed it was Seitan. She said, “No, thank you. I believe in Jesus Christ!”

I don’t think Seitan is evil at all, but it is curious how it can become such a dietary chameleon. The texture is so “meaty” and deceptive, that with the right seasonings it easily becomes a chicken finger masterpiece (pic), teriyaki (pic), or a Native Foods burger (pic).

It wasn’t Seitan that recently lured me into Spring Rolls at North Hills in Raleigh; I was in search of their namesake. Hoping to check off as “found,” yet another of my pre vegan favorites, I was looking for a good but elusive vegan style spring roll. The menu noted, “Vegetarian meat substitutes are made from soybeans, wheat gluten, and other non-animal sources. Originally made as a special cuisine in Buddhist monasteries it’s now available at Spring Rolls.” Interesting! It always excites me when I see restaurants and products volunteer a vegan option. It got even better when the waitress informed me that any of the meals on the menu could be switched with my choice of soy protein, tofu or wheat gluten (Seitan). That’s a major vegan score. Obviously this still has limitations. A dish with egg noodles isn’t vegan just because you switch tofu for the shrimp. But, I got very excited to know that I could revisit my General Tso’s love affair by including Seitan.

Spring Rolls Restaurant- Raleigh NC

I’d almost forgotten in my excitement of that discovery to enjoy my spring rolls- what I came there for. They were excellent. Simple but delectable vegan rolls stuffed with fresh cabbage and carrots and accompanied by a perfect dipping sauce. The picture above does them justice. They were as good as they look.

When the General Tso’s arrived I was taken aback and actually refused to taste it. This really looked like chicken. I just knew they made a mistake on the order. It looked tender, and I was able to pull what looked like layers of skin from the main body of the pieces. That alone was disturbing. When I cut into it, it looked in texture like a slice of chicken. “Waitress!?” She tried to assure me but I still wasn’t convinced. I asked Rochelle, who is working towards but not yet a vegan, to taste it for me. She said it tasted great but that it was clear to her that it wasn’t chicken. When I tasted it I still wasn’t giving up. It was delicious, but this had to be chicken!

General Tso's Seitan- Texture

Rochelle reminded me that my taste buds have probably almost forgotten what real chicken tastes like at this point, and what I was experiencing was more likely emotional guilt. True. I was a bit weirded out by this near perfect mock chicken. It was the closest I had been as a vegan to the visual presentation of real meat on my plate. Usually the taste and texture of a meat substitute is enough to provide the chew action I crave on occasion and this keeps me happy. The fact that my Gardein quick meals or tofu don’t really look like chicken is somewhat of a soother for my consciousness.

I am still a newbie vegan and I am just beginning to struggle with the idea of coveting meat substitutes. Point blank, on the one hand it seems that I still desire a dead animal that I’ve ethically chosen to protect by not consuming it. Yet, on the other hand it seems more relevant to eventually imagine the dish not as tasting like chicken at all, but being delish and perhaps “devilishly good” General Tso’s Seitan. Perhaps if more people can make this leap we won’t really need the poultry, pork, or beef industry. Tofu would be tofu. Soy Protein would be soy protein. The idea being that they are stand-alone well seasoned delicious meals instead of focusing on the idea of them as meat substitutes. So bring on the Seitan!

Recipe for Making Seitan at Home(link), or pick up WestSoy Brand at your grocery store.

Recipe for General Tso’s Sauce (link)

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In previous posts, I have written about difficult periods in my life. I write to explore my emotional roads less traveled in hopes of healing, finding understanding, and resolve. In one post I somewhat glossed over one experience in particular. A time when I was homeless. I probably did that because when I was writing the piece, that experience wasn’t what was at the top in my mind. That wasn’t the story of my life that was hottest for me at that time. I understand how authors like bell hooks, David Sedaris, and others can write several memoirs. Life looked at and told in one way on one day, may uncover a moment that could within itself tell another life. This is what happened to me yesterday.

Sunday July 25th, was the hottest day this summer in Raleigh. Over 100 degrees with a heat index of at least 112. It was record breaking. The highest point in two weeks of ever-increasing temperatures and rising, smothering humidity. On this morning I was already dazed and grumpy from the heat. I was also raw from three months of self imposed reflection and vulnerability. My eat, pray, love home experiment was coming to an end. I had not traveled beyond my mind in the past three months, instead I chose to look within and work on myself. It was painful. It was ugly. I didn’t always behave. But, I surely have a roadmap for yet another road less traveled for me.

I think it was because of this rawness that I was emotionally open and unprepared for what was about to happen on this morning. A family member awoke and rightfully so, expressed concern for those who would not have the choice to turn their A/C to a comfortable setting, or open their fridge for water. From her heart she wanted to buy bottles of water, immerse them in ice, and during the peak of the days heat, walk around parks in downtown Raleigh handing them out to the homeless. One park in the plan as mentioned was Moore Square. The other I didn’t know its name but it quickly became clear to me that I was familiar with it. I know it sits across the way from rows of police cars. I know this because it was because of the police cars that my mother chose it for perceived safety for us to sleep in all day during our own hot summer. The summer after I had turned seventeen. The summer my parents divorced. The summer that we were homeless. Like falling in a vortex, this realization took me deep into memory.

By the time we arrived in Raleigh that summer, we had been on the streets for about a month. It began when my parents’ marriage ended. My father had found a new woman and was moving in with her. He stopped sharing in the finances of our family and we lost our apartment. My mother turned in her keys, but left the door unlocked and we hid out in the empty apartment for about a week. No electricity. A few dollars to sneak out and buy food at night. Our belongings scattered around us. Eventually the cleaning crew came to refurbish the apartment and we were discovered. We had no means of storing our things and so, everything that I owned, every physical memory of my life to that point was left behind and sat outside for the trash man to carry away. With just the clothes on our backs we walked away. Stayed with my soon to be ex-boyfriend for a day or two, and then we were alone again.

From this beginning in Spartanburg SC, we walked and then hitchhiked to Charlotte NC where my mother had a relative. We stayed there for a few days. We both got jobs at fast food restaurants. I worked at Bojangles. We wanted the chance to get on our feet and hoped that we could stay with this relative long enough to do that. Like I said, we only stayed a few days. Things were never good for my mother and her relatives, which is perhaps another story, but in the end we were out on the streets again. It’s hard to hold a job when you have no place to get clean. No money to get to work. Exhausted from sleeping in dirt with one eye open for dangers. We both lost our jobs. For two more weeks we slept where ever we could and waited for that weeks pay to be given to us. With that small amount of money we walked and hitched our way to Greensboro, Chapel Hill, and then wound up broke in that park in Raleigh.

We knew how to work but we didn’t know how to ask for help. At that time we didn’t know of any services that would have helped us. This was a new life to be learned. My mother just thought that we should keep moving and try to stay safe. Moore Square seemed to be full of drunks and groups of single men. The park across from the police cars seemed safe, and so we sat on a bench all day. That night we lay down in the grass and tried to sleep. Sometime early that morning, perhaps around 2 am or so, a police officer came over and woke us. We explained our situation and he asked us to get in his car while he called to find us shelter. We sat in the back and waited while one place after the other was called. Each was unable to take us because they had no room. He got out, opened the rear door, and told us he was sorry but there was nothing he could do. Then he drove off.

Well at least now we knew where to go for help and come morning we walked to the Salvation Army near Moore Square. We learned three things there. One, you can’t stay there during the day. You have to wander around in town and return at 6 for the nights stay. Two, you can’t stay more than 3 days in a row. Three, it’s shelter but it’s not safe. People fight, spit, curse, and abuse each other. Oh yeah. I forgot number four. If you leave at anytime during the night for any reason, including that people fight, spit, curse, and abuse each other, you can’t come back in.

After the 3rd day of dodging or being part of the violence there in order to save ourselves, and after 3 days of vomiting after every too hot when it should have been cool, or unsanitary meal with flies floating in it, we left. Walked and hitched our way to interstate 95 and headed north to Richmond. I don’t know why my mother chose Richmond but off we went.

I know now that it only takes 4 hours by car to get to Richmond, but of course it took us the better part of a full day to make our way there hitching in and out of cars and on foot. The heat was incredible. As dusk approached we knew it was getting unsafe for us to be on the highway. When the trucker pulled over and offered us a ride all the way to Richmond I know that my mother made a difficult choice on the dangers of the two- the road or this man. We climbed in the truck. I saw the way he looked at me. So did my mother. She sat in the middle. An hour or so later when it was fully dark, he pulled over at a truck stop and he and my mother got out. I saw them talking. A few moments later my mother came for me with a hot take out dinner in one hand and a key to a hotel room from the lodge next door in the other. She hugged me and said she would see me in the morning. The next day he dropped us off in downtown Richmond.

It goes without saying but I will anyway, that this night was a psychological breakdown for us. My mother was changed after this night. I sat in the darkness, alone in my room, thinking of what she was going through. These are the moments that you look back on and know exactly when the pain became so great that its seed bloomed in full. The moment when its roots begin to wrap around your heart and start to squeeze in ways you could never have imagined in your prior life and are not sure looking back, that you’ve recovered from even today.

When we arrived in Richmond the first thing we did was find the welfare office and before the day was done we had a key for a room at the downtown welfare hotel. It was an old 20-story building and we had a room on the 20th floor. It was hot and loud in the building. People screamed and fought day and night. During our day we walked and looked for work and would return in the afternoon. The elevator didn’t work and we had to walk up and down the stairs through and by dangers, but once we got to our room we could lock the door and be somewhat safe. We had food stamps now and so we weren’t hungry anymore. We were given toiletry items and each night we would strip out of the only clothes we had, those on our backs, and wash them by hand with a bar of Ivory soap. They would hang in the window at night and be dry, slightly wrinkled, but ready for the next days job hunt.

By the end of the summer we had found no work. School was about to begin and social services required that I register and enroll. This was a tough one and we delayed action way into the school year. Because of our address at the welfare hotel I would have to go to the roughest school in the district. More violence waited. Social services gave my mother the choice of enrolling me or I would have to be placed into foster care. With that choice weighing on us, we walked down to this school and stood looking at its imposing and graffiti laden brick façade. As soon as we entered and tried to get to the enrollment office the class change bell rang. It was a full on assault. We left. On the way back to the welfare hotel we passed a military recruitment office and an Army officer handed a flyer to me. For some reason we went inside. For some reason we stopped not at the Army desk but at the Coast Guard office. That night in our room my mother told me that she could sign me into military service as a minor. I would be safe she said. I would have a job and a chance for a future. “What about you?” I asked. She said she would be okay and told me that it was the most important thing in her life to make sure that I was safe. Within a week I had taken my GED, physical, and was ready to be sent away.

Without a doubt, the two hardest moments in my life come to mind. The moment in 2005 that I learned my mother had died from cancer, and the moment that the military bus drove away and I watched my mothers figure disappear from my sight. Both moments haunt me and in each I wonder what pain she endured in those moments. For me, each moment created a ball of pain soon to be covered with thick hardness. For each I screamed inside, “Where’s my mother?”

When I was 17, the moment I arrived in training camp I was yanked off the bus and the constant screaming commenced. With each aggression aimed at me, for each yell, for each push up, for each punch, for each assault, I silently screamed back at the void, “Where’s my mother?” That weak voice grew stronger but also darker. I became hard, enraged, and unable to feel anything until many weeks later when the Chaplin called for me. There he gave me a letter from my mother, and explained to me that she was on a bus to my boot camp location and that she would be okay. I read her letter. Broken words, loneliness, and sentences of pain radiated up from the page. I could not stop myself from imagining what she had been through all this time. I wept without end for the first time in weeks. My mother was here.

Funny thing about blogs. Sometimes they can just be like a journal where your emotions flow freely and even if no one in the world reads it, your words are released. Your emotions seem tended to in that post.

Funny thing about life. It can come crashing in on you with just the simplest trigger. In this case, it was the suggestion of a visit to a park to help people who are just like me in more ways than many might realize or even know about me today. I am a woman who grew from a girl not unlike many others who was protected by her mother at all cost. I am a woman who survived and yes…thrives. But in that moment, a haze took over my spirit. A running vision clouded my eyes as I walked through that park. I was transported backwards in time and all that I have told you now, came spilling backwards on top of me. I was not ready. I was not willing.

My teacher of suffering visits me often, and most times I obey. I obey in a way that is often not recognized. We are taught so often to quickly deal with what pain flows through our bodies. The shock of trauma is said to taint us in ways and we are taught to push this “feeling” out of us as quickly as possible. Yet without the full experiencing of the pain there is no healing. The coverup only uncovers later. So let me feel. Let me be there. Let me experience sorrow. I’ve experienced rage and hardness and it most often appears from the process of too quickly covering (without resolve) for the comfort of others.

Through the pain and hardness there is softness to be found. Buddhist nun Pema Chodron wrote, “When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are the times that we connect with bodhichitta (meaning: compassion, responsibility, and enlightenment).”

And so, another road appears. A road less traveled, but one that is becoming more and more familiar to me. Life never smacks you when you’re looking for the hit. That would be no fun. It always comes at you when you least expect it. Suffering is inevitable. Suffering is our teacher.

Everyone around me knows by now that I’m always on the lookout for vegan foods. It’s amazing to me how many foods can be enjoyed without animal products. I keep tasting things that are clearly plant based foods and incredibly tasty, but I’m also discovering many that are my old omnivore favorites that I never imagined could be veganized. McQuirter has quite a few recipes in her book that I’m looking forward to trying out. Imagine a vegan cornbread- free of eggs and milk. Lasagna. Gravies. Strawberry Cheesecake. Can’t wait to get started on those. In the meantime, I checked out her informative site for the book and also found a great recipe for open faced black bean tortillas. Excellent source of protein!

Below, you’ll find a video of Tracey making a vegan pizza. Pizza was one of the first things I craved as a new vegan and I thought I would never have a good one again. That changed on a visit to Carrabbas when I ordered their outstanding Margherita Pizza with no cheese. (pic) I really would prefer to make my own pizza at home. Cheaper and I get more to grub on.

Take a look at this video. This munchie stacked pizza looks like it would fill even the hungriest vegan belly!

Tracey McQuirter- Author of “By Any Greens Necessary”

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Last month we attended our local Kadampa Center’s month long Discovering Buddhism Class called “Transforming Problems.” The nun that led the class began by discussing ways to deal with the “disappointment” that is sometimes felt when someone that we admire seems to “fail” us. Ultimately being a fallible human being. She approached a white board and asked us to call out qualities or traits of people that we admired. On the board she wrote:

Kindness. Humility. Patience. Generosity. Compassion. Optimistic. Forgiveness. Loving. Perseverance. Discipline. Humor. Loyalty.

At the end of the listing, she reminded us that each trait or quality could be looked at as the source of admiration. This is better, she noted, then attaching it solely to the person we see as seemingly owning the trait. She told us that it is the trait that we have to remember to admire and aspire to- not just the person that we see as having the trait. Therefore if the person acts in a way that shocks us, we have something to work with. An intellectual distance that allows us to continue to aspire to these traits.

First it was suggested, that we see the person as imperfect. Does the fact that they passed by the person standing on the highway corner with a sign mean that they are not compassionate? If they have a bad day does it mean that they are not optimistic? No. It would simply suggest that the complexity of human character allows for moments where it is not black or white.

Second, it is important to see the trait as something that is different to everyone. In your mind is it generosity to give something to Goodwill that you no longer have use for? Or, is it generosity to give something that has value to you? Is forgiveness only in certain acts such as to the person who cut you off in traffic this morning, or does it extend to your spouse who you feel has wronged you?

Third, it is problematic to attach a trait to a person and then judge the trait itself by one person. For example, if I were to see “John” as compassionate. Then, if he exhibits some behavior that breaks this image for me, I would start to see no one as being compassionate. You can see how this shutting down would inhibit me from interacting fully with John and others. Not a good thing.

Fourth, it is seen as necessary to examine our own need to place such unbending expectations on another human being. It falls under the concept of control. Not control in that one tells another how to be as a means to control them, but in that controlling ones environment/interactions might seem to create a safe space for them. Let’s say that I expect you to behave in a certain way that reflects to me an important trait of loyalty. If I believe you will consistently reflect this trait, then I might convince myself that I am safe, in control, and that I won’t be hurt by you. That I won’t suffer. Well. Anyone who studies Buddhism will tell you that the first Noble Truth a person must realize on the path to enlightenment is that suffering is inevitable. It will happen. We have no control over its appearance. It is what you do with the experience of suffering when this teacher arrives that will take you down another road often less traveled. From our text, “Recognizing undesirable situations as desirable is one of the most powerful thought training practices. It is the way to transform suffering into happiness.”

Finally, it is important to turn the mirror of expectation on oneself instead of focusing wholly on others. What do I do to exude compassion, loyalty, kindness, or patience? If I desire a trait or character in another, do I forget that they too need to see that in me? Can I not see that my own growth requires my connection with my own character, my own behaviors, and my own reactions—not as a function of others, but as a function of my own choices? From our text,” There is nothing to trust in seeking happiness from outside; you will only become exhausted with suffering, which is without satisfaction and without end.”

For More Info On These Courses:

To take course online or find a local offering: (link)

Recommended Books for “Transforming Problems” Course:

Transforming Problems Into Happiness -(Quoted Above) Lama Zopa Rinpoche

The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings; Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation- Thich Nhat Hanh

Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand- Pabongka Rinpoche

Awakening the Mind; Lightening the Heart -The Dalai Lama

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Take something that is living, full of blood, waste, and fluids. Kill it. Let it linger. Wrap it up and sell it. Then cook it and eat it. Yeah. That really didnt seem like it might be very good for me for very long. I admit, I havent always thought this deeply about the food I eat. I haven’t always been a vegan, though I spent many years being a vegetarian. Two years ago I started eating meat again. I was torn, but I found “bright spots” in going out and eating at all sorts of places. I posted about enjoying it- even after a bout with rare slices of meat made me sick. We all come to where we need to be, when we need to be there. For me, committing to being a vegan earlier this year was where I needed to be. Since I had been thinking about it for a while, this made my transition a bit easier. Now as part of my many roads less traveled, I explore this path in life, and on this blog. I will often post things such as the video above to inform. Perhaps it might help someone commit to a life that I consider for myself to be more ethical and healthy. I can’t tell you what to do, or what to see as such, but I can only say what is right for me.

I was a vegan when I visited the Harris Ranch feedlot and took the shots you’ll see in the video. I had passed the lot years ago when I lived in California and probably the biggest thing I noticed then was the stench. Now I notice and think about what goes on there and what it means for the environment, my future, and my health. Take a look at the marketing of steak, green grass, and farming that is presented on their website.

In many ways, who could blame them. Does anyone, vegan or omnivore really want to see a slaughtered or diseased cow on their product page? It is their business, and ultimately as long as people as consumers continue to request meat, places like the Harris Ranch will exist. That’s where the change has to come. If people request non animal products, they will appear in multitude. The capitalist has no care for context. Only in the content of the earning. Nor is the Harris Ranch the only feedlot in the US. Although they state somewhere deep on their website that their 800 acre feedlot has the capacity to “produce” 250,000 head of cattle a year, and that they sell 150 million pounds of beef per year–this is just for the West Coast.

As I say in the video, our images of the foods that we eat are often clouded by marketing and mis-information. We imagine, as was shown in Food Inc, and in the clip below, that our food animals are raised on rolling hills of grass or on land with family farmers throwing feed at them, calling, “Here chick chick.” Maybe we even go so far to think that they are humanly slaughtered. Is there such a thing?

If we can’t think about the animals, and I truly suggest that we do–thinking about exactly how our food gets to the table is the biggest answer I can give to anyone who asks me, “How can you stay a vegan?” But even if we can’t do that. Even if we can’t expand our minds further out to think about the environmental damage that animal waste run off from factory farms creates in our communities. Even if we can’t think about the role of concentrated animal “exhaust” on our air. Even if we can’t think about how we could practically end human hunger just by diverting the funds required or even better the actual crops of corn and grain used to feed animals factory farmed for consumption. Instead send that money or crops to human beings. Even if we can’t think that broadly. Think narrowly. Think about our own bodies.

According to a July 12, 2010 release from Health Care Without Harm and the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming (link) (full press story):

“Experts estimate that up to 70 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States are given to healthy animals on industrial farms to promote growth and compensate for the effects of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. Four decades of scientific research has demonstrated that feeding antibiotics to food animals over a long period of time promotes the development of dangerous strains of drug-resistant bacteria that can infect humans who work with these animals or process or consume their meat.”

Seventy percent of the antibiotics sold here are not given to people but to healthy animals. First, let’s consider that we often hear about food animals being given growth hormones, and because of this knowledge, people rightfully shun the resulting product. Is the use of antibiotics as a secondary method to induce abnormal growth a way to slip through regulation? Second, we must certainly understand the human peril to eating meats that have been dosed with antibiotics. Dr. Lance Price, director of the Translational Genomics Research Institute’s Center for Metagenomics and Human Health in Flagstaff, Ariz, said, “This is an extremely dangerous practice. It hastens the day when our antibiotics fail.”

If we continue to consume factory farmed animals that have been pumped full of antibiotics, we could be a nation unable to ward off a health crisis. In my last post, I discussed an email I received that was looking for people to test a plague vaccine. This was for the Department of Defense. Antibiotics perhaps play no role in this type of crisis, but can we risk an inability to provide antibiotics that work because our bodily systems have been flooded “invoultarily” by the foods that we eat? Imagine. Then consider the options.

Keep watching my blog as I talk about my vegan journey. There are lots of things important to me that aren’t about this issue and I will certainly continue to post on them, but this is certainly a big one for me.

Books I Recommend on Veganism:

By Any Greens Necessary- A Revolutionary Guide for Black Women Who Want to Eat Great, Get Healthy, Lose Weight, and Look Phat -Tracye McQuirter

Becoming Vegan-The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-Based Diet-Davis and Melina

Eating Animals- Jonathan Safron Foer

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows - Melanie Joy

Animal Ingredients from A to Z- Eg Smith Collective

Cookbooks I Recommend for Vegan Grub:

Native Foods Restaurant Cookbook- by Chef Tanya Petrovna

Vegan Soul Kitchen- Bryant Terry (extra website)

Vegan Yum Yum: Decadent (But Doable) Animal-Free Recipes for Entertaining and Everyday -Lauryn Ulm (website with free recipes)

Sites I Recommend for Finding Places to Eat Out:

VeganSteven

Happy Cow Compassionate Eating Guide

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The Actual Email Screenshot With Company Name Obscured

…and I’m saying no on this one.

Remember last year when everyone was debating and wondering if the H1N1 was some sort of sneaky way for the government to track its citizens with biological tags? I took the shot for it’s stated purpose and chose not to think about the other side of it. Well, I got an email the other day from a research company I do studies for and frankly, it was a wake up call. Typically this company calls on its bank of volunteers for seemingly benign projects. $100 for walking through a grocery store and telling what appeals to you. $150 to sit in a room with other women and look at ads for restaurants. $150 for sitting 2 hours and working on your laptop. Even health based studies seem harmless. Have trouble sleeping? Well, earn $500 to engage in a sleep study.

But, when this email offer popped up, the words “plague,” “Dept. of Defense,” and “bio-defense,” scared the crap out of me. The offer speaks for itself and says perhaps even more than the words on the page. I suppose it’s wise to realize that in our world today we have to be prepared…..but isnt it creepy to think of a plague coming and people scrambling for a vaccine? What would it look like? Where would it come from? What would it do to us? Who would get the vaccine and who wouldn’t? Is there enough? My favorite zombie movies like I Am Legend, and all the George Romero films came into sharp focus.

Look to my next post for my thoughts of how this might happen. Back in March, I went to the Harris Feedlot in Coalinga California and I have a weird experience to tell you about, and I tell ya….it’s gonna be in the meat. I’m just sayin…..

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