On a weekend afternoon, I went to her apartment. She sat on the couch, painting her nails hot pink. She said, The thing I hate about this job is that I always have to paint my nails. She said it with her high-pitched voice and she said it sweetly. After I interviewed her, I realized she is sweet and vulnerable, too. I feel a tenderness for her that might be hard to explain.

***

The Rumpus:  I’m wondering how you decided to start working in porn.

Adrianna Luna: Well, when I started, when I first met with my agent, I was under the impression–I didn’t know it was going to be porn–I thought it might just be nude modeling. I thought, I could do some stuff on the side, I could do that. Then, when I went to go meet her, she said, Yes, there is that, but it’s on set and you’d have to do porn. I was like, Oh. Oh, no. No way. She said, Well, what are you scared of? And she explained everything to me about the industry.

Rumpus: What did she say?

Luna: Well she asked if I was scared of diseases–and I was under the impression that you use condoms. They don’t use condoms in this industry. One company does. I haven’t shot for them. But she was like, You know, you go through really intensive testing every thirty days. In the state of California, they test a lot more than in other states. It’s a lot more regulated.

I told her, I just–I don’t know. That’s just something so private, I just don’t think I could do it. Maybe I could do solo or just with girls and she said, You know, I have a lot of girls right now that only do that and they would take priority.  I can take you on and we can put you as that but I honestly don’t think we can get you a lot of work. You really have to do boy-girl. I was like, OK well, let me think about it and I left.

I thought, You know. I don’t know if it’s that bad and I met with a friend and I talked to her about it. I told her, I think I could totally do this but I don’t know. Do you think I’m crazy? I really have to think these things through. What about the consequences of doing this. It’s going to stay with me forever. My friend was like, If you want to, you should do it. I would accept you. I’m sure any of your close friends would too.

So I go to the agent and I say, OK.  I’ll try one scene. What’s one scene? If I hate it, if it’s totally horrible, then I’ll disappear. I’ll never have to do anything again. So I went and it actually was a lot of fun.

Rumpus: What was your first scene like?

Luna: It was a lot more professional than I thought. I think a lot of people think that the industry is very dirty, very seedy, that there’s drugs and alcohol everywhere and that it’s not safe. It’s actually very professional, as much as it can be. It is porn, it’s sex. I kind of feel like it’s a uniform. When you go to a hospital, you see people in scrubs. When you go to a porn shoot, you see people naked. That’s what it is. That’s your uniform. But it’s very controlled. Everyone has their job and everyone makes you feel really comfortable. I was surprised how quickly I was just OK walking around naked my first day. I thought I’d be really shy.

Rumpus: How did you imagine your first scene would be?

Luna: I had no idea. Honestly. I don’t know. I never really thought about it. I never watched porn before getting into it. The night before my first scene I went online–my friend told me about these free sites–but honestly, the first thing I saw was very aggressive, like porn star punishment. I was like, Oh my God.  I’m definitely not doing that.

Rumpus: What was it?

Luna: This girl was getting fish hooked, in her mouth, and they were pounding her from the back and she was all sweaty. It just looked like a mess.

Rumpus: That’s the first video you ever watched?

Luna: I was like, Oh my God. I definitely cannot do this. Then I saw another scene that was a lot more tame. But even still. Some of the stuff the girls were saying. I was like, Oh my God. I can’t talk like that. All the dirty talk they were saying. I just didn’t even think about you’re going to have to talk. I thought I’d just have to moan. All the stuff the girls were saying. I thought, What am I going to do? What am I going to say?

Rumpus: Wait, but–I mean, had you talked dirty in the bedroom before?

Luna: A little. But not like that. I’d never used the word cock before. Never. Now I use it everyday. Now it’s weird for me not to. Even in a normal conversation, I use the word cock and think, Oh…that was kind of vulgar.

Rumpus: When you were talking to your friend and she gave you the advice to go ahead and do it, she said your closest friends were not going to judge you. Is that something you were afraid of?

Luna: Yeah. In my head, I thought this is kind of bad but I’m intrigued. I want to try it but I didn’t know it was OK. And she said if you want to do it, you should just do it.

Rumpus: Bad, in terms of?

Luna: Bad, in terms of…Morally wrong, I think. Like this is bad. I guess I thought, What are people going to think when they find out? Even still I feel bad when I talk to my mom. I hope she never finds out. In my head I think she won’t. I don’t know. Most people say your parents are going to find out. I don’t know how I would respond to her if she found out. I’d just be really embarrassed.

Rumpus: Was there a specific person you were embarrassed to tell or you were afraid of telling and then told?

Luna: I was scared of telling my roommate, best friend/sister figure. I was for sure afraid of telling her but I knew I had to. Because she was going to catch on that I wasn’t going to work anymore, that I was leaving at odd times with a suitcase. You know? (Laughs)

Rumpus: Why were you afraid to tell her?

Luna: I didn’t know if she was going to be accepting of it. It’s kind of a shocking thing. It’s not something that everyday someone is going to say, Oh I’m doing porn. A lot of people have problems with it. It’s not openly accepted by the public.

Rumpus: How did you tell her?

Luna: We went out for drinks and I thought, OK. I’m going to need a lot of drinks before I tell her. Even then I almost didn’t. It was towards the end of the night, almost time to get the check, and my other friend was looking at me like, Do it, tell her.

Rumpus: So you were just sitting there? Thinking about how to say it?

Luna: Yes! We were having conversations and I was just not there. I was just thinking, Do it. Just do it. Do it now. And then I would say something else, get off topic. I’d get too scared. Then there was a random, silent moment and I said, OK. I have to tell you something. But don’t get mad, don’t judge me because it’s kind of bad. Once I told her, she said, Oh. I thought it was going to be something way worse. OK, she said and that was it. She was the hardest one to tell.

Rumpus: So you started in March, you’re new, relatively.

Luna: Yes, very.

Rumpus: I guess I don’t really have a concept of what being new means in the sex industry. How long is new, how long do women usually last?

Luna: Oh, right. The shelf life. Well, most girls get in and a lot of them are really bad, they don’t like it. It might be they don’t like having sex or they don’t like giving head or they just don’t like the experience, they’re just there for a paycheck. So they’re just kind of laying there and they’re not really giving anything and it’s just a really bad scene.

I think just because the industry itself is going down because of the economy and because of all this free porn now, people aren’t really shooting as many movies anymore. A lot of the companies have shut down and there’s not as much work anymore and they’re saying that most girls only work three months and that’s it and they’re done.

My agent says she’s had tons of girls and they start out and they’re shooting all the time. When you’re new, everybody wants to shoot you, so you could be working five, six days a week for a month, which is a lot. It takes a lot out of your body, too. You need breaks. One day to the next, she’ll stop getting calls for a certain girl and she just can’t book that girl anymore and that’s just it. They do two months and you’re out. Three months and you’re out.

Rumpus: So your agent told about you this before?

Luna: Yes. She said, You’re doing really well. You kind of made it over that hump. I’ve never gotten complaints about you. People really like working with you. They say you have a great attitude in that you honestly really enjoy it. And I told her, I do and she said, And it comes off. You’ve been in it six months and you’re just as busy now as when you started and she said that’s really good. I guess you can make it or you can’t and there’s really no telling. But she also thinks that it’s odd because of my age. My agent said, You’re a beautiful girl, I get why you get booked but normally, I probably wouldn’t have taken anyone your age. It makes no sense. No one should really want to book you so much, being new.

Rumpus: And you’re how old?

Luna: I’m twenty-seven. That’s old.

Rumpus: That’s old?

Luna: That’s really old. She says, You’re lucky you look really young and you have such a pretty face. That’s what is keeping you in. Most people don’t come in at twenty-seven and the people that are my age have been in for a long time already and they’re just a big name, so of course they keep shooting. But they’re more of that character or persona or whatever that might be. Everybody knows them. So, I don’t know. (Laughs) I’m like a rare kind of thing. I don’t know why it works but it works.

Rumpus: Well, how does it feel?

Luna: It’s nice. It’s flattering. For sure. It’s probably also because–she says, You don’t look your age. You look like your twenty-two or twenty-three. And the voice. Everyone loves the voice and the boobs.

Rumpus: How would you describe your voice?

Luna: My voice? The best way to say it is, a lot of people say that I sound like a cartoon. Don’t I sound like a cartoon?

Rumpus: (laughs)

Luna: Yeah! Like a dirty cartoon. (Laughs) Maybe like a South Park or something. It’s kind of bad though when they say, You sound like such a little girl and sometimes they’ll want me to talk really dirty, like a lot, just because of the voice, which is kind of pervy.

Rumpus: You say you like doing porn, you enjoy it. Through this experience, which hasn’t been that long, have you discovered you like sex more than before?

Luna: A lot more than I did before. Sometimes I look back and think, I don’t know how you’ve become more open and OK with a lot of things. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I mean, I’m still trying to grasp and get my head around this whole thing. What it is I’m doing and why am I doing it.

For me right now it’s just fun. I feel like I’m just having fun. And I feel like I have to take it more seriously. There’s going to be consequences and I really need to think about what I’m doing now and how it’s going to affect me later. But I just feel like I show up and I’m having a lot fun. I’m not feeling bad about what I’m doing. I don’t have any regrets about what I’m doing. But, I know I should take it a little bit more serious. It is my body. It is me. It’s going to stick with me forever.

I don’t know if becoming OK with so much is a bad thing, if it’s just making me numb to respecting myself, maybe? I don’t know because really quickly a dude would be like Um, Are you OK with swallowing and I was like, Yeah, sure. Why not? Or are you OK with doing group sex and I was like, Yeah sure, why not? Because I have fun with it, but I don’t know.

One time, somebody–I was having a conversation with my boyfriend and it was my first blow bang, and he said, You shouldn’t be doing blow bangs. I was like, Why not? I want to. I really like to give head so I thought, Why not? Four at the same time! I was excited about it.  He said, No. If you want to make a career out of this or you want to stay in for a while, you shouldn’t be doing that. You’re too pretty. That’s something they’ll have just any other girl do. Or you’re too new to be doing this. You should wait. You just need to be more exclusive with yourself. I said, But I want to.

He said, How much are they paying you to do it and it’s not worth it, for all these people. It was the first time I actually said, Do I not respect myself? Am I degrading myself? What am I doing? I remember driving to set and I was talking to him and started crying. I thought, What am I doing, why do I think it’s a joke, why do I think it’s funny. He said, No, don’t cry. That’s not what I’m trying to tell you. It’s not bad. It’s great that you’re having fun with it, but he said I think you need to think about things more seriously.

And after that–honestly, I don’t know where this is going to go. I’m having fun with it at the moment. I’m in a phase in my life where I’m just trying to figure things out and this is something temporary that I picked up along the way.  That was the intention of it when I got started in it and that’s still how I see it. I’m having a lot of fun with it and I enjoy it, but I don’t see it as something that’s going to be a part of me forever.

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I didn’t know why I was feeling better, so I went to the literature. I discovered that most books about yoga are not accessible or interesting. I stopped checking out yoga books from the library and started asking yoga teachers and students my questions.

Recently I talked with Neal Pollack about yoga. Neal has been practicing yoga for almost eight years and just finished a yoga teacher training with Richard Freeman. He answered my questions, even though I was, for the most part, nervous and inarticulate. I suppose I’m just neurotic and yoga helps.

Neal Pollack’s most recent book is Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude. He’s the author of the bestselling memoir Alternadad and several books of satirical fiction, including The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature.

The Rumpus: You started practicing because of you were feeling bad, because of the bad review.

Neal Pollack: Yeah. Because The New York Times called me fat.

Rumpus: Right. I started doing yoga when I wasn’t exactly well and I’m curious. Why do you think people, who aren’t feeling well, start practicing yoga? What do you think draws them in?

Pollack: Well first of all, people start doing it because it’s offered for free at their gym and some people start doing it because they have a bad back or some other injury. But if you’re one of these people who starts it for some mental or emotional reason, I think you just reach a point where nothing else works and nothing else seems to make sense, so you just throw caution to the wind and say, All right. I’ll give this a try, too. That’s kind of what it came down to.

It was a combination of that and the fact that my wife was also willing to give it a shot and that it was offered as part of our gym membership. That played no small part. I don’t think I would have wandered into a yoga studio in Austin and started my practice. I had never even considered yoga.

Rumpus: I started practicing yoga at 24 Hour Fitness.

Pollack: So did I. That’s just how a lot of Western yoga practitioners get started. I didn’t realize at the time why I was doing it, but in retrospect it came in that period where my conceptions of my self and my ego were completely shattered and completely out of control. It just sort of appeared when it was necessary.

Rumpus: How often do you practice yoga?

Pollack: I try to practice everyday. At the moment, I’ve got this hamstring injury. So right now, yoga is taking the form of rehab. This routine I have seems to work pretty well. It’s the routine that my teachers gave me during my teacher training. So I combine that and I try to meditate and I try to read about yoga and sort of study it.

The style I practice in Ashtanga is supposedly an eight limbed style, which means in addition to the physical, in addition to the postures, you have to practice breath control and you have to practice meditation and live as ethically as possible. It’s kind of an all-encompassing practice.

Rumpus: I didn’t think of it as an all-encompassing practice when I began. I was just looking at yoga as a physical experience and then all of a sudden I was meditating and reading Buddhist books. I got really upset. I felt tricked into having a spiritual life.

Pollack: The thing is that’s part of it, too. My teacher Richard Freeman talks about the fact when you have a purely physical practice, there will come a point where you reach your Rubicon.  You reach a point where you either quit or you push through to some of the deeper aspects of the practice.

When you first start, you feel awesome. You think you’re awesome. After a while you’re doing things you didn’t think you’d be able to do. Then one morning, you still are unhappy and you’re still neurotic and you’re still insecure. Or you get injured and all of a sudden you can’t do physically the stuff you were doing that you thought you were awesome at and that is the point at which — this is what he says — a lot of yoga practices, just fail. Or collapse. Or get abandoned. But if you push through and continue, it generally deepens and enriches and these tests happen over and over and over again.

You know I was so excited to get my teaching certificate and really get into incredible physical shape. I was going to be deeply enmeshed. Then ten days before I went, I blew out my hamstring. Not doing yoga.

Rumpus: How did you do it?

Pollack: I just tripped over my suitcase in middle of the night. I was getting about to take a piss and then I felt a little tweak and sure enough, it didn’t go away and it still hasn’t.

It was a constant challenge for me while I was there with people who were throwing their legs behind their heads and walking around on their hands. I mean, not everyone at the training was like that, but a lot of them were. I was forced to sort of just sit with myself and deal with the situation at hand and try to throw away any preconceived notion I had of myself as this yoga guy.

Rumpus: Were you bummed?

Pollack: Yeah! There were moments when I wanted to walk away. This is not what I bargained for. I worked really hard, raising money on the Internet and just really pushed and pushed and got dealt this hand. But I soldiered through and it’s over. It happened. I still got my certificate, which is nice, even if my physical practice actually regressed and it did. I can’t do triangle pose, that’s a pretty basic pose.

Rumpus: But maybe your injury is a way to deepen your practice?

Pollack: One could hope. I find myself struggling with it all the time. A lot of times you use that yoga brain that you get out of a really intense physical practice as kind of a crutch. You come out of that practice and you’re thinking, It’s all good. Everything’s cool. I don’t get that. The practice I’m doing is just not that intense.

One of the reasons I went to the teacher training when I did and wanted to deepen my practice when I did was so I could have a steady mind and a steady attitude in the publication of the book, because it’s stressful to publish a book. I’ve done it before. I’m trying to do that and trying to support my family. Some of the reviews will be good and some of them won’t. There’ll probably be some snark on the Internet here and there and having a yoga brain helps. Now I have to figure out a way to have that yoga brain without the usual methods. It’s a challenge.

Rumpus: I was thinking about how there’s a lot of ego involved in publishing your book and marketing it. I was thinking about how publishing is in some ways a contradiction to yoga. Do you feel that tension?

Pollack: Yes, because yoga is all about diminishing the ego and reducing the self and not promoting one’s self as superior to or different than the rest of humanity. But at the same time, I wrote a book and I think it’s funny and useful and well written. I’ve got rent to pay and a kid to support and I think it’s OK–there’s nothing in the Yoga Sutras that say or the Bhagavad Gita that says, You should not make a living.

There’s nothing wrong with it. The key is then to try and sell the book and do it with a good sense of humor. It’s not like all of a sudden because I’m doing yoga, I’ve become some sort of ascetic person or have become some sort of anti-capitalistic crusader. My essential personality hasn’t changed, but what I’m going to try and do is be more thoughtful about how I go about it. I’m going to do it with a little bit less puffed up attitude and not let it consume me.

Rumpus: I will say that I think your book makes yoga seem really relatable. There’s a misconception about what yoga is and I come across it often. For instance, if I say I practice yoga four times a week, I’ll have someone tell me that I sound like a Silver Lake housewife.

Pollack: What’s weird is that if one had said that in 1974, people’s conception of what that meant would have been completely different. Only recently has yoga become the New Age aerobics for yuppie housewives. That’s a very recent conception of it and a very small percentage of what it actually is.

What I try to do in the book is show how it can be adapted to any kind of life and it doesn’t have to be any one thing. I try to relate my own experience. It’d be nice if people who think they might not be able to do yoga can use my experience–not as a guide in how to behave in their own lives. God knows I wouldn’t want to impose that upon them, but maybe it can give people an idea that yes, they too can do it. If a schmo like me can pull it off, then they can pull it off as well.

***

Rumpus original art by Jason Novak.

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My junior year at UC Santa Cruz, I discovered Gary Young’s writing and fell in love with his stories. My senior year, he happened to start teaching creative writing classes. I took his course “Methods and Materials” and later that year, I designed an independent study with him. He was an amazing mentor and always inspired me to write out of love.

Recently I realized I had surrounded myself with people who were not very much concerned with writing out of a love for language or stories, or people. So I decided to get in touch with Gary and he agreed to answer my questions and for that I am grateful. I find his answers inspiring, interesting, and sincere. I wish to share them with you.

Gary Young’s most recent book is titled Pleasure.  He has written several other books, which have received many awards, including the William Carlos Williams award. In 2009, he received the Shelley Memorial award and just last month, he was named Santa Cruz’s first poet laureate.

The Rumpus: What was the last book you loved?

Gary Young: I assume by “loved” you mean the last book that made me feel as if I’d fallen in love. I can think of two books: Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just, and Jack Gilbert’s The Dance Most of All. I had previously read Scarry’s book The Body in Pain, a fascinating study of torture and of the limits of language to adequately express the experience of violence and pain. On Beauty and Being Just is a marvelous antidote to her book about violence. Her thesis is simple and profound, namely that beauty encourages a sense of justice. She recognizes that beauty is life-saving for individuals and collectives alike. Her short philosophical inquiry is simultaneously radical in its approach, and conservative in its embrace of traditional, even reactionary values. Scarry believes what the medieval philosophers believed, that “beauty is a call.”

Jack Gilbert has been a favorite poet of mine for decades, but his latest book, The Dance Most of All may be his most heartbreaking. I have always admired artists who somehow manage to do their best work at the end of their lives—Rembrandt, Milosz, W.C. Williams, Hokusai—and Gilbert’s newest collection puts him squarely in that group of artists who continue to grow even as their physical strengths decline. His poems about love and loss are especially trenchant, written as they are from the vantage point of old age, and his insistence on passion and on beauty even in the face of his own decline and imminent demise are powerful evocations of a great spirit.

Rumpus: I first read your poems when I was a junior at UC Santa Cruz. Micah Perks recommended the book No Other Life to my then boyfriend and he absolutely loved it. He read the book and shared it with me and his roommates. Everyone seemed rather amused by your author photo because you are clearly sitting in a cemetery. I too loved your poems and felt especially drawn to the poems in Braver Deeds. I had not really read prose poems before. I did not then know what I was reading were prose poems. I knew it was writing and it affected me.

I think you call your writing prose poems. And I know we’ve talked about flash fiction/prose poems/short shorts, the labeling of these things. I suppose what I am trying to say is that I discovered prose poems existed because of your writing. Then, through your Methods and Materials class, I realized, more and more, writing in very short pieces was the form that best suited what I was trying to say. My question is how did you discover prose poems? How did you discover that this form worked best with what you were trying to communicate?

Young: Taking that author’s photograph in the cemetery was a conscious decision on my part, but I have to explain that the cemetery is directly across the street from the Little League field where I was coaching baseball; it was a convenient backdrop.

I have written several essays on the prose poem. I’ve edited a critical anthology about the prose poem, Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poetry and Poetics from California, and I have chaired panels devoted to the form and its practice; to be honest, I’m a little sick of the whole thing. This obsession with form and with labels is finally a distraction from the poetry. I don’t care what they call it, I just want it to move me.

I first read prose poems in the Bible, of course, and when I was in high school I discovered Arthur Rimbaud. I read prose poems by Charles Wright, James Wright, Borges and others while I was in graduate school, and it never occurred to me that the form was anything special. There was one prose poem in my first book, Hands, but when I started writing prose poems exclusively in my third book, Days, I discovered the hostility and animosity the form could engender in editors, readers and even in other poets. It made no sense to me then, and it still doesn’t. I started writing prose poems when I discovered they were the best form for externalizing what was going on in my head. I produced an artist’s book of letterpress prints, The Geography of Home, and printed the text as a single line on the back of the 40 images. The text runs almost 100 pages in a single line. I realized that I wanted my poems to run out like that, horizontally rather than vertically, and it’s been my preferred form ever since.

Rumpus: You are a poet as well as a printer. How did you start printing?

Young: I started a literary journal, Greenhouse Review, while I was in graduate school. When I returned to Santa Cruz where I lived, I took a night class at the high school to learn how to print; I wanted to save money on production costs. I aced the course in offset printing, so I started playing with an old Chandler and Price platen press that was hulking in the back of the classroom. It was about to be scrapped. I read an old ITC typographic handbook, set a poem by a friend, and printed it. The experience was just like those of some drug addicts I’ve encountered who say they knew they were done for after the first taste. I was hooked, and I’m still printing after almost 40 years.

Rumpus: I find myself asking, “Why Write?” I find myself asking, “Why Publish?” I’m curious what your answers to these questions might be.

Young: We write because we can’t not write. We want to make music out of our breath; we want to be under the power of an art that toys with us and could destroy us, but which allows us to get a glimpse of what’s real. I suppose we publish for any of a number of reasons. The best reason is for community. When we publish a poem or story that makes a connection with someone, there’s a kind of magic at work that is essential to human beings. People publish for vanity, for money or for fame, but to reach out through space and through time and touch another person is all the reason I need. That’s a gift other writers have given me, and I like to think that I’m returning the favor.

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I would however say to most anyone, “You will love The Pharmacist’s Mate,” which is the first book Amy Fusselman wrote.

The other day, I went to my favorite yoga class and I was the only one who showed up, so my favorite yoga instructor asked, “You want to just get a drink instead?” (You see why she’s my favorite yoga instructor.) While we were drinking enormous glasses of five dollar wine, we started talking about books. I said, “Have you read Amy Fusselman’s The Pharmacist’s Mate?” She had not. I said she would love it, she had to read it. I went on and on about the book. I didn’t even mention 8.

I did not mention 8 because if I told my favorite yoga instructor, “You have to read 8” and she read the book and said, “Eh. It was OK,” I might not like her or her class any more. I might react this way even though I know that everyone will not love this book. Love isn’t rational and 8 is the last book I loved.

* * *

The other day, I remembered a scene in 8, which made me smile. I want to tell you about the scene because it is why I love Amy Fusselman. In the memoir, she writes about how she loves a song by the Beastie Boys and how she sees Ad-Rock from time to time. She wants to talk to him but doesn’t. She doesn’t think she has any good excuse to start a conversation with him. Then she writes, “But after the ninth or tenth time I couldn’t stand it anymore and I finally said to myself, the next time I see him I am going to tell him how much this song means to me.”

She sees him again and you know what she’s wearing the day she sees him and decides to talk to him?  She’s wearing “my pink Beastie Boys T-shirt and the pink leather clogs I had just taken to the Garment District shoe guy to have embroidered with INTER (left foot) and GALACTIC (right foot.)”

She has pink leather clogs embroidered with Inter Galactic. I think the fact that she owns those shoes is reason enough to love her. But the fact that she was wearing those shoes when she stopped Ad-Rock on the street and rambled about her favorite all time Beastie Boy song makes me happy. I don’t often read about coincidences in stories, fiction or otherwise. I think writers hesitate to place coincidences in stories because they seem not believable. Fusselman’s 8 is filled with these moments, and they make her memoir spontaneous and interesting.

* * *

Amy Fusselman writes that her editor “had submitted this manuscript to some students she had had in a publishing course earlier in the summer, and this was what kept coming up for the students: they didn’t believe this part.” The part the students didn’t believe was a scene where Amy as a four year old interrupts a play of Sleeping Beauty. During the play, the prince says he wants to kiss Sleeping Beauty, and Amy runs up the stage steps and says, “‘I can show you how to kiss.’” She sits on the actor’s lap and practices kissing him. She wants him to kiss correctly so he can save Sleeping Beauty.

The editor and these students thought that part of the book was not believable. Yet they had no problem believing that Amy was raped at age four. The fact that they readily accept she had a pedophile but cannot accept that she interrupted a play to save Sleeping Beauty causes Amy to critique our construct of reality. She decides, “Now that I am seeing just how imprisoned we really are by the idea of what is allowed to happen, I don’t care anymore; I’m just going to throw everything in and look like a kook or idiot or whatever.”

If you ever think about holding back or leaving things out because you are afraid that people won’t believe your story, I suggest you adopt Amy’s attitude of Fuck It. I don’t care.

Also, I think we should all start using the word kook and kooky more frequently. It’s a lot more fun than crazy.

* * *

In the first few pages, Amy writes, “Let’s make this fast. I had a pedophile and then I didn’t and then I skated for a long time and then I quit skating and then I started drinking and then I quit drinking and then I started therapy and then I got married and then I still had therapy and then I had children and then I still had therapy and finally I decided I was tired of all this therapy, all this talking like a talk machine; I wanted someone to lay their hands on me.”

I knew exactly what she was talking about. Not so much about being married and having children and not about having a pedophile either. Okay. So maybe I didn’t know exactly what she was talk about. But I knew what she meant about just getting tired of talking. I kneaw what she meant about wanting someone to lay their hands on me in a healing way. When I first read 8, I really couldn’t believe I was reading a book where someone else was done talking to an MSW female candidate because she wanted to be healed through the power of touch. I felt less kooky.

Amy tries Cranial Sacral Therapy (CST) and what happens might seem strange, if you’ve never experience it before. Patricia, her Cranial Sacral Therapist, touches a part of her body and asks Amy, “‘There’s some trauma there. Do you want to release it?” Amy answers yes and then Patricia tells her she might relive the trauma and the next day she relives the time when she was four and a pedophile tried to rape her.

I didn’t try CST but I started practicing yoga. During various poses, I would suddenly relive certain events. Sometimes I wouldn’t necessarily remember events but I’d feel some sort energy become unblocked and then I would start sobbing in class. I know how this sounds. I also know the body remembers what the mind forgets.

* * *

There are certain things people don’t talk about, precisely because they seem not believable. Stories that require courage to tell, stories about the power of healing, stories that require both writer and reader to examine their concept of reality, these are the stories I love. Amy Fusselman’s 8: All True: Unbelievable is one of those stories.

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When I first started listening to Cat Power’s music, I was still with a man I very much loved. He played music, he was a music man, and for four years, I depended on him for all my music. All the music I listened to, I listened to because he shared with me. It was he who introduced me to Cat Power’s music and the first album he gave me was Moon Pix.

When it came to Moon Pix, I immediately attached to the song “Colors and the Kids.” I remember listening to “Colors and the Kids” on repeat during my last few months in Santa Cruz. It was my last quarter at the university and I was supposed to be finishing my manuscript of flash fiction. I don’t remember much of that spring except I was having trouble writing and I was listening to this song repeatedly. Right now what I clearly remember is one moment when this song was on very loud. I stood in the middle of my bedroom and looked out the window. I remember that the sky was gray and that it did not seem like the middle of spring. It seemed instead to be the middle of winter.

That spring felt a lot like winter. When I had free time I spent it indoors even though I do not remember what I did during those days. I did not write because I no longer took pleasure in writing. Writing began to bore me. In “Colors and the Kids,” Cat Power sings, “It must be the colors and the kids that keep me alive/Because the music/Is boring me to death.” As I listened to the song, I found myself wondering what was keeping me alive. I had thought what kept me alive for much of my life was the act of writing but that spring realized I was wrong.

Cat Power uses simple chord structures in her music. In August 2007, she told Greil Marcus, “I’m not a learned musician, I don’t really know where what chords are and where they graduate and where to gather keys, so I just kind of mess with the notes.” In “Colors and the Kids” I hear her playing what seems like simple chords on the piano and she plays them slow. She takes her time with every key and chord she hits. She does this too with the way she sings each word. She sings the song slow, she sings the song sad.

At times I can hear desperation in her voice, especially towards the middle of the song. Since I tend to be exact, I will tell you that I start hearing the desperation in her voice starting in the third minute of the song and the song is six minutes and thirty-six seconds long. In the third minute of the song, she sings, “I could stay here/Become someone different/I could stay here/Become someone better.”

I think she sounds most desperate because of her delivery of the lines and because of the lines themselves. As she sings these lines, she sings the notes in a higher pitch and I think too I hear her hitting the piano keys harder. She could stay, she could become someone different, she could become someone better. She could, but probably does not. I do not know that for certain. All I know for certain is that she recognizes what could happen. Then she switches back into singing in the previous pitch. Two minutes later she repeats that the music is boring her to death.

Before she repeats that the music is boring her death, she sings “It’s so hard to go into the city/’cause you want to say hello to everybody/It’s so hard to go into the city/’Cause you want to say/hey I love you to everybody.” I realize she’s using the second person but I still think she is the you. In my mind I have the image of a woman by herself, staying away from the city, not because she dislikes the people in the city but because she likes them too much. She thinks of where she could go and she knows why she does not go. She sings the song, she stays where is.

She is somewhere on “this January night.” It is the middle of winter and it is probably cold. It is cold and she is alone and she is thinking about what is keeping her alive. It is not so much herself. It’s not so much the song she’s singing. It’s the colors and the kids. She ends the song with the chorus. “Yellow hair/you are such a funny bear” and I have the image of a child she loves, and if not a child, then someone with a childlike spirit. I think this child or person does not belong to her but that does not seem to matter because what matters is that the child is one of two things that keeps her alive.

During my last spring in Santa Cruz, I took much comfort in listening to this woman. I thought I was listening to a woman who was like me. She was a woman who felt lonely and at times desperate. However unlike me she knew more about herself than I knew about myself. She knew what kept her alive and I did not know what kept me alive. The song offered me hope. I hoped that maybe at some point I could become as self-aware as the woman singing the song.

You Are Free

As I wrote this essay, it occurred to me that I have for some time avoided Cat Power’s album You Are Free. I now know why. It seems to me an obvious statement that the mind works in associations. Sometimes the reason people love songs has not much to do with the song itself and has more to do with the memory the song evokes. For instance I love the song “Groove is in the Heart” by Deee-Lite, not so much because it’s an amazing song but because I remember myself as a five year old, turning up the radio and dancing in the living room. When it comes to You Are Free, I listen to the songs and I remember much of what I do not want to remember.

“Baby Doll”

My friend once made a mixed CD that he called a “break up” mix and I considered making a break up mix but could not think of a group of songs that seemed to apply to my situation. (I prefer to write “situation” rather than “break up.” I did not then like to use the word “break up” or “ex” nor do I now. Break ups are something that happen to people who date. I did not date, I fell in love with a man who for four years was my best friend and love of my life. I did not break up. I lost him.) Then one early afternoon, while I driving the Ventura Freeway, I heard “Baby Doll” and thought this was a song that could be on my hypothetical “break up” mix. I thought about actually making the mix but realized the mix would have one song and that is not much of a mix at all. So I did not send my friend a CD with one song. Instead I put the song on repeat. As I drove the Los Angeles freeways, I sang along, and for a time I thought I might learn the song on the guitar and play it for some people, some time, some place.

The song is the ninth track of the album, sounds simple, and is not long. It is less than three minutes and has approximately sixteen lines and each line varies from at least one word to at most seven words. The song addresses the you and I think the you is fixed. The song sounds much like an open letter. She asks the you questions in an effort to make him or her think about their present situation. These questions are poignant and straight to the point. Two of the questions are “Don’t you want to be free?” and “Don’t you want to be clean?” I think the questions carry with them some anger but the anger comes from a place of tenderness. Before each question, she addresses the you, as “Baby,” “Honey,” and “Baby Doll.” She sings these words in a tone that’s tender. “Baby Doll” is the title, which makes me think the tender feelings for the you is probably the motivating factor for singing the song.

In “Baby Doll” I think Cat Power is singing about the experience of knowing someone who has an addiction. This someone may or may not be herself. I mention the possibility that she may be singing to a part of herself, because of course a person can know they have an addiction and want to stop and just not be able to stop. In August 2007, Cat Power (whose name is Chan Marshall but I never refer to her by her birth name so I won’t start now) spoke about this concept in an interview with Greil Marcus. She refers to this part of the self as a “protective second self.” During the interview she distinguishes two parts of herself that exist simultaneously. She describes one as naive, childlike, and dependent, while the other is the voice of a protective, strong woman. (Earlier in the essay, I told you that I did not know when I first heard “Colors and the Kids” what kept me alive but I do know now what kept me alive and what continues to keep me alive. It is the protective second self of which Cat Power spoke in this particular interview.)

Whoever the you may or may not be, the feelings surrounding the addiction remain the same. One feeling she expresses is anger, which may include a bit of judgment. She sings, “Honey, the shape you’re in, is worth every dime you spend.” It’s another way to say, You’re paying for what you get. You’re getting what you deserve. There are consequences to what you do. Another time anger appears in the song, occurs when she sings, “Did you have a real cool time?” She sings the line and it starts bitter, carrying that anger, which has, by the end of the song, seemed to settle, but by the end of the question, when she sings the word “time,” she sounds sad. It makes sense. Oftentimes underneath anger and judgment and bitterness, is sadness. After this question, she ends the song that way she began the song. She sings, “Baby/black, black, black is all you see/don’t you want to be free?”

Powerlessness is a feeling also prevalent in the song. The woman singing the song can only ask questions and the questions go unanswered. I wonder if she sings the song because a song is the only form of communication left to address the you. I suppose, when it comes down to it, maybe all you can do when someone has an addiction, is ask, Don’t you want to be free?

As I drove the LA freeways and sang this song, I think in some ways I imagined myself singing to the man I had loved for four years, who had during our last year together developed an addiction. In one way, singing this song to him made no sense. I had already left him and refused to talk to him, but there I was, miles away, singing to him. In another way it made perfect sense. I still cared for him and I had things I wanted to say, things which went unsaid.

When it comes to my experience with loving someone who has an addiction, I felt completely powerless and on another level completely responsible. I had this warped perception that if our love had been strong enough, then he never would have chosen a drug over me. If I had loved him more, he would have stopped using, he would have gotten better. It was a perception he aided when we were together, when he was not well, and even when he was to my knowledge clean.

The last time I saw him, I said, You know, I always loved your family, especially your mom, and I hope, even after everything, she doesn’t hate me.

He said, Well she did like you. She loved you while we were together. But you do know, she saw me really sick.

I said nothing because at the time I still held myself responsible for his addiction and for what his addiction did to his body. I am telling you that I thought I was to blame and what I am telling you leads me to the first song on You Are Free.

“I don’t blame you”

In “I don’t blame you,” Cat Power sings about a musician who no longer wishes to perform and turns away from his or her fans. “You were swinging your guitar around/cause they wanted to hear that sound/that you didn’t want to play.” Some people think the song is about Kurt Cobain, others Cat Stevens, but she does not name any specific musician. She refers to the musician as “you,” which operates powerfully in the song because the listener can apply the song to herself. When I heard her sing “you,” I applied the song to myself, when possible. Clearly, I was never on stage, swinging a guitar around. I did however blame myself for the decisions I had made, which mostly had to do with turning my back on people. I think any listener has the freedom to apply “I don’t blame you” to their situation and I would encourage each listener to do so. In one way the song is about a musician, and, in another way, the song is about self-respect. “I don’t blame you” inspires each listener to have self-respect.

The title and the chorus of the song are “I don’t blame you,” and when she sings this line, I can think I am the you, she is singing to me. In fact I did for a while imagine she was singing to me. Listening to the words “I don’t blame you” over and over again happened to be a healing experience. She did not blame me. Maybe others did not blame me. Maybe one day I would not blame me.

Throughout the song Cat Power reminds the “you” to stay true to who he or she is despite what other people, “they,” may expect. In the middle of the song, she describes a role in which the you is participating and then points out, “but you never wanted them that way.” She points this out as a way to explain why she does not blame you. In doing so she encourages you, the listener, to let go of any role, if the role is at odds with what you once wanted and may still want. She understands that “you simply deserved the best.”

She also reminds you that these other people, who expect much, do not know where you are from. She sings, “Just because they knew your name/doesn’t mean they know from where you came.” They do not know of the “deadly houses you grew up in,” they do not know of the past that has shaped you. Cat Power is in one way asking: To what do you owe people who do not know of your past and yet expect you to perform various roles? In this song, Cat Power answers, Nothing. She sings, “They never owned it/and you never owed it to them, anyway,” which I think is a powerful thing to remind us. They do not own us, we do not owe it. We can say no to it, we can turn on back on it. She does not blame us and maybe one day, we will not blame ourselves. I find this song hopeful. The hope is that we may not now be free but one day we might be.

The Greatest

In January of 2006, Cat Power released her seventh album The Greatest, which received much critical acclaim. Two weeks prior to the release of The Greatest, she was hospitalized. In an interview with “The New York Times” Cat Power said she “just lost her mind.” She attributes her state of mind to depression and her addiction to alcohol. Her hospitalization for seven days, a low point, one of the lowest point she’s had, seemed to be the catalyst for personal change. Soon she became sober. On September 12, 2006, the day The Greatest was re-released, during a live session on the radio show “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” Cat Power told host Nic Harcourt that for four months she rested and recovered.

As it happens, I know what it feels like to just lose your mind. It’s terrifying. When it happened to me, I was quite shaken up and decided to make some serious personal changes. During this time I learned about Cat Power’s personal transformation. I read interviews with Cat Powers, watched online videos of her musical performances, and listened to her recorded performances on “Morning Becomes Eclectic.” I did this because Cat Power had characteristics I wished I had. She seemed better. She seemed happy, brave, and strong. She seemed not to want to die but to live.

Online I saw a (poorly recorded) video of Cat Power performing “Hate” at Bonaroo in 2006. Before she starts performing the song, she lifts her right hand in the air and says “Sober!” As the crowd cheers and applauds, she smiles. She applauds herself. The song “Hate” is on The Greatest. The song is about self-hate. The line that repeats is “I hate myself and I want to die.” When I first heard the song, I felt comforted by the line, especially by its repetition. I felt comforted there existed a woman who, like me, wanted to die. Now I listen to this song and wish the woman singing did not want to die. In 2006 at Bonaroo, when Cat Power performed “Hate” she changed the line. She sang, “I do not hate myself and I do not want to die.”

As I edited this essay, something happened, which I will relate to Cat Power. I checked my bank statement online and noticed two overdraft fees which together added up to seventy dollars. The fees had already posted to my checking account and I immediately called the bank. I argued with the representative on the phone. I’ve never argued with a representative before but more and more I’m learning how to fight. He explained that one of the overdraft fees was for a 99 cent purchase on Itunes. I had purchased Cat Power’s “Colors and the Kids.” I still have a copy of Moon Pix from years ago but the CD is scratched and will not play that song. In order to write this essay, I purchased the song online.

During the conversation with the phone representative who at one point sighed heavily, I said, You realize I’m paying thirty six dollars for a 99 cent purchase. You do realize that.

He said, Well, that’s the way things are.

I said nothing.

Finally he said, Hold on. Let me see what I can do.

That’s the way things are.

It occurred to me that I do not accept the way things are. Sometimes this makes my life difficult but for the most part I think I’ve taken a good stance in not accepting the way things are. Today the bank representative reversed all the charges. What I’m talking about has less to do with banking fees and more to do with resistance. I think now of Cat Power’s song “Maybe Not,” which I think is a song about resistance in that she teaches us what freedom is. She sings, “We can all be free/Maybe not with words/maybe not with a look/but with your mind.” She informs us that we can all be free because freedom is a state of mind.

**

original art by Miranda Harter

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