American Girl, Take My Checkbook Please

Perhaps you'll say I drank the Kool-Aid, and quite possibly you would be well within your rights to do so. And I'm sure if you are child free, or only have boy cubs, on the outside looking in, you'd probably jeer, "If I had a girl I would never succumb. What losers." But I'm telling you, when you happen upon that impressive storefront this unimaginable tide washes over you, and you can't think of anything else that would make your little girl (or fem boy) happy. And this has nothing to do with peer pressure. It's not like all of Maxwell's friends taunted her with we got ours, when are you going to get yours? No, this sickness belongs to the parents. And it's insidious, and pernicious, and very, very real. The Kool-Aid from which I have sipped is American Girl.

And I'm not the only flabbergasted parent with a drained Dixie cup in my hand and a Black Cherry moustache on my face. No, this last holiday season, many family members and close friends with five to eight year old girls in silent unison partook of the Kool-Aid, all secretly thrilled and yet very much ashamed.

You have to understand, Michael and I were initially part of that coterie of parents who scoffed, One hundred and ten dollars for one doll! Does she come with her own espresso machine? They are out of their fucking minds! 

My change of heart started with a call to my sister. I was at a loss as to what to get my nieces for Christmas, and needed guidance. Sara, was almost apologetic when she told me they wanted American Girl dogs, Coconut and Honey, to go with the American Girl dolls my nieces would be getting from Santa.

Perfect, I thought, I'll just hop on over to the Grove which has an American Girl store. This unfortunately brought to mind the last time my family walked through its doors...

[Dissolve to blurry wavy lines indicating a past memory...]

A couple of years ago, when our kids were newly out of that horrible run-away toddler stage and Michael and I were enjoying the untold bliss of being stroller-free, we happened upon American Girl's front door. We were wary of the exorbitant prices within its walls, and had heard the rumor of the eager-to-please parents who had to secure a second mortgage to support their daughter's American Girl habit. It had been explained to me that American Girl didn't just sell dolls, it sold a lifestyle complete with its own restaurant, dolly hospital, fashion boutique, beauty salon and spa...

"Add this special treat to any Doll Hair Salon visit for just $12. Our stylists will give her doll a thorough facial scrub to get her clean. And to keep her feeling relaxed, we'll send her home with a pampering set featuring cucumber stickers for her eyes, nail decals, flip-flops, a salon cape, and a faux face mask. Plus, girls get a "Doll Skin Care" sheet for home care." 

I mean, who in their right mind buys into this shit?

It certainly wasn't my daughter, who at four was much more into stuffed doggies in purses than dolls. But standing in front of that edifice there was this inexplicable pull offering...possibility. And I'm pretty sure every time an enthusiastic customer exited the store, with an oversized crisp shopping bag, I heard within the swish of its doors in Stephen King italics, Come in! What could it hurt? This is where Maxwell will get her first dolly, and you will find salvation!

And just like one of King's misguided characters who blindly follow the incredibly bad advise of Christine, Cujo, or the cavernous hallways of the Overlook Hotel, we set foot into the store. At first, we were dazzled with the wonder of it all, but then we had a difficult time finding a doll with my daughter's coloring, so we pulled aside a lovely saleswoman (and at American Girl they're all lovely saleswomen) and asked where the black dolls were. At first she looked as if we posed a trick question. Then her initial confusion transformed into giddy understanding, "You must mean Slave Girl Addy. She's upstairs."

And there was this moment where it felt as if every person in the store took in a collective breath and waited for Michael's reaction. It was slow to come at first. He didn't want to believe what he had heard, but then...

Slave Girl Addy? Slave girl... SLAVE!!

There was no way in this world or the next that my chocolate husband was going to give our mocha daughter an un-emancipated doll. We grabbed the kids' hands making them wince and turned to leave the sleek, intoxicating store, but the American Girl at the Grove has a floor plan that makes it impossible to turn in a huff and stomp out. No, you have to wend your way through the goods on the first floor, go up an escalator, wend through the second floor, go down an escalator until you're finally allowed to leave. Have a mutherfuckin' nice day!

Michael huffed and puffed the entire way to the exit, talking not exactly under his breath, to anyone who met his eye, "Slave girl my ass. All these dolls in all these colors. Look they have a Pacific Islander section. They have a goddamned Inuit doll! But the only doll that has my skin tone, has to bow down to Masser! And to make sure she don't get uppity they lock her up on the second floor. One hundred and ten dollars my ass!"

[Dissolve to blurry wavy lines indicating the memory has concluded.]

I relived this experience as I made my way back to the Grove. I intended to show disinterest, to locate Honey and Coconut, buy my purchases and be on my way. But I was immediately suckered in. They had changed their layout since the Slave Girl Addy debacle. Now, one can pick any skin tone, any eye color, any hair texture, so that your doll resembles your kid. Jim Jones Kool-Aid, I'm telling you.

Almost unconsciously I began to build my daughter's twin. I found the skin tone and the eye color but none of the hair choices were like my daughter's. Sure there was one doll with ebony sausage-curls looking very much like a black Shirley Temple (not to be confused with Shirley Temple Black), and another doll like the one in the upper left who appears to have purchased her hair from Eva Gabor Wigs. Seriously, I can't look at that doll without vintage Tina Turner, circa the Proud Mary years, coming to mind.

(Yes, white people, Tina wore a wig. It's time to wake up.)

But nowhere was the kinky, the nappy, nor the fro. This kicked off a whole inner monolog. I began to wonder if simulating true black hair was harder to manufacture than straight white hair. And even if it was, wasn't it important for American Girl to understand the social impact of neglecting the kink?

***

Let me introduce to you Cécile Rey.

My first impression of Cécile was that she looked like a New Orleans hooker, which to my mind was steps above Slave Doll Addy. Sure, she has Shirley Temple sausage curls and Shirley MacLaine china blue eyes (really American Girl, blue?!?), but she was Shirley Bassey complected, wore a saloon dress, and came with her own story book, what's not to love? I snapped a pic with my iPhone and zipped it to Michael to get his thoughts. Knowing his fondness for ladies of the night it didn't surprise me that he loved Cécile even more than I did!

On Christmas morning Cécile was met with mixed reviews. Maxwell liked her enough, but when her cousins showed Max their lookalike dolls in modern drag she began to hate Cécile, "She doesn't have my hair!"

Take note American Girl, you need to rethink the kink!

It took time and distance, but finally Cécile is a favorite. We've been reading the book, which is a parlor room drama. Turns out Cécile isn't a hooker after all, but a girl from a well-to-do family who feeds pecans to her parrot Cochon...that you can buy for $38.

A friend of ours who watches the kids from time to time had access to used American Girl clothes from one of her other gigs. But I had my misgivings...were they meant to be worn by Cécile or were they from some other doll...my aversion to hand-me-downs shrieks loudly here. But before I could find out the answer Lala had given Maxwell the doll clothes, and here's the result...

I know, I can almost hear you saying, "Cécile, where'd you get that Member's Only jacket and those embroidered jeans? Slap on a pair of rollerskates and I'd swear you was Tootie from the first season of Facts of Life."

Or if that wasn't your first thought, it was probably, "Cécile, you look ragged, girl. You need to get your hair did!" Which, of course, American Girl will do for a nominal fee of $20.

***

Maxwell is known for waking from her peaceful slumber and immediately bulldozing into whatever topic is important to her in that moment. 

Do you know that an alicorn is a unicorn with wings? (Invaluable information for parents with little ones entering the My Little Pony phase.)

Geckos wash their own eyes by licking them clean. 

Now, that I found my sleeping bag I'm ready for camp, and I think at camp I'll wear my jean shorts with my Hello Kitty T-shirt. Won't that look good, Papa?

But this morning Maxwell's morning pronouncement was, Late last night, Cécile told me she wants a Halloween costume, but not just any costume, she wants to be a fairy princess.

After dropping my daughter off at school, for shits and giggles, I went online to see if American Girl actually makes a fairy princess costume for Cécile. Of course, I was silly to doubt, she is from New Orleans after all. 

At first look this costume cost $28. Pricy but doable. I'll just drop the expensive coffee for a month. Then I looked closer and found out that the mask, gloves and wings were $20 extra. Okay, I thought, $48. I need to diet anyway, I just won't eat for the rest of the month. But when I saw that this price didn't include crinoline nor chemise...

This goddamned costume all told costs $72...plus tax! 

As you can see, she's a pricy biotch. And there's plenty more Kool-Aid where that came from.

Shut up and open your checkbook.

Downton Parenting

A scene played out between Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton on Downton Abbey last night, and the subject, parenting.

For those of you entirely out of the know, Smith (right) plays the Dowager Countess, a woman who doesn't mince words and sounds and acts as if she just walked off the stage of an Oscar Wilde play. Wilton's Cousin Isobel is less well-to-do, but equally steadfast in her beliefs. These two hens cluck and spar with each other every chance they get.

DOWAGER COUNTESS: One forgets about parenthood. The on-and-on-ness of it.

COUSIN ISOBEL: Were you a very involved mother with Robert and Rosamund?

DOWAGER COUNTESS: Does it surprise you?

COUSIN ISOBEL: A bit. I'd imagined them surrounded by nannies and governesses being starched and ironed to spend an hour with you after tea.

DOWAGER COUNTESS: Yes, but it was an hour every day.

COUSIN ISOBEL: I see, yes. How tiring.

Is That a Unicorn on Your Head or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

No Christmas after December 25th.

Isn't that the unspoken rule?

And anyone who doesn't throw away the tree, take down the lights, pack away the inflatable Frosty lawn decor should get fined lots and lots of money. I don't want to see any lingering holly or mistletoe, taste eggnog-flavored cappuccino, smell any roasted chestnuts or god awful peppermint scented candles, or watch the Laverne and Shirley rerun "Christmas Eve at the Booby Hatch" outside the month of December. What is with people who cover their house with Christmas lights, run up electric bill, deepen their carbon footprint and yet refuse to take them down in a timely manner? Or as my cousin-in-law, Greg, so eloquently put it, "Get your Flocking Xmas tree out of the house, it's February already." 

Three weeks ago, Sebastian had his regularly scheduled physical. He goes to Children's Hospital here in Los Angeles. And in this bastion of wellness there is, quite incongruously, a McDonald's on the ground floor for all of us parents to painfully negotiate every single time we have a doctor's appointment. There motto should be: Go to Children's Hospital to maintain health, leave with a Quarter Pounder. 

Sebastian gave me the pathetic look. "Please can I get a Happy Meal?" And before I could even think no he adds, "I never get what I want." 

Yeah, that's right kid. Your dad and I just shelled out a couple grand to give you a kick ass Christmas, but of course I can't throw that in your face because you think Santa and a gaggle of elves made that Kindle Fire especially for you!

Of course, I acquiesced to the Golden Arches, pleased as punch that my jockey-sized son is passionate about eating anything. I go in and order him his standard: a Happy Meal for a boy, chocolate milk, cheeseburger with cheese and ketchup only. You have to include the "with cheese" in the cheeseburger order, otherwise you will end up with the following inane conversation...

CUSTOMER: My son would like a plain cheeseburger with ketchup.

MICKEY D'S EMPLOYEE: Would you like cheese on that?

(Which seems like trick question or the beginning of a Becket play.)

CUSTOMER: Yes. That's why I said I wanted a cheeseburger.

MICKEY D'S EMPLOYEE: Well some people order a plain cheeseburger and don't want cheese on it.

I want to know who the fuck those people are. They go on my shit list along with those who think fruitcake can be served year round!

This conversation actually took place years ago at two different McDonald's!!, and at that time all I wanted to do was jump across the counter and choke the breath out of Becky or Jose or Quanisha or whoever my McDonald's server was at the time. But I have been worn down. These days I play right into their silliness and order "a plain cheeseburger with cheese" to insure that pasteurized mold is indeed part of my son's meal. But I digress...

Back at Children's Hospital, after ordering this particular plain cheeseburger with cheese (how many have their been?), I took a step back from the counter clutching a little paper number in my hand and it dawns on me that the peppy tune I'd been mindlessly humming is actually playing on their sound system...it's The Twelve Days of Christmas almost two weeks after New Years.

What the fuck?

And just as the final strains of "...and a partridge in a pear tree" were fading away, then started up "God rest ye merry gentlemen...". Which was followed by Hark are the Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and that maudlin drummer boy. IT WAS McDONALD'S CHRISTMAS MIX...IN JANUARY!

That's it. Any and all aseasonal propaganda should be punishable by death. Like Voldemort, Christmas at this time of year is the holiday that should not be named. Never. Ever. Under any circumstances. Finale. Kaput...

...That's why it pains me to the core, with Valentine's Day around the corner, to have to share with you my yuletide mishap.

Maxwell is part of the school chorus, and starting in October she and her buddies rehearsed for the Christmas show. One of the requests from the music teacher was that each kid should wear a woolly sweater and a Santa hat. 

The sweater was easy, but I couldn't find the Santa hat I knew was somewhere in our house, and I really didn't want to buy a new one. Besides I saw an expensive Christmas ahead, Kindle Fires and American Girl dolls don't come cheap, so I cut corners anywhere I could, even if that corner was only $4.79. 

Besides, I couldn't imagine every parent would follow the costume directions. Certainly there must be those who are as lazy, as clueless and as cheap as I am.

The day of the show, Maxwell insisted on bringing her unicorn hat instead of showing up empty headed. I let her do so figuring that the powers that be would take one look at the knitted phallus and refuse to let her to wear it.

Well, wasn't I wrong. There she is in the center of it all, Santa hat-less, with what looks like an aroused walrus atop her head.

Next time I'll spring for the Santa hat.

Jodie Foster is My Twin Sister

It's a little known fact that Jodie Foster is my twin sister.

Get out of town I can practically hear you say. But it's true. The Academy Award winning, husky-voiced actress of such seminal works as Foxes and Freaky Friday (the original) and your very own Mommy with a Penis are sibs.

This out-of-left-field revelation might not be too hard to swallow considering Little Sis's (I'm older by fourteen minutes) penchant for privacy. But with her unusual and perhaps inappropriate coming out at the Golden Globes, I thought I'd shed some light onto this lesser known fact and come out a little myself.

I can understand if there are nonbelievers out there, so I submit to you the facts: most obviously we have the same last name, we are exactly the same age (which she blurted over and over at the beginning of her Golden Globe speech, thanks a lot Jode), we are both children of California, and we both prefer to cavort with our own gender. And if that doesn't satisfy you, take a gander at this...

This was taken when we were eleven or twelve. The same baby blues, the same freckles, the same exuberant smile with wonky teeth, the same hair swoop, the same inexplicable love of plaid! Case closed. Twins!

Jodie's name has become synonymous with hard work, gritty determination and off-the-charts intelligence. And truth be told, she does have a higher IQ than I do. One Easter, when we were five, we got two live ducklings in our Easter baskets. They were soft and fuzzy, and I wanted to name her duckling Jack and my duckling Jill. But Jodie being the brainiac that she's always been would have none of that. She insisted on Abelard and Heloise, and she wanted us to speak to them seulement en français. Now Jodie was a tough little girl who intimidated the fuck out of me so, of course, she won out. But after a couple of weeks, I gathered up my nerve and when I thought Jodie wasn't looking, I rebelled and cooed to Heloise in English, calling her Jill. Shortly after that, Jill/Heloise mysteriously disappeared.

In 1977, I was forced to go to a boarding school in the Monterey Peninsula (Jodie was shooting a movie in France and the family felt they had to put me somewhere for safe keeping). My best buddy at the school was a stout lad named Fred. And for kicks Fred and I would beg for money from unsuspecting shoppers at the Del Monte Center. We quickly found out we'd make more money if we created scenarios, like we needed bus fare to go to the hospital because I forgot to take my [fill in disease here] medication. After an evening of begging, we'd usually have enough to treat ourselves to chocolate covered cherries from See's Candy or an Orange Julius that we'd split. But at some point we realized that our wildly spun fictions were made more lucrative when incorporating the truth, "I need cab fare to get my medication which is being held by my twin sister, Jodie Foster." That would score us enough to buy the See's candy, two Orange Juliuses and a medium combination pizza at Round Table with a side salad.

On the Golden Globe Awards, Jodie was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award. Much has been said about her speech, but being her brother I think I have a unique perspective. Firstly, her coming out made me incredibly proud. Jodie may not have succinctly stated, "I'm a big lez pot," but I find it ridiculous that there are those who are criticizing her for being oblique. On prime time national television, in a time slot that was heard around the world, she unmistakably spoke her homosexual truth...and her single status reality.

Some people condemned that the speech rambled, but I have to disagree. Those words were strategically chosen. They were placed under a microscope, carefully examined from every angle, welded and pounded, not a thought, not a beat, not a syllable out of place, until they held up like an exquisite piece of chain mail. She said what she had to say in exactly the manner she intended, throwing down the gauntlet, daring anyone, anyone, to speak out against her, all the while clad an Armani gown that (purposely?) resembled body armor.

I just wish she incorporated a dollop of humility. Where was the "From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for the..." or the "I am humbled to have been bestowed such an..."? Because let's face it, she lucked into this profession. Now, I'm not being cruel. Any actor who's "made it" has a four-leafed clover hidden away somewhere. More than looks, or talent, or hard work, there's a right place at the right time aspect to this business, and to acknowledge that, to wink to the actors who are as good looking, as talented, and as hard working but have to accept jobs as caterers, mechanics and pet psychics to get by would have been welcome.

And lastly, I have to admit that I am bent out of shape she didn't mention me. A missing duckling does a lot to damage trust and our relationship never fully recovered after that event, but we are blood after all.

So, Jodie got her DeMille, yippee for her, and my family got the cover of a national magazine. (Mine was in my mailbox last Monday!) I know, I've mentioned this before, but it's finally on a newsstand near you. You can find it at the Natural Child World website, Barnes and Noble, or if you're lucky my son's doctor's office.

As time goes on, I will play characters who get older: I don't want to be some Botoxed weirdo.

                                                                                                      -Jodie Foster

SAG Nominating Committee; Yea or Nay?

I have never written about movie awards before but something magical happened to me this year that prompted me to change all that. For the first time in all the years I've been an active member of the Screen Actors Guild I was randomly chosen to be part of the elite SAG Nominating Committee for film. 

What this means is that I got to watch a shitload of this season's films and then voted for who, in my estimation, should be nominated for the SAG Award in the following categories: best lead male and lead female, best supporting male and supporting female, best performance by a cast, and best stunt ensemble (go figure).

It's an interesting film season, in that there isn't a decisive front runner in any category. Remember a few years back when Helen Mirren graced the silver screen in The Queen? She received endless accolades, sashayed down many a red carpet, and, according to IMDb, snatched up no less than 29 statuettes, plaques, ribbons and bangles portraying the stalwart, corgi-loving QE2. 

This year is different, however. There doesn't seem to be a clear cut favorite. Let's look at the Best Actress category: The LA Film Critics lauded the work of Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook and Emmanuelle Riva for Amour, the NY Film Critics Circle preferred Rachel Weisz for Deep Blue Sea, the National Board of Review opted for Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty, the DC Film Critics went gaga over Quvenzhané Wallis (gotta love a girl with a Q, V, Z, and an accent in her name) for Beasts of the Southern Wild, and the Hollywood Film Festival selected Marion Cotillard for Rust and Bone. It's a celluloid free for all and this made my job all the more tantalizing.

On top of which, 2012 was a significant year to be participating because, Mayan apocalypse aside, this is the year when two of our acting unions, SAG and AFTRA, joined, creating the spanking new, yet not necessarily clever sounding, SAG-AFTRA. 

(I find it rather unfortunate that SAG-AFTRA's anagram is a gas fart or perhaps worse a fag tsar.)

I excitedly awaited each movie that ended up unceremoniously crammed into my mailbox. Opening a SAG Nominating Committee envelope felt like Christmas. "Goody. What do I get to see today?" Not all the films sent to me were the foshizzle. For every Lincoln, or even Skyfall there were two loosely crafted, over-acted, under-scripted sacks of shit I had to suffer through. (Is it Woody Allen's intention to film a movie in every major European city, and get progressively worse while doing so?)

It soon became clear to me that Daniel Day-Lewis and Anne Hathaway will fare well whether I vote for them or not. So instead, I decided to stand up for the lesser-knowns... It's entirely possible that because of me the world will fall in love with Ann Dowd or Matthias Schoenaerts. Let's face facts, the SAG Awards are a precursor to the Valhalla of the awards season, the Oscar, and it became my mission to promote new, noteworthy talent over those already in the club with crackerjack publicists, so that they (the lesser-knowns) may join the ranks.

Now, I'm not naive. I'm aware that every person nominated cannot be an unknown from a low budget film. After all, these are American film awards, and what's more American than our beloved name brands. (The only explanation I ever came up with as to why we elected a second George Bush to the White House.)

By my count there were eight almost-definitive, name brand nominations to expect this season: Daniel Day-Lewis, John Hawkes, Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Hathaway, and Sally Field. It should be noted that all of these luminaries have scored previous SAG as well as Academy Award nominations, four of them winning seven Oscars between them.

But even if these eight actors are shoe-ins, that still gave me twelve acting slots to help fill with lesser-knowns. 

For two weeks I dedicated myself to watching movies. I took mental notes, marked up my voters manual, and finally on December 9th proudly cast my votes. I couldn't wait to see how my small contribution might influence the outcome.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to present the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for 2013:

LEADING MALE

Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook   

Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln  

John Hawkes - The Sessions 

Hugh Jackman - Les Misérables 

Denzel Washington - Flight 

LEADING FEMALE

Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty 

Marion Cotillard - Rust And Bone 

Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook 

Helen Mirren - Hitchcock 

Naomi Watts - The Impossible 

SUPPORTING MALE

Alan Arkin - Argo 

Javier Bardem - Skyfall 

Robert De Niro - Silver Linings Playbook 

Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Master 

Tommy Lee Jones - Lincoln 

SUPPORTING FEMALE

Sally Field - Lincoln 

Anne Hathaway - Les Misérables 

Helen Hunt - The Sessions 

Nicole Kidman - The Paperboy 

Maggie Smith - The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 

Where's the new blood!?

Every single one of these actors is a seasoned veteran. They share a whopping 49 Academy Award nominations between them, with 17 Oscar wins altogether. Only Cooper and Jackman out of the twenty have thus far been deprived of an Oscar nod, but certainly they are hardly unknown, thanks most recently to hangovers and wolverines. 

And no offense to Washington, Cotillard, Field, Hunt, the entire supporting actor category, and Dames Helen and Maggie, but they already have little gold men in their powder rooms. It's time to share. The only Oscar winner from this list that I'm surprised and tickled about is kicky Nikki Kidman. Her balls to the wall performance in the little seen movie The Paperboy was quite unexpected.

But where are the unpredictable nominations like exhilarating Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Smashed, for instance? Or what about engaging Ezra Miller in Perks of Being a Wallflower? And where the fuck was Joaquin Phoenix? Granted he's no lesser-known, nor is he a stranger to the awards circuit but his work in The Master was really quite superb. And there are so many others: Matthias Schoenaerts in Rust and Bone, Ann Down in Compliance, Tom Holland in The Impossible, Juno Temple in Killer Joe, Omar Sy in The Intouchables, Pauline Collins in Quartet, Jason Clarke in Zero Dark Thirty and someone, anyone from Anna Karenina. But the most startling omissions for me were glorious Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant in Amour.

Really, fellow SAG voters? REALLY!

And after all the work I've done, and yes screening twenty some odd films in a fortnight, without my voice being heard is heart-rending work. I'm disillusioned and pissed off that actors, actors, are just as easily swayed by the glossy pabulum that is force fed to us by studio execs and publicists.

My idealism has taken a beating.

Tinsel Isn't the Only Thing that's Glossy

I had no idea this would happen.

Really. 

The whole thing started with an innocuous phone call.

LESBIAN FRIEND: How would you and Michael like to be interviewed for the magazine my wife works for? The article would be about gay parenting. Sort of like a real life Modern Family.

ME: Cool.

See. An interview. That was the extent of it. Emails were sent, phone calls were made, and before I knew it a photo shoot was scheduled to occur in my house. Now, one might imagine any photographer worth his or her aperture would provide his or her own equipment. But somehow the photographer that came to my house to shoot my family neglected to bring any lighting apparatus of any sort, and on a day that was fifty-two shades of battleship gray. Trust me, my bullshit meter was going crazy. 

The photographer busied himself moving my living room furniture around, trying to find a glimmer of natural light (knocking my standing lamp over in the process) as Michael and I were being interviewed by an appropriately inquisitive yet somewhat apologetic reporter.

bullshit bullshit bullshit

Like most "Hollywood" scenarios this felt like another never-to-be-realized puff of smoke. "We think your family would be the great subject of a reality tv show, I'll be in touch." "You would be perfect as the best friend to conjoined twins played by Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear." "President Obama would like to fly your family to DC and make you the poster family for gay, adopted, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, interfaith families everywhere!" (Okay, that last one didn't happen, but a guy can dream.)  

Needless to say, I didn't have much hope that we would be included in the issue at all. But in January and February, on the cover of Natural Child World, at a newsstand hopefully near you you very well may see this...

...my family on glossy paper representing the new normal.

DC, we await your call.

How Legitimate Must the Rape Be?

I know of a fourteen-year-old young man who was finally given permission. He convinced his parents to let him ride the train into the city to take a summer musical theater class. Every Tuesday and Thursday for six weeks he rode his gold Schwinn to the nearby suburban train station. After responsibly locking up the bike, the young man purchased a round trip ticket and boarded a San Francisco-bound train. Once in The City, he connected to a bus that would take him up Third Avenue and make a left onto Geary. This young man would then disembark at Union Square Park and walk two blocks west to the American Conservatory Theatre where the class took place.

One day, as he was taking the train from the hustle and bustle back home he entered into what he considered a grown-up conversation with a well turned out older man of twenty-five or twenty-six, who wore a light wool sports jacket of charcoal grey with brown pinstripes. The young man, now feeling confident with his life path, poured out his heart and soul, shared his dreams, and perhaps even a few of his fears, for the older man was so very attentive, just the kind of professional the young man imagined he might one day become if his acting career didn't materialize

Coincidentally, they got off at the same stop, and as the train pulled away from the station the older man queried, "Have you ever thought about modeling?"

The young man couldn't believe his ears. Finally someone recognized his potential. The older man continued, "I represent a line of swim suits, and I think you'd be the perfect model."

The young man thought this older man of twenty-five or twenty-six uncannily perceptive, for the young man was quite the accomplished swimmer and had been on swim teams since he was seven. And it was there, by the train tracks, that the young man felt he was finally teetering upon the precipice of adulthood, a dazzling yet perhaps scary place where starry-eyed dreams can intertwine with reality.

The older man said, "I can't continue this out here. Let's go inside." The young man nodded and the two entered the sad little train station, where the older man gestured to the men's room. The young man, with a degree of caution, followed the older man into the lavatory, which smelled of industrial detergent and feet. Much to the younger man's surprise, the older man of twenty-five or twenty-six took off his charcoal grey with brown pinstripes sports jacket and hung it on the corner of one of the bathroom stalls. Then he undid his belt and unzipped his pants to reveal to the young man a rather skimpy, multicolored, Speedo-like swimsuit.

The young man thought it odd the older man had swimwear underneath his clothing, but with everything he'd seen and heard on his many recent solo jaunts to San Francisco (working on a scene from Mame no less) the young man was learning to accept what his suburban sensibilities deemed as outlandish. He didn't want to appear a rube so he acted as if strangers wearing Lycra beneath wool was an everyday occurrence. Besides, it made sense to the young man that people who regularly frequented The City would have a certain cosmopolitan flair and embrace capricious eccentricities. And the fact he was wearing a bathing suit surly must legitimize his claim that he was some sort of scout for swimwear models, doesn't it?

Then the older man looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming into the john, which didn't seem to have any foot traffic at all, and jutted his chin towards an open stall. Without a second thought, the young man acquiesced. It wasn't a choice the young man found difficult to justify, after all the young man knew to get the job he would have to show the older man his body.

Once in the stall, the older man unzipped and pulled down the young man's pants, and then lifted his shirt to get the lay of the land, the young man supposed. One glance at his tighty whities and the young man immediately wished his mother bought him more sophisticated underwear. Their eyes briefly met, but the older man broke away to once again gaze intently at the young man's almost hairless body. Biology took over and that thing happened, which happens to pubescent boys when over scrutinized.

Mortified, the young man tried to cover himself immediately, but the older man with a voice the young man misinterpreted as compassion said, "Don't worry. I'll take care of that for you."

And with deft precision, the older man pulled down the young man's Jockey shorts and began to stroke.

***

All this talk in the news lately of forcible and legitimate rape has made me think of this incident quite a lot actually, for the young man in the story was a fourteen-year-old me.

I'll be honest, I was unsure if the word rape, statutory or otherwise, even pertained to the violation I experienced. (I always thought of it as molestation.) In skimming through various websites I found that the umbrella phase sexual assault most likely pertains, but I'm still unclear if I was technically raped. In my case, penetration, which seems to be a defining rape act, did not occur.

Before you allow those speculative doubts that we all have to surface, let me assure you that I wasn't an old fourteen; carnality wasn't oozing from my pores and I certainly wasn't looking for it. The medication I took to abate my epilepsy slowed down my puberty considerably, thus I looked closer to twelve than the age of consent; thus my musical theater teacher saw fit to have me work on a scene playing Mame Dennis' ten-year-old nephew, Patrick; and finally thus at fourteen (late for most boys) I hadn't previously ejaculated until that moment in a smelly train station bathroom stall, with the hands of another man upon me, into a toilet.

Following the abuse (and with distance and perspective I find this incredible), the older man and I made plans to meet the following week on the doorstep of the American Conservatory Theatre!

What came next was a deluge emotions. Shame, fear, anger, and yes, fervor (which spiraled back into shame because I felt I must be mentally imbalanced for feeling sexual arousal of any kind) tsunamied up inside me, each demanding to be validated. They have ebbed and flowed throughout my life, morphing into varying degrees of confusion, doubt, prudishness and abandon, clouding my all-consuming need to be desired with sexual desire itself (I would basically fall for those who coveted me). That this one act can create such a hairball of conflicting emotions, that I am probably still in some way navigating, bargaining with or against, manipulating, or trying like hell to disregard what may bubble to the surface these thirty-six years later shows just how corrosive a sexual assault can be.

On the day I was to meet the older man again, my panoply of emotion had crystallized into razor sharp dread. As I exited ACT, instinct took over and I quickly ducked out of the building into busy Geary Street not looking for him at all. I have no idea if he was waiting for me, nor have I ever heard from nor seen him again.

Up till now, I haven't made this part of my life public; I believe I've only told four people. I certainly didn't tell anyone at the time. Not that I could have articulated this when I was fourteen, but I didn't trust there was a support system in place to actually help me. On top of which, and this is truly unfortunate, I was afraid that I would be made to feel culpable of the molestation.

And this is where society fails horribly. We are a skeptical bunch and have the tendency to blithely spread seeds of doubt with phrases like, "Well, he was asking for it," or "She always wears those low-cut dresses." As long as we allow ourselves to place blame on anyone but the attacker we are enabling a system we all know is broken. And somehow my fourteen-year-old self knew this.

Rep. Todd Akin said he misspoke. But his apology, if that's what you want to call it, cannot stop the damage. By speaking the phrase "legitimate rape" he has conjured into America's already vivid imagination that there must be such a thing as it's antithesis, or "illegitimate rape". Which implies what? That some of us really wanted it, or perhaps the molestation although unfortunate wasn't that all that bad, or maybe we deserved to be assaulted because we were not man or woman enough and needed to be sexually shown the way.

Whether any of these thoughts actually went through the congressman's head is less to the point than the fact that he presented glaring misinformation as truth, all the while holding up a figurative Bible to authenticate his claim, and that sort of Christian vigilantism scares the fuck out of me. I worry what the ripple effects of his statements will do to today's fourteen-year-olds who are sexually assaulted. I'm afraid they, like me, will keep mum because they can't help but question the legitimacy of their attacks.

As I should not be judged, neither in any way, shape, or form should we judge the decision any woman or girl has to make after being impregnated by a rapist. It's their body, their business. Unlike Mr. Akin and his brethren, I believe our primary concern should not be for unborn fetuses (which oddly stops becoming a concern to Republican budget cutters once these children are born), but rather we should move heaven and earth to give aid to those who are violated. Help the women, the girls, and yes, the men and boys who've been abused, offer them services and never belittle anyone's pain by misusing qualifying words.

It's true that I wasn't tied up and beaten to a pulp, but my experience, although less forcible, was no less legitimate.



For anyone who has experienced a sexual assault and would like help call the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800) 656-HOPE. Also you can visit the following website: RAINN, I found it incredibly helpful.