On the Wagon Again

It's been a while since I wrote about my struggle with social anxiety disorder. Partly this is because things were preoccupying me that left me little time to post about anything. But I also felt that I was backsliding, and was not eager to write about this.

I was trying to use the weekly messages from a seduction "email bootcamp" to keep me motivated, and initially it worked. But then I started to fall behind on my email. I could have made an exception for these emails and kept up with them even while lagging on the other messages, but didn't do so, due presumably to an unholy alliance of social anxiety and obsessive-compulsiveness.

When, a few weeks ago, I decided to resume the boot camp, I found the instructions to be totally over my head. They seemed to require me to already have proficiency in areas where I simply didn't, and I despaired of following them in any but the most perfunctory way, which might fulfill their letter but not their spirit.

Reflecting on this impasse led me to the feeling that this approach might be too rigidly goal-oriented for me (especially when I can't negotiate personally tailored "homework," as I could with a therapist). I also recalled someone's observation that OC people are always telling ourselves that we need to be "more self-disciplined," when actually we need just the opposite. So I decided to focus on practicing mindfulness more -- both to be more open to possibilities to start conversations with strangers, and to avoid the kind of self-talk which, even though intended to motivate me, seems often to just end up making me more anxious by raising the stakes too high.

I judged that I need to do less reading, more simply being and doing in the moment. And now there's evidence that this was a good choice. Yesterday, while standing in line at my neighborhood post office, I started a conversation with an attractive student standing behind me, in the course of which I got her email address. This was the first time in several weeks that I'd done something like this. (I'd made small talk on elevators in the interim, but never asked for contact info despite the notion that I should try to.)

An example of the different approach I was now taking is that I resisted any temptation to strategize in my head during the conversation. At those points where I had nothing to say, I simply turned away and maintained my poise without thinking about anything in particular, and when something apt occurred to me I turned back and expressed it.

Over the preceding couple days, I'd actually started unsubscriibng from several people's attraction and seduction-related newsletters which I wasn't keeping up with. I worried that this might be a manifestation of avoidance, but yesterday suggests it was in keeping with an approach that may prove to be more sustainable than my previous one.

Wednesday, 15 December: Day of action for Rite Aid workers

Jobs with Justice reports there will be a national day of action 15 December for Rite Aid workers, whose benefits are under attack. I've left the following message for their CEO, who just gave himself a huge raise:

Stop attacking Rite Aid workers!

Think you have to make cuts to keep the company profitable? All right, then how about cutting your OWN salary to that of the average employee? After all, they're contributing as many hours per week as you are. So why should you be making any more than they are?

In an earlier entry, I posted the words to my filk song "Trinity," based on Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy novel The Curse of Chalion. Two weeks ago at Philcon, I got it recorded, and today uploaded it to my computer.

Turns out that at present, Blogger provides no way to post an audio file directly in a blog, so I'll have to find a service to host it as a podcast.

Talk on Psychology and Social Change

Lucky I learned about this — it was almost by accident. Nick Cooney will be speaking Friday on his new book, Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Tell Us About Spreading Social Change at Grindcore House, a new vegan café in South Philly:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=158039280898401&index=1

Halloween and Election Day: The Hidden Connections

I've spent most of this weekend strolling the streets of Roxborough, leaving doorhangers for labor candidate for state representative Hugh Giordano. This has given me plenty of time to think, and today a profound insight came to me about the relationship between Halloween and Election Day.

For some years I'd noticed the temporal proximity of the two days, and certain parallels. I'd come to refer to the period they bookend as "Monster Week," because on both days we find the streets filled with scary creatures making loud noises and demanding we supplicate them -- first with candy, then with votes. I figured it was just a coincidence.

But today I realized otherwise. Consider: Halloween is the one day when the dead return temporarily to the land of the living. Because of how the elections are scheduled, they only have to stay here a few more days to participate before returning home. Can there be any doubt that this is precisely why Election Day is held when it is? There's none in my mind. It's too great a coincidence to have happened by chance.

Of course, the dead aren't allowed to vote, on the grounds that they don't have a "fixed stake" in the affairs of the living. But it shouldn't surprise us that some politicians will try to get around this when they think the dead will vote for them. The fact that they usually appear to vote as a bloc confirms this hypothesis.

Speaking of the Underworld, this also explains another observation: the fact that the dead vote in significantly higher numbers in South Philadelphia than in other parts of the city. This can be explained by the consideration that more of the South Philly dead are restless. They can't find peace until their deaths are solved -- which may never happen because nobody saw anything. If this isn't proof of paranormal activity, I don't know what is!

Cultism Is About Psychological Manipulation, Not Doctrine

I've been having a discussion turning partly on this point with another atheist. You can read it here: http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=151629424879710&id=504226569

Quote of the Month

"Where there is equality there can be sanity." -- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four, page 181 (Signet Classic edition)

Leave the Ghost, Take the Pizza

I went to Fluid again last night, where they were having a party featuring soca among other musics. I've loved soca for years, since becoming acquainted with it from the old show "Rhythms on Trade Winds" on WKDU. But this was the first time I'd been to a soca party.

I asked another woman to dance at this party, and this time she did dance with me for a bit.

When I took a break for a snack at the nearby pizza place, I noticed a handful of people down the side street Fluid is on (Kater), just hanging out at the intersection with Orianna. This really seemed anomalous because of the way I'd become acquainted with Orianna, and I had to go down and comment on it to them. They were, in fact, just hanging out and eating pizza themselves. The one who asked me the details of the purported haunt seemed surprised at the story about a massacre. She made some reference to Native American history, as if perhaps she thought she'd have heard the story already if it were true. On the other hand, she didn't seem surprised that I'd heard a cricket there a few days earlier. She said they were like car horns where she came from.

After this experience, there's not much left of the air of mystery and potential excitement the street had for me when I first visited it.

Orianna Street Revisited

Coming home from Fluid the other night (the first time I've been to that club), I saw Orianna Street again, and decided to take another walk down it since it was around the right time (2:15-2:30 am) for strange happenings to purportedly happen. Unlike before I was by myself, so there was nothing scientific about this visit; clearly anything I (thought I) saw or heard could be the product of my imagination, informed by what I'd heard about the street. I was just entertaining myself this time.

As I got about halfway down the block I realized this was as far as I'd gone with the guy who'd accompanied me last time -- just a little short of an even smaller cross street, which I realized in retrospect is probably the same one Fluid is on (at Fourth). I decided that this time I'd walk the whole block.

As I approached the cross street I started hearing a cricket, and continued to hear it for a few strides after passing it. I looked around but could see no obvious source for the sound, which I assumed must come from the (SW) corner rather than the street. It being late and I having to work the next day, I didn't investigate further. Afterward, though, I thought the speed with which the chirps' volume rose and fell as I passed the south side of the cross street was so great that it must have come from the street itself, where I hadn't thought to look.

Although a cricket's chirp may seem out of place in the middle of an urban district like this, I see no need to invoke a paranormal explanation. But perhaps for people who are "fantasy-prone" and believe in such things, a seeming anomaly like this might set off their imaginations.

Then again, it may well be just a coincidence. Perhaps the cricket settled there to be close to the electro music. (Could it actually have a similar rhythm?) Or maybe the flashes from the mirror ball reminded it of starry nights in the countryside :-)

On rereading the earlier post, I realize I was a little late for the purported "window" for paranormal activity. Since I'm inclined to go to Fluid again, I can correct that next time, and maybe even incorporate it as a "venue change" into my pickup efforts.

10,000 Stand Against Hate

Yesterday I was in New York for the march and rally for religious freedom called in response to protests of the permit for an Islamic Cultural Center a couple blocks from the World Trade Center site.

I made a sign the night before. On one side it says, "Magic Baby believers, STOP PICKING ON Magic Rock believers!" On the other, I inform the Used Tea Bags (as I like to call them -- because they're all wet) that we have this thing called the Constitution that guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits an established church. A number of people liked it; near the end of the event, someone took a picture of the first side, calling it the best sign she'd seen all day.

There were a number of other homemade signs, including "Atheists for religious tolerance."

It'd been a few years since the last time I came to an out-of-town demonstration -- since January '07 I think. As I've struggled with finding a way to fulfill my need to express myself politically while maintaining a strong sense of autonomy -- and, especially, avoiding association with anything too reminiscent of my past cultic involvement -- I didn't want to commit ahead of time to riding on a charter bus run by a sectarian group, which often seemed the only affordable way to get to NYC or Washington.

Fortunately, while making plans to get to the cultic studies conference in July, I became aware of how affordable the nonstop Chinatown-Chinatown buses are, and the fact that one need only arrive twenty minutes ahead to be assured of a seat. Round trip from Philly to NYC is only $20, about the same as a ticket to ride on a charter bus, even after figuring in a few extra dollars for the Metro. This knowledge freed me to save the date without having to make any commitments in advance; I just had to see if I could leave enough money in my budget to cover the cost, which I was able to do.

My new orientation meant that I was also trying to pursue the development of my interpersonal skills even at an out-of-town event like this. I made a particular effort to start conversations with attractive women; even though it seemed an outside chance, I entertained the idea that if I really hit it off with someone, I might be invited to stay overnight, and here again my new transportation option gave me the needed flexibility to take advantage of that. With this in mind I also brought a Red Bull shot with me, as I've used previously only in connection with clubbing.

As people were leaving the rally site, I did briefly consider going to the afterparty that had been announced, but I was reluctant to because I had only a few dollars left in my budget and there might not be sufficient free food at said party if I got hungry again. Not that I couldn't have gone over budget -- borrowing against future expenses -- but it seemed ill-justified for the sake of an outside chance. Was this prudence, or avoidance? I don't know, but I intend to have more to spare next time I face a choice like that, so that I won't need to second-guess myself.

Last night I dreamt that for research purposes, I joined Geerts Wilder's party, despite neither being a Danish citizen nor sharing his views. After signing up and being shown the eco-friendly farm he somehow had inside his party's giant building, one of his cows followed me home.

Unfortunately, I don't have health insurance right now, so I can't see a therapist like I did last year. But I've found an alternative that may serve just as well.

I recently signed up to get free email newsletters from the guys behind fastseduction.com, and it turns out these include a twelve-week "boot camp" for aspiring pickup artists. The first was not very challenging; aside from abstaining from a couple things asserted to be bad influences (porn and sappy love music), the only positive action required was something to get over a recent obsession that I'd actually already done. (I hadn't really had that much of a recent obsession.)

There was a bit more to the next message, which I read Friday. Both parts involved starting conversations with women, and the first one was pretty simple; I accomplished it yesterday with a new neighbor I encountered on the elevator of my building. The second is considerably more complex -- a sort of multi-tier "nested set" of instructions on what thing (or kind of thing) to say in response to each of several possible contingencies. I had to read it over several times before I felt prepared to attempt it.

Nonetheless I did attempt it late this afternoon, three times, in a food court. I haven't yet managed to get through the whole script (not always through my own fault), but given my past troubles with approach anxiety -- especially in that setting -- I decided to reward myself with a box of lemon herb tea on the way home. I'd been doing without an evening beverage for a while.

Even though I think I have a pretty accurate idea of the things I need to do to continue overcoming social anxiety disorder, I know from past experience that I can get frustrated easily without some external prod to keep me going. Where a therapist's "homework assignments" have sometimes played this role in the past, Jay Valens's "missions" should accomplish the same thing now.

Hopefully, Tha Truth Is Not Out of Style

I just noticed some lovely lyrics on rapper Tha Truth's album Tha Miseducation of the Masses. On the track titled "Truth with a Side of Humor," he relates, "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left before we met." And: "My house burned down from a stress-relieving candle."

I find this reminiscent of that old gem by MC 900 Foot Jesus, "The Truth is Out of Style," which I heard was on his album Hell with the Lid Off. Anyone know where I could find a copy of that?

More on Nouveau Tech

I just noticed a comment I'd previously missed on something I'd posted a few years ago, and have made a reply. You can see it all here:

http://stripey7.blogspot.com/2007/03/nouveau-tech-surely-most-audacious-scam.html?showComment=1283040877256#c4054052012028557586

R. I. P. $pread!

I am sorry to pass on this sad news from $pread, the magazine by and about sex workers:

Hello $pread fans. We regret to inform you that, while we expect to publish 5.4, the Crime and Punishment Issue and 6.1, the Race Issue (guest-edited by a fabulous collective of sex workers of color) by January, $pread will close its glittery doors soon after the dawn of the New Year. Once the remaining two issues have been posted, we will fulfill subscriptions for those of you who are owed them with the option of back issues, or, if you're feeling generous, a waiver to help us with closing costs. We apologize for those of you who have only recently come to know us, and to all our longtime supporters. After all these years, five all-volunteer years to be exact, we have come to the conclusion that an all-volunteer magazine is simply unsustainable in the current publishing climate. Short of a donation of $30,000, we will be unable to sustain the magazine past January.

For those of you with a hankering for $pread merchandise and back issues, make sure to go to the $pread Shop (www.spreadmagazine.org/shop) in the next few months. Once we print the next two issues, we will donate the materials to our outreach partners as well as lay the foundation for a physical archive, complete with all the $pread memories of yore, blemishes and all.

We hope that you will look forward to a $pread retrospective in book form, featuring highlights of our five years of publishing. We will also package a '$pread Scrapbook' for sex worker advocates looking for tips and tricks on publishing a magazine by and for people working in the sex industry. We are producing these materials in the hopes that our model will help motivate the continued movement for social justice among our many and varied communities, in the same way Danzine inspired our own publication. We also close our doors in the comfort of knowing that right now, around the world, sex worker-run and sex worker-supportive media such as ConStellation (http://www.chezstella.org/) in Montreal, Flower in Beijing, and Red Light District Chicago (http://www.redlightdistrictchicago.com/) are holding forth on the issues that matter to our communities.

$pread was motivated by the motto “Illuminating the Sex Industry.” We submit these five years of blood, sweat, and tears to you as a testament to this founding sentiment. May the struggle to end the stigma, discrimination, and violence perpetrated against our communities end in justice, and may the flashy strobe light of sex worker rights never go out, but illuminate the sex industry for the world to see.

I can proudly say that I've subscribed to $pread for the majority of its existence, and don't doubt that it's helped inspire other projects that are ongoing.

Differences in Cognitive Culture, and Doing Something About Them

I just read another post by my brother to his new blog, which you can read at

http://wersgor.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/ive-got-them-on-my-list-2-directions/

It served as a takeoff point for a number of related thoughts which I posted as a comment there. I reproduce them here:

One good habit to develop in life, is not too quickly forming conclusions about other people’s behavior or underestimating the extent to which their knowledge base may be different from one’s own. Doing so may be reinforced by a momentary gratification — because it allows one to feel superior — but can stand in the way of helping them become more a help to themselves and less a burden to others.

Where illiteracy is concerned, it’s important to remember that many people who didn’t learn to read when they were supposed to, are too embarrassed to admit this, and so have developed quite elaborate means of concealing it. They may, for instance, pretend to know the name of a place from reading the sign, when in reality it’s from someone’s having previously told them, or from acquaintance with the graphical aspects of its logo. Once several years ago, I was hit by a store clerk who, as I interpreted it afterwards, was simply too embarrassed to admit he didn’t know arithmetic well enough to see that the register had miscalculated my bill.

Where street signs are concerned, there are many conventions with which we are so familiar, we may forgot that they are not intuitively obvious, and we ourselves had to learn them at one point. A few months ago I was on the the 15th Street platform of the Market-Frankford Line, and someone asked me if this was the side that goes to West Philly. I said yes, but she felt uncertain because of a sign saying “To Frankford.” I explained to her that the arrow next to those words means that you would have to follow that arrow, up the stairs and across to the other side, to get to Frankford. She evidently had simply never been outside her own neighborhood before (some people never do) and so hadn’t made the acquaintance of this sort of sign.

Someone new to the city might 1) not know where to look for the street signs, 2) not be familiar with the convention that a street sign goes parallel to the street it names, so that even if they see the signs they still won’t know which street is 12th and which is Chestnut, or 3) even if they know which street is which, not notice (or be able to read, if their eyesight is poor) the signs’ smaller print about street addresses indicating which way the higher numbers are.

Another, extremely pleasing experience I had in the past year was on a subway ride. A woman whose dress and manner loudly said “middle class” was showing her young child the SEPTA map on the wall of the car, and explaining how it worked. What was remarkable about this heartwarming sight was simply how rare it is, at least on public transit. Not long ago I saw a flier for a book arguing that one of the major factors helping to perpetuate class inequality is the differences in the cognitive habits passed on from generation to generation. Because this is cultural rather than biological transmission, it’s possible to break the cycle (which is the idea behind the Harlem Children’s Zone, for instance).

Of course such differences in cognitive-cultural heritage don’t account for our sociey’s huge differences in income, which result from hereditary private ownership of productive wealth. But while we’re trying to do something about that, there’s no reason not to also address what is easier to tackle politically — not to mention that such newly improved cognitive skills can be applied to activism as well as personal advancement, and are more likely to be if those who taught them are also activists. And that the species as a whole generally benefits when some portion of it gets smarter.





I went to a reading today by the authors of The Great Typo Hunt and got a free bag from the Chicago Manual of Style.

My brother now has a blog.

You can view it at http://wersgor.wordpress.com

Quote of the Week

"I hear Iran had an earthquake this weekend. Didn't they say a while back that all these earthquakes are due to scantily clad women?" -- Robert Bowles Jr., in the 2 August Metro (Philadelphia edition)

Remembering Juliet Anderson

The day before yesterday, I learned that Juliet Anderson had died last January. This made me very sad as she was emotionally significant to me.

She was a Golden Age porn star best known for her take-charge "Aunt Peg" persona and for starting Nina Hartley's career with the film Educating Nina, but I actually didn't know these things when I became acquainted with her. I've copied below a correspondence I had with her last summer.

From: <stripey7@yahoo.com
Subject: Happy Birthday!
To: "Juliet Anderson" <eyebrow@sonic.net [This was an "extremely private" address which she told me not to share with anyone. I didn't while she lived.]
Date: Thursday, July 23, 2009, 9:09 AM

Yours always,
Eric

P.S. I have more insight than I used to about why getting to see and meet you 23 years ago was so emotionally significant for me. I should set a side time to explain that at some point.


From: juliet <eyebrow@sonic.net
Subject: Re: Happy Birthday!To: stripey7@yahoo.com
Date: Saturday, July 25, 2009, 1:51 PM

Hi Eric,

Please do tell me why. Can it be in person or do you live too far
away?

I had a wonderful birthday.

Juliet


From: <stripey7@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Happy Birthday!
To: "juliet" <eyebrow@sonic.net
Date: Saturday, August 15, 2009, 4:46 PM

Dear Juliet,

I'm in Philadelphia so I'll have to tell you long-distance. Here's the story.

As I grew up I became pretty shy and introverted. I didn't seem to have many points of commonality with my peers, who were usually much less intellectual and very mundane in their interests. I eventually becamecurious about my parents' radical politics, and what I read of them made sense to me. Partway through high school I decided to get involved myself, in the youth group of the same party in which my parents had met and with which they still sympathized. In addition to a desire to make the world better, I was conscious of the hope that this would provide a circle of friends with whom I would feel something significant in common.

I was a member of the group for a year and a quarter or year and a half (1978-79). Partway through this period, the chapter organizer asked to have a meeting with me. He seemed concerned that I "lacked confidence in the leadership" and suggested I should leave the group. This apparently stemmed from an occasion on which, after the national leadership had come down in favor of the position I'd taken on a local political issue (in which I had been alone), someone had said to me jocularly, "Don't get a swelled head," and I had replied, very logically as it seemed to me, that of course I wouldn't get a swelled head, since the Political Committee's statement didn't mean that my position was right, but rather that their position was right. It would still be the right position whether they had taken it or not. This seemed to me to be practically a tautology, yet my interlocutor reacted as if I'd said something strange and disturbing, which mystified me at the time.

So the chapter organizer was pursuing this idea that I "lacked confidence in the leadership." I denied this, and in fact I hadn't volunteered any disagreements with them. Rather, the organizer was asking me if I had any. The only issues I could think of were a couple I had seen debated in the discussion bulletin of the adult organization, and even of these, I only was inclined to the minority position on one. I was inclined toward the leadership's position on the other, and just wasn't 100% certain about it. And these were really minor issues too, not core principles of the group. Yet, incomprehensibly, on this basis Bob repeated his contention that I "lacked confidence in the leadership" and should consider leaving the group. When I again denied this, he asked me if I would support their position in that case. I said of course not, because I didn't think it was correct. So Bob again claimed that I lacked confidence in the leadership and should perhaps leave the group. We seemed to be talking in circles. The meeting eventually ended with nothing resolved.

A couple months later, Bob asked to have another meeting with me. This time his expressed concern was that their was evidence of my having acted inappropriately on various occasions, which he described as a "pattern of sexist behavior." It was apparent that in some cases he simply had his facts wrong, and that what he was asking about was based on one half of a phone conversation, overheard, and not a complaint that someone had actually volunteered. In other cases the incidents had occurred, but were basically manifestations of social ineptitude rather than attitudes about gender. Since I knew that I did have significant problems relating socially, I ended up agreeing to leave the group, even though I didn't think the way the issue had been characterized was fair. I was very upset and rather depressed at this turn of events.

I had considered myself a Marxist for a few years before I'd joined the group or even made contact with it, however, so this experience didn't affect my convictions. It didn't even affect my opinion of this group in particular, since I had accepted the greater part of responsibility for having to leave it, and since, to the extent I felt misunderstood, I saw this as the problem of one or two individuals. So I continued to regard myself as a sympathizer, until later the group's own politics began clearly to change.

Before continuing with the chronological narrative, I want to fast-forward to a few years ago, when I finally acquired some insight into what had happened. This came while I was reading a paper by Dennis Tourish of the University of Belfast, titled "Ideological Intransigence, Democratic Centralism, and Cultism: A Case Study from the Political Left." I'd been developing an interest in the cult issue for the past several years, ostensibly from concern about a group a romantic interest was involved with; but for the first time I was reading about my own experience. Although it was a different group, I recognized the same mechanisms of milieu control and thought stopping that I had been subject to.

I suddenly had a whole new framework in which to understand what had happened. Things that had simply been mysterious fell into place when seen as part of a program of brainwashing, aimed at destroying my intellectual autonomy. I saw clearly, for instance, that Bob was "loading the language" (as cultic studies people say) so that "confidence" in someone -- which normally just means thinking they're basically good and honest -- instead meant surrendering one's independent judgment to them. In retrospect, one might wonder why I didn't point that out at the time; the reason is that Bob's whole manner was one designed to keep me off balance, so that I didn't even have the chance to form such thoughts, being kept too busy coping with his assault. (For that matter, it occurs to me that I might have asked, "If these disagreements mean I lack confidence, does that mean the members who raised them in the adult organization should leave the group too?" But, again, I was kept too off-balance to even think of something like that.)

Of course the attempt at brainwashing hadn't been successful, which was why they decided to get rid of me. But they had succeeded in masking the nature and motive of what they were doing, and as a result I'd taken blame that didn't belong on me, affecting my self-confidence. In particular, the issue they used to make me leave the group had played on my social and sexual insecurities, and consequently made them worse.

But what I couldn't yet handle emotionally, I intellectualized instead. From having been rather prudish through most of my adolescence, I became by mid-college years rather passionate about sexual freedom. I wasn't getting to practice it, mind you (except, briefly, with one girl who told me she'd been diagnosed as "hypersexual"), but I believed in it very strongly. Above all, I passionately opposed any treatment of sexual feelings or of honesty about them as illegitimate or "sexist." Yet the group's methods had been so sneaky that I failed to recognize where this attitude came from, or to ponder how it had changed so radically since junior high.

So, a couple years after graduating college, I see a local news segment about lesbian porn. I had not heard of such a thing before and was quite intrigued. I knew that I liked the idea of women's manifesting their autonomy by freely expressing their sexual interests. Of course, at the time I had no idea why I felt this so strongly; I only knew that I did.

The segment mentioned two publications, one of them based in the US: On Our Backs. So before long I visited the city's gay and lesbian bookstore to see if I could pick up a copy. I made no assumption about whether I would personally find it erotic; I just knew it would be very satisfying "politically" (or at bottom, as I now understand, emotionally) to see its existence for myself and to feel that I was supporting it. And in that first issue of OOB that I bought, I saw an ad by someone named Juliet Anderson, who was looking for people who could help her with a project to make lesbian erotic videos. Although I had no special skills to contribute and little money, I wanted to help if I could, so I called the number in the ad and talked to you.

You said you weren't ready to look for investors, but asked where I was, and when I said Philadelphia, told me you would be in Camden in a couple weeks for a live performance, and invited me to come. So I did. I got to talk to you for a moment and had my picture taken sitting in your lap with a big silly grin on my face, which you autographed. I had that picture for many years, although I seem to have lost it during a hasty move in 2000. Since then, however, you've sent me a postcard personally in reply to an earlier birthday greeting, as well as another autographed picture which I ordered from you.

But I appreciate now that the reason meeting you was so meaningful for me was that you negated, "in the flesh" so to speak, the feelings of guilt and anxiety about acknowledging my sexual feelings, with which my forced departure from the YSA (effectively an expulsion, since I'd been threatened with a "trial" if I didn't leave of my own accord) had left me. Basically, you helped show me that I wasn't crazy.

Thank you.

Yours,
Eric


From: juliet <eyebrow@sonic.net
Subject: letter
To: stripey7@yahoo.com
Date: Sunday, August 23, 2009, 11:14 PM

Hi Eric,

Thank you for the birthday greeting and your very interesting letter about how I had such a positive effect on you. Wow! Little did I know.

Keep living life to your fullest and with love and compassion.

Juliet

Juliet's performance, which I saw in 1986 when I met her in person, was a sort of burlesque in which she started out dressed for various occupations -- carpenter, secretary, executive, nurse -- and then did a striptease, with the message that women in any line of work could be sexy. I wasn't in touch with her again till after discovering her website in 2004. I called her early in January 2005 and we talked about her career and its significance. I subsequently started sending greetings for her birthday (23 July), including a card I mailed her this past 22nd, before realizing she'd died.

For those who may be interested, she told me in 2005 that her favorite of the porn films she'd made was Talk Dirty to Me.