Saturday's Child (53 page)

Now we approach the Eighties, though, when what I'd assumed was marginal turned out to be central. And
un
forgettable.

Breaking Down

The marriage was in trouble, trouble by now so chronic it felt normal. We worked hard at being soulmates, yet every time we heaved ourselves up toward the stature of archetypes, life smacked us into the pratfalls of stereotypes. As a gay/bisexual man and an artist, Kenneth had already opted out of most aspects of John Wayne masculinism, but as he became more publicly pro-feminist, the cost increased. Although he continued to produce poetry, political essays, stories, and a novel at an admirably prolific pace, he faced more and more difficulty getting into print.
⁷
Publishers had finally realized there was a huge new women's market, that women wanted to read women. But they didn't want to read men at this particular juncture, not even an antisexist man, and men
certainly
didn't want to read “a traitor to his sex.”

So we'd extricated ourselves from the plot of
The Red Shoes
only to find ourselves cast in A
Star Is Born
, as one career flowered and the other wilted. Not fools, we acknowledged it, swore we could get through it, insisted we wouldn't let “them” play Either/Or games with us. But any inequity eats away at its hosts over time. Writing, which had always been the primary bond between us, was becoming a delicate subject. Kenneth could hardly be active in women's groups, so we couldn't work together politically as we had before. Eventually only Blake would remain as the strong connection between us. Meanwhile, we veered steadily apart while clinging tearfully to one another.

Partly in an attempt to travel less but not feed my family less, I became a contributing editor at
Ms
. magazine in 1977. My acquaintance with Gloria
Steinem had over the years slowly developed into a friendship, especially as I came to know the real, vulnerable woman behind the glamorous image—the woman who was at heart, as she puts it, “still a working-class, fat brunette from the wrong side of the tracks in Toledo, Ohio, with a mentally incapacitated mother, yet.” Gloria, already a celebrity as a journalist, had been anointed by the media boys as a feminist leader the moment she showed interest in the Women's Movement, but she was growing into that role by working seriously at becoming a skilled feminist organizer. I'm not always fond of her public persona, although I recognize the at times strategic value of such an image. No, to me her most important contribution lies in the thousands of beneficial actions, large and small, that she's made discreetly, behind the scenes, for absolutely no personal gain. Refreshingly, our friendship from the first was one in which no punches were pulled regarding what political and stylistic differences we had. For example, my rather droll defense of Gloria in 1972, when Friedan mounted yet another diatribe on the “female chauvinists” and “man haters” of the movement—that is, anyone who criticized men and/or disagreed with Betty. In this case, she attacked by name both Gloria and Bella Abzug (for daring to run for Congress against a man who had only a minimally tolerable legislative record on women). The
New York Times
quoted my statement on the contretemps: “As I've just told Gloria, I've never seen her as a raging feminist, man-hating broom rider, but rather as a wimpy moderate.” I meant it. A movement needs all kinds of activists, but if Gloria and Bella were foaming-at-the-mouth radicals, then I must be off the map. As for my relationship with
Ms
., it too began in my characteristically dissident fashion.

In 1972, a group of us from New York Radical Women had come to the Ms. offices after the pilot issue to complain about advertising we considered sexist and racist.
⁸
On the one hand, I was impressed by the editorial staff's openness to criticism and apparent willingness to include radical
perspectives alongside the more “mainstream” feminist issues—reproductive rights, job and education parity, legislative reforms—which formed the bulk of their content. But on the other hand, I was suspicious that our critique was being smoothly co-opted and would produce no real change. In fact, it would be two more years before I agreed to publish in
Ms
., and then warily, contributing poems and, a year after that, an essay. In 1976 Gloria, editor Suzanne Braun Levine, and publisher Patricia Carbine took me to lunch to propose, as Mary Thorn wrote in her history of the magazine,
Inside Ms
.,
⁹
“a more formal connection.” Still, although I certainly could have used the salary starting then and there, it wasn't until December of the following year that I came on board as a contributing editor, having come to respect the importance of the magazine's existence (and its potential) as outweighing any of its weaknesses. For the next decade
¹⁰
I would write regularly for the magazine, attend editorial meetings, help expand the presence of radical and literary writers in its pages, assign and edit pieces, and periodically write snarling memos to the advertising department when it tried to foist what were in my opinion unacceptable ads on the rest of us in the editorial fortress of political integrity.

Not surprisingly, far from being the hotbed of man-hating that Friedan claimed
Ms
. was, the magazine bent over backward to be persuasive to men, and bent further, into pretzel shape, with gratitude to pro-feminist men.
Ms
. was one of the few places that would publish Kenneth's antisexist writings, and Gloria personally brought the manuscript of his novel to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, by then a book editor at Doubleday (Jackie loved it and pushed for it, but even she couldn't get it past higher-up male editorial resistance—which certainly taught us a lesson about the limits of female power).
Ms
. tried hard to bring feminist values into a marketplace
context.
¹¹
The magazine also prided itself on being a family-friendly workplace, and Blake soon became one of “the Ms. Kids,” visiting the office on school holidays or during a weekend when we were closing an issue. He made friends with Letty Cottin Pogrebin's son David, Yvonne Peace's daughter Tammy, and Alice Walker's little girl Rebecca (Alice was another contributing editor during this period, and we shared an office for a few years). Blake especially liked “doing childcare,” minding the younger toddlers and babies; it seemed to him a grown-up manly job, since he'd witnessed his father doing it. Cursed with his mother's craving to bring order out of chaos (as well as the illusion that one
can
), Blake decided one summer to reorganize the Tot Lot, a room put aside for
Ms
. Kids and child guests. He spent days painting shelves and fixing and tidying toys. His pride—and subsequent anguish at the mess when other children began playing there again—touched me; it's what women have felt millions of times, and I remember thinking the experience would stand him in good stead as a part of a new breed of men. But meanwhile I was busy trying to comfort the outrage of an eight-year-old.

Since he was five, Blake had been a student at the United Nations International School (UNIS). Like Lisa Simpson in the TV cartoon series, he had a personal frame of reference different, to say the least, from that of other kids his age. This at times made his life difficult. Kenneth and I supported him strongly, but he had to weather his schoolmates' reactions alone, and I recall watching him learn to do so with the heartache of any
parent trying to let go and at the same time longing to protect. Academic learning is the challenge for most children starting school. For Blake, that was a relative breeze compared with the challenge of trying to bridge his home context with that of the general society, trying to integrate himself into a world where other kids looked at him blankly when he innocently made offhand references to Shakespeare, Susan B. Anthony, the Lady of the Lake, or Zeus. We'd hoped the transition would be eased by the atmosphere at UNIS, where, we assumed, every child might feel unique because of the multicultural composition of the school. But we'd underestimated the seduction of what we then called “cultural imperialism.” I remember sending him off, around age six or so, to a birthday party for a little Japanese girl in his class. I reminded him to take off his shoes before entering the apartment, not to be nervous about the chopsticks because he already knew how to use them deftly, and not to act squeamish if sushi was served. It turned out that shoes were to be left on, hamburgers were served, and his present—a Queen Elizabeth I coloring book—bombed beside the gifts of Barbie accessories. All three of us tried to adapt, and we weren't always successful. But Blake found—or forged—his own way. He was a small child, who wouldn't shoot up until his early teens, but he discovered that baseball was both enjoyable and a way of sharing popular culture—a practice and insight accomplished totally on his own, eliciting admiration but no functional advice from his parents, both of whom were sports ignoramuses (I've improved somewhat since). Because of Blake, the baseball team was opened to girls, gymnastics was opened to boys, Thanksgiving Day and Halloween decorations were challenged (since Native Americans got a raw deal and witches were
not
green warty hags), and women's studies was introduced as a subject, first in Tutorial House (high school), then downward through Middle House into Junior House, where he had begun. Clearly, the poor child never stood a chance of not being “political,” given his background—yet he always put his own stamp on his politics, and he survived the passing cruelties of other children by his sense of humor, which eventually got him accepted. He was a true New York kid, sophisticated, street-smart, articulate, funny. But he was also the child of two artists, and he grew up understanding what the creative process involves: how the most important thing money can buy is
time in which to do your work, how certain sacrifices and disciplines are part of the bargain, how the triumphs might turn out to be solitary and the defeats public, but how the completion of work you know is really good is the best goddamned fun to be had in the universe.

The best that can be said of Kenneth and me during this period is that we took pains never to use Blake as a battleground, and we almost succeeded. Virtually everything else was becoming one, though. Kenneth surely felt as trapped in his way as I did in mine; and though he never stopped writing, he withdrew more and more into anger and depression, increasingly magnified by brandy. He must have been able to glimpse no escape without seeming to turn into the type of man he deplored. I should have let us end then and there, as we discussed—but naturally I refused to admit, even to myself, that it was time to quit. On the contrary, I initiated another round of literary dinners in the hopes of helping his publication chances. I corralled him into interviews and public forums
¹²
because he seemed to want to do them and acted hurt if not included, and because I hoped a raised profile would help his career.

Most of this backfired, as I might've surmised if I'd paused for a moment in my perpetual-motion frenzy. Publicly, he was turning into a “feminist prince,” disliked by some women for his pontifications. Men made “Mr. Robin Morgan” jokes about him. We were sarcastically referred to as “Feminism's Holy Family,” which was all the more outlandish considering what was going on under the tarnished halos, where we felt like hypocritical wax figures or, as Kenneth put it, the candy bride and groom on the movement cake. Privately, his economic dependence on me was resented by both of us. Yet he seemed unable to take steps toward landing an editing job or returning to teaching, though his “house-husbanding” was no longer as preoccupying as it had been when we went half-and-half during Blake's preschool years or when I'd been on the road more, during which period he shouldered a lot of the childcare. We still lived moderately, but UNIS was expensive and, as every parent learns, raising a child costs more money than you ever planned. Between my lecture fees, book
advances, royalties, freelance journalism, and job at
Ms
. (which paid humbly but steadily), I was dancing as fast as I could, yet it was still never enough. Every freebie poetry reading I did to benefit some women's group coffers became a subject of contention between us, as did the “if only” specter of the indemnified
Sisterhood Is Powerful
royalties and the now dead fund. And while Ken may have felt bad for envying my being published, I felt bad for envying the time he had to write.

I remember crying a lot in the bathtub or in my study, wherever I could manage a few minutes alone. I believed the despondency was impenetrable and permanent, believed Ken had made major sacrifices for me, my politics, and my career, and that I owed him accordingly. (I noticed no leitmotif in such beliefs, though I couldn't avoid noticing a recurring dream of mine in which he turned into my mother.) Most of all I believed in commitment, believed I had to stick it out, although I wondered if I could live the rest of my days in a state of such personal joylessness.

Attempting to find some way of feeling honorably resigned to the situation, I saturated myself with the work of such Anglo-Roman Catholic authors as Graham Greene, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, and Charles Williams. Their unsimplistic serenity, combined with their British urbanity and irony—especially Greene's darkly lustrous vision—was comforting, and seemed to offer clues for forbearance and survival. That helped for a year or two, but in the end the spirituality felt imported, artificial. It revived memories of Father Joe, and an inchoate uneasiness—as if he'd secretly baptized me while I was napping, inflicting a proprietary blessedness without my knowledge or consent that was now exerting its eerie magnetism as on a Greene character. So I wound up back at existential Go, quoting Camus to myself that the only real task was trying to be a saint without god.

The more Kenneth inhaled brandy, the more I exhaled sanctity, and vice versa—a bleak symbiosis and yet another stereotype. In 1978 I took a drastic step and told no one. I deliberately stopped writing, thinking it would equalize things between us for a while, since at that time virtually anything I wrote seemed to get published, nothing Ken wrote was seeing print, and the imbalance was intolerable. This was one of those self-destructive gestures one makes ostensibly for another person's sake but actually in order to jettison guilt and feel holier than him.