Feminist Amnesia
excerpt from a memoir: PK, Cancer & the Tragic Ruts of Time
Writing a memoir is being in the diaristic present. I’m here but writing about then—a then I have not documented, a then that is lost, a then I re-create with each stroke of a word, as if I’m a time traveler denied access to my past.
This diaristic present reminds me to mention my first white leatherbound diary given to me when I was ten. It came with a key. I locked that baby up. And here, decades later, I write in an open field, open-sky space of unlocked territory. Ah, the word diary. Every time I hear the word (which evokes the sound dire), I am reminded of that perfectly bound white book given to me with a golden-brass lock and key.
And then I see eighty-five-year-old Gloria Steinem speak. She wears a revolutionary red coat and black leather pants. Peaceful and undisturbed at age eighty-five, she says she can tell everyone to fuck off. She says there are only two choices: feminist and misogynist. I look around and realize I’m sitting in a room of feminists. I live in Seattle—a city of feminists. The image of Gloria stirs up Shirley Chisholm, Kate Millett, Margaret Sloan, Angela Davis, Betty Friedan, Flo Kennedy, Bella Abzug, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Simone de Beauvoir, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, Anaïs Nin, Adrienne Rich—the women I sought, the women I found, the women I devoured.
***
The memoir is like a great animal of poverty. A kind of feminist amnesia about the ugly past. A step into darkness and a desire to share the joy sphere of living femme through it all.
***
PK and I meet with Hayden. He asks: what if—what if we live until eighty-five, what if we live until ninety? My father died at sixty-eight. I’m confident I have his DNA, not my mother’s charmed eighty-seven-year-old genes.
How does one truly know one’s year of death?
Every Rosh Hashanah, the Book of Life opens, and your name is either entered or thrown asunder into the Book of the Dead. My acupuncturist Josie Zhuo looks at hair and the size of ears to determine a person’s longevity. She says, “Steinem should forget about writing about feminism and inclusion—she should write about how she stays alive in this world.”
How did she? She was one angry-flaming femme-feminist in the sixties (less angry than her lesbian counterparts) and look at her now. No cancer under her skin.
Perplexing and the crystalline—these are the traits of death. At first, I tell Hayden, seventy. “Oh, come on,” he laughs. I tell him I had breast cancer. It’s fraught with a sense of diaristic present—reality of doom. I’m here, but I’m remembering then. He convinces me to add fifteen years to my life. Now it’s a fun numbers game. How to calculate death. Math is not my strong suit, but still, I play the dice. Cancer at age fifty-seven. Alive at age ninety.
I look at PK, who will outlive who? I want to die before her. I don’t want to be a burden to her. We brokered all of this by ourselves. None of this was given to us, and she’s paid a price working as a public servant for the city for thirty-three years. We will be okay until eighty-five. But thirtysomething Hayden believes in enduring invincibility—he wants us to live until we’re ninety. I look at PK—we were women who said exactly who they were and what they stood for—and so we laugh and say okay—let’s do ninety.
At ninety, I’m depressed. My retirement app, currently at thirty-three months, increased to forty-five. I will have to work four more years in the corporate world.
***
What constitutes the truth in autobiography? Is it the diaristic present? Is it the color of the word or sweeping gestures of time? Is it the homeless voice of my twenties desperately seeking home, finding PK as if she were the embodiment of home—my foundation, keeping me from the current world-destroying pain?
-Geri Gale
Geri Gale's award-winning books include: "Patrice: a poemella" (Silver IPPY Award: GLBT Fiction, Independent Publisher Book) and "Alex: The Double-Rescue Dog" (National Indie Excellence Award, Picture Book, Finalist); and "Waiting: prosepoems" (Dancing Girl Press). She is also Moth StorySLAM winner and performed in the Moth Seattle Grand Slam. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Foglifter, Sinister Wisdom, ang(st): the feminist body zine, Neuro Logical, Ligeia Magazine, The Bombay Review, Poetry Pacific, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Bayou Magazine, and Under the Sun.
@gerigaleword