Body

Touched

There’s no better place to hold a concert, in these twilight days of COVID, than a barn. This particular barn was spacious, high-ceilinged, and well ventilated, with fragrant bales of hay serving as benches and planks on sawhorses passing as tables. Most of the men wore flannel shirts, bushy beards, and ponytails; the women wore western-style hats and boots. Although this was in San Gregorio, only about 60 miles from Oakland, I was apparently the only city dweller there, feeling a bit out of place in my crewneck sweater and striped dress shirt.

I was there because two of my favorite touring musicians, Nathan Rivera and Jessie Andra Smith — who perform together as Nathan & Jessie — were among the acts on the bill. We know each other from the times they’ve performed in my living room as part of my long-running house concert series, but they — along with my house concerts and live music in general — had been idle for the past year and a half, and I really wanted to hear them play again.

What I didn’t expect was the greeting I got outside the barn, first from Nathan and later from Jessie. Each of them looked at me in wide-eyed surprise, and then — following one of those awkward, late-COVID-era hesitations in which one person, with arms flung open, has to pause and ask the other, “May I…?” — gave me a warm, tight hug.

Hugs! It had seemed for a while that hugs would never return, having been replaced by sorry fist-touches and elbow-bumps. I remember back before the lockdown began, when we were all learning the new rules, I said that I would never give up hugging — until that moment when I realized that it wasn’t just my decision, that it was something we all had to do to protect each other. I remember when, months later, my wife Debra and I came to an agreement with our friend Amy that the three of us would become a “pod,” the first thing each of us did was hug Amy — an experience that felt strange, oddly foreign, and enormously satisfying.

Even in ordinary times, there’s too little opportunity for physical contact among people. I’ve always been unusually sensitive to touch, to the extent that for every person whose hand I’ve ever grasped, I can remember exactly what their hand felt like. (“You must be some kind of savant,” Amy said, when I mentioned this to her.) I get more of a sense of connection from one moment of contact than I do from hours of conversation. And yet, conversation is pretty much the only avenue our society offers toward bonding with most of the people around us.

During the concert in the barn, a trio of very happy dogs kept darting in and out, unable to decide whether they preferred romping in the field or socializing with us humans. One dog in particular, whenever she came inside, would make the rounds of the hay-bale benches, delightedly accepting strokes and pets from one audience member and then eagerly moving on to the next. Another dog sat contentedly among the standees in the back, waiting for people to come to him and scratch under his chin.

I kept thinking, “What do these dogs know that the rest of us don’t?”

I was reminded of another dog that Debra and I met during a visit to a dairy farm — an old dog who had retired from her farm duties and hung out on the front porch, watching the action. When any of us would approach her, she would simply roll over and expose her belly, as if to say, “You know what to do!” As a retired person myself, I would love the opportunity to do whatever the human equivalent is of accepting joyfully offered belly rubs.

As it turned out, I didn’t get to hear much of Nathan and Jessie’s performance; they had been moved to the last spot on the bill, and I, having poor night vision and not being eager to navigate narrow, winding roads in the dark, needed to leave before sunset. But even though I didn’t get the music I was hoping for, I was very happy I’d come, because I’d gotten something equally valuable: a reminder of the immense pleasure contained in a spontaneous, simple, and heartfelt hug. May we all experience more of them!

Posted November 17, 2021 by Mark S
Category: Body

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On the Face of It

Jay, me, Krishna, and our respective beards at college graduation

When I reached adolescence and began needing to shave, my father gave me his old Remington electric shaver. I never liked using it. I didn’t like that I had to depend on a machine every morning, I didn’t like the noise it made, and I didn’t like the slightly sandpapery way my face felt after I used it. Eventually, I asked my father to show me how to shave with a razor.

“Why?” he asked. “It’s so much easier with the electric one.” That seemed an odd thing for him to say, since he shaved with a razor every morning. I think he just didn’t want the responsibility of teaching me, because he was known to cut his face occasionally. But he gave in and showed me how to use a razor and shaving cream. From then on I shaved the old-fashioned way, and, not surprisingly, cut my face occasionally.

It never occurred to me to grow a beard until I was in college, when I met my friend — later to be my roommate — Krishna. He had a beard, and told me that had grown it as soon as he was physically able to, because he had a pudgy baby face and wanted to look more mature. “Besides,” he said, “I don’t want to live in a culture that requires you to put a blade to your throat every morning.” (Krishna was the kind of guy who could make pseudo-profound statements like that and sound cool doing it.) Still, I resisted the temptation to grow one of my own. Where I was raised, in the conservative suburbs of Long Island, people didn’t have beards. Besides, I was performing regularly with the mime company I’d founded, and I’d never known of a mime who had facial hair.

The barrier finally broke the summer after my junior year. My girlfriend had left the country for the summer, I was living alone on campus, and I was dramatically in mourning. I moped around, wore dark glasses, and stopped shaving. When I finally re-entered the world and took off the dark glasses, I discovered that I had a beard, and it actually looked pretty good. I also found that I had no desire to resume putting a blade to my throat every morning.

When I went home to visit my parents, they were not impressed. “You’re going to shave that off, right?” my mother said. “You don’t want to look like that when they take your graduation picture. You’re going to have that picture for the rest of your life.”

“You know who you look like?” scowled one of my parents’ friends at the synagogue. “You look like Jesus Christ!” Clearly he had never studied art history, because my beard looked nothing like Jesus’s. Not to mention that my hair was shorter.

I did, in fact, keep the beard, and despite my mother’s warning, it appears in my graduation photo. I went clean-shaven a few years later because of some acting roles, and by chance I met Debra, who was to become my wife, during that beardless period. When she went away on a planned trip to China, I took the opportunity to grow my beard back. I promised her that when she returned, if she didn’t like how I looked when she returned, I’d shave it off again. Fortunately, she did, and I didn’t.

Over the succeeding years, as I gradually lost the hair on top of my head, I was happy still to have hair at the bottom of it. My beard turned fully gray just about the time I began my teaching career, transforming me into the perfect model of a college professor.

A musician I know, who sports a similarly gray beard and a shaved head, once suggested that I start shaving my own head. “You’d rock that look,” he said. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it became clear that haircuts would not be available for a while, I took him up on the suggestion. Although I had long ago abandoned putting a blade to my throat, I was now regularly putting a blade to my scalp, and not surprisingly, cutting myself in the process.

“Why don’t you try an electric shaver?” asked our goddaughter Shaelyn.

“No way,” I said, and told her about my experience with my father’s Remington. “It’s noisy, and it just wouldn’t shave close enough.”

“You know,” she said diplomatically, “it’s possible that shaving technology has improved in the past 50 years.”

She had a point. (I hate when that happens.) I did some research, and found something called the Skull Shaver Pitbull, which has four pivoting rotary blades and is expressly designed for shaving heads. I bought one, and now I’ll never turn back.

Krishna died a few months ago, but not before he had a chance — via Zoom — to admire my new look. I think of him every time I stroke my beard.

Posted May 11, 2021 by Mark S
Category: Body

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Form-Fitting

I recently was filling out a screening form for a Google research study, answering questions such as how much I trust tech companies to protect my data (not much), and how much I worry about that lack of protection (also not much). In the section where they ask for demographic data, I checked off my age (alarmingly, everybody over 55 is assigned to a single age category, which I suppose is known within Google as “going to die soon”) and my household income (which probably isn’t enough to interest marketers, given that our household consists of two retired people and an unemployed 26-year-old).

When I got to the question about gender, I checked off “male,” as I always have, despite the fact that there are now multiple options such as “non-binary” and “prefer to self-describe.” This had always seemed like a routine question, but this time, it suddenly occurred to me: Why do they want to know that?

As we’ve all come to learn in the 21^st century, sex and gender are more complicated than many of us had previously accepted. What if, instead of routinely selecting “male,” I’d chosen “prefer to self-describe”? I’d probably have to write a whole essay in the blank line that followed that option.

I remember the first time I was called a man. I was probably in my late teens. I was knocking on someone’s screen door, and a young child peering through the screen called out, “Mommy, there’s a man at the door!” I was so jarred by that description that I almost turned around to see whether anyone was standing behind me. Despite the fact that Jewish tradition had declared me to be a man at age thirteen, I’d never really adopted that identity. I still haven’t — being called “a man” still feels strange to me. I’ve always thought of myself as a person who happens to be of the male gender.

I’m attracted to women, but that attraction has always felt more like-to-like than opposite-to-opposite. As a child, I would have loved to hang out with girls — they were smarter, more feeling-oriented, and less physically aggressive — but that wouldn’t have been acceptable (particularly to the girls). I’m still much more comfortable in the company of women than of men. A gay woman friend of mine once gave me a sticker that said “Honorary Lesbian,” and oddly enough, I truly felt honored.

At the same time, in a society that until recently assumed everyone to be either male or female, I’ve never had any trouble being male. I’m perfectly comfortable using men’s bathrooms, wearing men’s clothing, and checking “male” on questionnaires. I have a man’s body, complete with a beard, male pattern baldness, and male genitalia. That’s always felt perfectly natural to me.

So I’m confused and intrigued by the now-mainstream idea that people can be non-binary. After all, we’re all non-binary to some extent. I once took an online test that purported to tell you to what degree you’re masculine and to what degree you’re feminine. I came out half-and-half, which seems about right, but I doubt that there are many people who would come out 100% on either side. Yet most people, like me, don’t feel the need to declare themselves non-binary and ask to be called “they.”

The difference, so far as I can tell, is in the level of comfort with and acceptance of one’s assigned gender. I’m still uneasy with being called a man, but I have no trouble with maintaining that role in society. The non-binary and trans people that I’ve talked to do have trouble — they don’t just have mild uneasiness with their assigned gender role; they have painful, deep-in-the-soul discomfort: This isn’t me. I don’t know where that acute discomfort comes from, and why they have it and I don’t, but I can certainly accept that difference without having to understand it. So, I guess I would have had to write all this in the little space on the Google form next to “prefer to self-describe.” That brings me back to my original question, though: Why do they need to know my gender? I suppose it’s because marketing is statistics-driven, and that there’s some discernible pattern by which self-identified males prefer one thing and self-identified females prefer something else. They don’t need to hear about what’s going on in my mind and body; they just want to know where I fit into the pattern. In which case I say: Google, you’re not worth the trouble. I’ll just check “male.”

Posted March 25, 2021 by Mark S
Category: Body

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Antibody

“Why does Uncle Neil act so weird?” I asked my mother.

Neil was her brother, twelve years her junior. That big gap between their birth years meant that he was actually closer to my age than to hers. I was probably about eight when I asked the question, which would have made Neil eighteen. And like may eighteen-year-olds, he was moody and self-involved. His latest annoying behavior was to come over to where I was sitting and demand, “Scratch my back.” Which I did, but didn’t especially like it.

“It’s hormones,” she said. “When you get to be a teenager, your body starts producing these chemicals called hormones. They help your body develop into an adult, but they can also make you act a little crazy.”

That was alarming. “When do the hormones go away?!” I asked.

“They don’t,” she said. “You just get used to them.”

The reason I remember this brief conversation so vividly is that I suddenly felt that I was doomed, and that sense of impending doom lasted for years. I didn’t want those hormones. Other people might get used to them, but I was sure I wouldn’t. Once they arrived, I feared that I would have to battle them for the rest of my life.

I learned early on that my body was not my friend. When I was a year old, I was sent to a hospital for a hernia operation — an experience so terrifying that I still have a memory fragment from that night in the hospital, alone in a crib in a vast room, crying with all of my strength as I watched the fluorescent lights overhead turn off, one by one. When I was seven, I had a bout of asthma that was so serious that the family doctor came to the house at night and considered sending me to the emergency room. (He eventually determined that it was triggered by an allergy to aspirin, which I haven’t taken since.)

I had other reasons to resent my body. In addition to my allergy to aspirin, I developed allergies to dust, molds, and grass, for which I had to get injections — one in each arm — every weekend. I also was allergic to mosquito bites, which caused them to grow into huge welts on my arms and legs. I had flat feet, thick ankles, and puffy breasts, which made embarrassed to be seen without many layers of clothing. When I reached adolescence and the dreaded hormones arrived, the main result was not weird behavior but painful acne cysts on my face, chest, and back, from which I still have scars.

My mother wasn’t much help with all this, because she’d always had her own body issues. She had been a chubby girl with very heavy thighs and unruly curly hair. As a teenager, she spent nights crying in her room, wishing that her body would turn into an onion so she could peel away the layers. She spent much of her life dieting, including taking prescription amphetamines for a time. In preparation for my Bar Mitzvah reception, she spent months losing weight and then hours having her hair and makeup done. I remember her gazing into the mirror and saying wistfully, “I’m never going to look this good again.” (She eventually fulfilled a lifetime dream by having liposuction in the 1980s, followed by a face lift, and she proudly sent out before-and-after photos.)

My sister and I both tended toward chubbiness, so we were put on Weight Watchers from the time we were young. My sister’s response was to severely limit her calorie intake for the rest of her life, while mine was to binge-eat out of a constant sense of food deprivation.

There are many more examples I could offer (and in fact did offer, before I realized that this post was turning into a catalog of complaints and then edited most of them out). But the main point is that I never developed any sense of comfort, much less identification, with my body. There was me, and there was my body, and we only reluctantly shared the same space. Occasionally we could make a deal — my body learned the physical techniques that allowed me to perform as a mime, and I would reward it by giving it the exercise that those performances demanded — but most of the time we merely coexisted.

Interestingly, the thing that allowed me to reconcile with my body was a practice called Breema, which is a philosophical path toward self-understanding embedded in a practical form of therapeutic bodywork. One of the foundations of Breema is that our sense of separation — the idea that there’s me, and then there’s everything else — is all an illusion, that calling myself “me” is no different from a drop of water in the ocean claiming that it has an independent existence. Breema reminds me that I am not my body, but that my body is a tool that, through attention to breathing, weight, and posture, can help me learn to be present and experience the unity of all that exists. Nevertheless, I’m always amazed by people who seem to be naturally embodied, who appear so at ease in their skin. The place where I encounter this the most is Las Vegas, where young people (mostly women) dress in as little clothing as possible and pose on the street for tourists to take pictures with. I always wonder, how did that happen? Somehow, when they hit adolescence, they didn’t just “get used to” the hormones; they embraced them and made them their own. I’d love to know their secret.

Posted February 9, 2021 by Mark S
Category: Body

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Touched

On the Face of It

Form-Fitting

Antibody

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