A man apologizes for turning his back on true love. A woman apologizes for having an affair with a married man. Someone else apologizes for embezzlement. Yet another apologizes for ever being born.

From the sound of it, you might think these were the players in a group therapy session. Or maybe you’d think these were the stories of Jews on Yom Kippur, the Day of Repentance. But you would be mistaken.

These are the voices and stories of people who have left their apologizes on an answering machine to heal themselves. Started by a 20-year-old Vassar student, the apology hotline allows people with guilty consciences to experience some release and get the words out — words that they can’t say in person, words that they can’t say to any other human being when there’s a risk that the other person will speak, write, or call back.

Though some psychiatrists have praised the hotline for giving people who otherwise wouldn’t speak a chance to do so, there are, of course, skeptics. One can’t help but wonder how much closure one really gets by saying something that the person who should hear it never will. By virtue of calling a machine, the repentant’s words are not directed toward the person(s) they’ve hurt. They’re about healing oneself. And though healing oneself may be important — integral even — to moving on and regaining self-confidence, it seems like not saying those words to another human being, or not  writing them down, would preclude any genuine closure. That is, it may provide temporary closure with oneself, but by never confronting the other person, I imagine there would be remnants of repressed guilt potentially forever. For people with depression, that’s only likely to trigger a relapse of the illness.

Even if this isn’t the case, this hotline seems dangerous because it lures callers — people who are potentially suicidal or depressed or whose problems extend far beyond the one incident they’re apologizing for — to call and think, “Well, if I can get up the nerve to call the hotline, I’ll be redeemed for my actions and I won’t really have to confront my fears — i.e., fears that reside in interacting with other human beings.” Others may be suicidal — is it really helpful for them to call a hotline where they speak to a machine, or would it be more beneficial for them to call a hotline where the phone is answered by another person, albeit one the caller doesn’t know? How is the anonymity of the latter any different from the anonymity of the former? In my mind, they’re not all that different. But the person who listens to the apology is more likely to be able to open the caller up, however little, or get them help. The machine can’t do that.

Or can it? I can’t help but wonder about the student who started the hotline, the one who receives all of the messages. Does he listen to them? Apparently.

This poses a couple of problems. First, the fact that he does listen to them deceptively undermines the privacy and solitude of the answering machine. Would you feel more comfortable calling a machine about your failures in life, knowing that someone else was going to be listening to you silently, subconsciously judging you? I don’t think I would …

Second, by providing the false illusion that callers are really just speaking to a machine, what kind of precedent does this set for the way in which we define our relationships to other humans? Suddenly, we don’t have to express our emotions to other human beings. We can just replace them with machines, which serve as our intermediaries.

Third, let’s say the student listens to the messages and a caller says s/he is committing suicide. Given the euthanasia and suicide laws in the United States, does the student then become a conspirator in such a suicide?

This isn’t to degrade the difficulty many people have with apologizing and expressing their true feelings. It’s also not to condemn the innovative student who sought to give sad people a way to cope with their feelings when they’re lonely. But the hotline, it seems, is the easy way out, the quick fix that may not really be much of a fix at all.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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Dear Michael,

Thank you for the short fiction piece. It reads like Lord of the Rings on ’Shrooms, depending on how far you want to take the introspection. If this story is meant to serve as a metaphor for any real life situation, I guess it might reflect experiences backpacking in Asia. The plot might read as follows:

Frodo is on spring break from Vassar and decides to take a backpacking trip to Vietnam. Along the way, he stumbles along traveler cafes, mingling with other expats. He becomes engrossed in the lifestyle, decides to take a semester off from college and continue traveling. He feels estranged and struggles to be accepted by the locals. In order to assimilate, Frodo must adapt to the unfamiliar customs and foods. Taking it a step further, Frodo explores with drug use and becomes a fiend.  

He lives each day struggling to keep his habit alive. Having spent all of mommy and daddy’s funds, he takes up odd jobs dishwashing, whoring himself, and dabbling in the tourism industry to help other expats. He is taken under the wing of a local transvestite Madame, aka, “the ancient Moonshine Magi,” who provides Frodo with a roof, a mattress, and the occasional allowance to purchase yaa baa and hash from street corner hustlers, or “diggers” as you call them.

Feeling disillusioned, Frodo runs away from the Madame in confusion and disgust into the central highlands of Vietnam. There, he remains secluded, searching for money to buy a plane ticket back to the United States.

Pass the moonshine!

In The Fray Contributor

Greetings fellow traveler, I’m currently living with the Moonshine Clans of the Alphane Mountains, observing a praxis that may allow me to unlock the paradox of a philosophy centered around the mythical knowledge of sustainability.

For the first few months, manic giggling greeted me whenever I mentioned my desire for answers … the whispering behind my back almost broke my determination, but I hung in there until an elder Magi of the Clans began to take pity on this Lost Boy from the Western Lands. She claimed to have originally come from the City of the Red Night, where they teach their young that one cannnot seek “the” answer; instead they must expose themselves to the “multiplicity” of questions, for it is in the masking of “possible” questions that power rests upon, and the prying free of these nuggets from the earth’s moist grasp is the quest of the Clans of the Alphane Mountains.

The ancient Moonshine Magi cackled, swigged from her jug, and said, “This is where the neophytes can get in trouble.” She told me that when chasing these evasive questions the skillful seeker notices that the landscape shifts and reshapes each time a question is revealed. It seems that the Clans learned long ago that when one unearths a question revealing its essence, the disturbance of the surrounding landscape generally causes an accompanying re-veiling of surrounding questions. In fact, she warned that often eager groups of diggers, banded together for strength and safety, will bury smaller groups/individuals digging nearby. This is why the Diggers of the Moonshine Clans of the Alphane Mountains always stop and retrace their steps, reflecting on the pathway they are traveling, in order to re-cognize what disturbances their digging causes. The Magi seemed to derive much amusement from my comment that the Bushes that cover the western lands have long forbidden self-reflective contemplation in order to freeze traditional concepts and to fuel travel to the future-past.

I asked the Magi how the Diggers of the Moonshine Clans of the Alphane Mountains retain their reflective ability while unearthing large complex concepts and revealing troublesome questions. “How do they dream the impossible and imagine the unaskable?” The Magi leaned back and swigged from her jug and chuckled at my Western ignorance. She stared at me like an adder stares down a mouse and dared me to think upon it. After a long uncomfortable two days, I unkinked my frozen limbs. The emptying of my mind allowed me to recognize that the best way to build a hearty, enriching intellectual bouillabaise, is to blend it with (an)other body(ies) of knowledge. The Clans, following the wisdom of the Dispossessed, require all learners to travel to other realms (physical, spiritual, and mental) in order to experience different realities and to act as multi-conduit translators (within and without their clan)

It’s obvious that the Magi is still toying with me. Perhaps I still must quest for these answers on my own, perhaps I still must travel, perhaps I should look into the interstices of production for missing clues?

I screamed, “Please help me! What is a traveler to do when there is no map to guide me?” … The Magi just cackled, “Foolish Lost Boy of the western lands, when will you learn that the quest is the journey and that as soon as you pin down an answer, it only means that you have reveiled other healthy questions — questions that must be once again revealed.”

Shaking and confused, I picked up a large jug of Alphane moonshine and stumbled into the forest to look for questions …

thivai

Dear Mimi,

Thank you for touching upon the recent phenomenon of “gay as hip” in your article. The current fascination certainly raises questions of whether these shows have “stifled” serious conversation on this issue. However, instead of censuring FOX’s trashy and tasteless attempts, the program, “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay,” might actually provide a message that absolves them from your charges: “homosexual behavior” is non-existent. A gay man can “act straight” a much as a straight man can “act gay.” Whether FOX or its viewers know it or not, the program derides stereotypes and proves that guessing one’s sexuality based on their behavior is completely ridiculous.  

To the extent that this television show exploits humanity as much as any other program, FOX is not demeaning gays in an exceptional way. The “gay coaches” are not enforcing negative portraits of gay men, they are simply playing off the exagerated and foolish socially contructed stereotypes in order to win a game … and money.  

We face a contradiction when analyzing TV programming — we clearly acknowledge its trashiness and absurdity, yet, at the same time, we expect them to be forums for real discussion on serious issues. In this specific case, we find that the measure of man cannot be based on TV-enhanced stereotypes.

In The Fray Contributor

Arts and crafts were always one of my favorite things when I was younger. I’m wondering, though, whether we made a mistake by not making arts and crafts mandatory for people throughout their lives, particularly people who hate each other, say, people in war-torn countries or people with different ideologies.

Though Bosnian Serb and Muslim women viewed each other as enemies not so long ago, hundreds of them have since linked up as business partners and knitting buddies. That is, a Tuzla-based non-governmental organization, known as The Bosnian Handicraft, hires women of diverse ethnicities — “mainly refugees who lost their men and homes during the 1992-95 war,” to use their hands to knit carpets, stockings, socks, and various other garments to sell to buyers abroad.

The Bosnian Handicraft was begun in 1995 to help Muslim women establish their economic independence after more than 7,000 men and boys were massacred in the eastern town of Srebrenca. Economically, the group has experienced quite a bit of success, selling over 3,000 pairs of socks to Robert Redford’s Sundance catalogue and to French fashion house Agnes B. The group is in negotiations with prospective British clients.

What the program’s creators weren’t expecting was just what a cathartic experience knitting could be, but numerous women insist that the program has saved their mental health. And by working alongside other women — many of whom they once saw as the enemy, once blamed for the loss of their loved ones — they’re learning how to not just live and work alongside the enemy but also to start to let go of the pain and hatred that defined their past. In the process, they’re starting to see these women as business partners and fellow knitters and creators, putting aside their differences to achieve a common goal of economic independence.

Reading things like this, it’s difficult not to think, “Yeah, right, as if knitting could save the day.” But I imagine that years and years of pain and suffering in which one loses her loved ones, her sense of home, and even a part of herself, fighting wouldn’t seem worth it anymore. I can imagine that if all one had left was her knitting, that might not seem to be much of a reason to keep struggling to survive. But if one was lucky enough to survive — if one had already suffered that much and made it that far, giving up might not seem like much of an option either, leaving coping as the best possible solution. And if it proves to be cathartic, then the struggle might not seem as pronounced.

But it’s difficult to imagine the tensions disappearing altogether or to imagine that economic incentives could make all of the difference. In other words, perhaps it’s a Bosnian form of detente (cooling for tensions), but it may take generations — even centuries — until the tensions cease to lie just below the surface.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:

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At 18, I didn’t want to go to college in the first place. At 22, armed with a B.A., I swore I would never return. Now, why am I going back for a Ph.D.?

Last weekend, I went to a baby shower. The sun was out in Hollywood, and the caterers had outdone themselves. I feasted on salads and mineral water while watching babies and children in Armani crawl across the lawn and play the unceasing array of games they’re so brilliant at inventing, minute by minute.

An unexpected thought sprang to mind; I guess I had let down my guard. It was: hey, if I’m lucky, I’ll be 34 or 35 when I receive my doctorate. That’s a little old to have kids, isn’t it?

This thought made no sense. First of all, my pregnant friend, whom we were celebrating, is 36. I’ve also heard since I was first called a tomboy that women these days can have babies well into their 40s. (This, of course, is frowned upon by several of my Italian friends. It’s not natural, they tell me. It’s not fair to the children.)

Of course, even knowing it was nonsensical didn’t stop me from doing a double-take.

An only child, I’ve never given much thought to having kids.  Somehow I grew up believing my first objective would be to find some sort of occupation which would permit the things I considered necessary to existence: freedom and time to pursue creative projects and visit my dispersed family, enough to pay the bills, and the opportunity to throw myself into my work without being interrupted. Love interests and children being a distraction, I decided they would have to wait until after I discovered my ideal career. How else could I be sure I’d be able to pay for them?

Life being what it is, at 29, I’m still searching for the perfect career.

Or maybe it’s just taken me 29 years to see the writing on the wall.

As so many of my friends in the United States are getting married, having children, and buying their first homes, I’m made ever more aware I have little tangible evidence that what I’ve been doing since graduation has been anything other than a waste of time. In fact, I’ve given up my $600 a month apartment I never had time to visit, and despite the fact that I live in Los Angeles, I’m seriously considering selling my car. In addition, by going back to school, I’m abandoning an exciting, lucrative film career for a grad student salary of $15,000 a year.

Call me crazy.

Times are changing. I could argue that in Italy, children continue living with their parents into their 40s, marry later, and are still going to school in their 30s. Not so different from what I’m doing. However, as far as Italy is concerned, it remains to be seen how the European Union and the euro will change that lifestyle over the next decade.

As my decision is made known to my former classmates, I’ve been surprised by how many of us are questioning the tradition of settling down, taking on lifetime-length financial responsibilities, and taking leave of our families. At the same time, making the decision to “leave the real world” and go back to school has been more difficult than I had anticipated, and not in any of the ways I expected.

Even armed with the news that I’m not alone in the way my life is turning out as I near my 30s, I’m fighting a subtle backlash. I wonder whether it’s exclusively American. With not a little embarrassment, I remember how, at 24, I told my Italian friend, a painter, that he should start taking responsibility for himself and get a job. Five years later, he’s still living with his mother in Rome. He’s also well on his way to becoming a celebrated working modern artist, and his mother is in no hurry for him to leave.

It’s not simple for me to watch as my boyfriend sticks with his 17-year career as a camera assistant, and with his responsibilities as a father and as a son. I watch as my mother, a single career woman, continues to work with no end in sight, in order to support the lifestyle she loves, a lifestyle which is usually made easier by two breadwinners instead of one. Both of them have more responsibilities than I, and neither of them have ever looked back. Just as I have kept my responsibilities to a minimum, and not without sacrifice.

Whose world is more real, anyway? Theirs or mine?

Somehow at 18, going to college seemed like an escape from the real world. After being out of school for seven years, going back feels like I’m entering the real world, though I’m constantly aware that to others, I may appear to be making my escape. It’s a liberation to know, by past experience, that I can live on the $15,000 a year that my fellowship is offering. It won’t be easy, but it’s a choice I’m making with eyes wide open. Maybe I won’t be able to host elaborate dinner parties and take my parents on vacation as I hope I’ll be able to do one day. But getting my Ph.D. will be my first job which pays me to do what I do best, and what I would do even without being paid to do it.

Ever the vanguard of truly trashy television, the Fox network waded into hitherto unimaginably tasteless ground with a show that was to be called “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay.”  

Bowing to pressure and a startling sense of decency, last week Fox cancelled the two-hour show — which was to be aired on June 7 — ostensibly for “creative reasons.”

The now cancelled reality show featured two heterosexual men who would compete for the $50,000 prize by convincing a “jury of their queers,” that they were gay. According to a press release that incensed the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamations (GLAAD), the two contestants were to plunge head-first into the “the gay lifestyle,” by moving into two separate apartments in West Hollywood and inhabiting some sort of gay space by living with gay roommates. The contestants would feign homosexuality by coming out to their closest friends, frequenting gay nightclubs, and going on a blind date with a man. Lest the men be unable to appear convincingly gay, promotional material for “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay,” advertised that the men would also be allocated three “gay coaches.”  

The grand finale of the show was to be a judgment, pronounced by a “jury of their queers,” — according to the Fox press release — of which of the two straight men was actually gay, with the winner pocketing the $50,000 prize for his convincing gayness.

Fox was clearly developing its programming based on the financial and popular success of shows such as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” which captivated three million viewers during the summer 2003 season. Metrosexuality has been welcomed into common parlance, and gay-themed shows, such as “Boy Meets Boy,” have enhanced the Bravo network’s ratings. For a brief and superficial moment, being gay is now hip.  

The popular success and drawing power of such gay-themed shows has probably raised some sort of awareness of the gay community. The important question, however, is whether these shows have normalized homosexuality, or whether these programs are instead an “exercise in systematic humiliation,” as GLAAD described the now cancelled “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay.” It may be the case that far from blurring the dominant lens of hetero-normativity, such shows have made a fabulously packaged commodity of an identity at the cost of stifling any serious conversion or progress.    
  

EDITOR’S NOTE: To see one reader’s response to this story, click here.

Mimi Hanaoka

It may not come as a surprise that President Bush has been hoarding the gun that Saddam Hussein was holding at the time of his capture, and that the president has been gleefully showing off his latest trophy to choice guests to the Oval Office like a child boasting about his latest toy. The president’s memento-taking is, without a doubt, one of the most innocuous news items to have emerged from coverage of the Iraq war in recent weeks, but it nevertheless made me wince.

At the same time that horrific photos of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib prison are being flashed across news screens, the image of Mr. Bush, happily parading Saddam’s gun around the Oval Office, only reinforces the impression that the current campaign in Iraq is characterized by brutish and jingoistic machismo. For all of the money that the current administration is channeling into its propaganda war, both here in America and abroad, Mr. Bush’s aping around the Oval Office is bland but offensive enough, and may only confirm, for skeptics, the profoundly unreflective attitude that has come to be associated with President Bush’s catastrophic venture into Iraq.

This is not to suggest that Saddam wasn’t a calculating despot who ruled through a genocidal regime, and that there may be many who are pleased that Saddam is no longer toting his gun. The issue, rather, is that Mr. Bush must realize that poor public relations, in addition to completely lacking taste and savoir-faire, may have concrete and negative consequences.

The American government is not only engaged in a heart-breaking and traditional war in Iraq, but it is also in the midst of a propaganda war. Last year, America launched Hi, a lifestyle magazine targeted at the 18- to 35-year-old age bracket for both men and women. The magazine is sponsored by the United States State Department and enjoys funding from a bill, supported by the House of Representatives in the summer of 2003, that allocated money to a variety of foreign projects in the Middle East. Buttressing this propaganda is Al-Hurra, an American-run Arabic-language television network, and Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language radio station.  

As Samir Khader — the wry and charismatic producer for Al Jazeera, as he was portrayed in Control Room — noted, “You cannot fight a war without media … Any military that doesn’t plan for that is not a good military.”

For all of the money that the American government has poured into its traditional and propaganda warfare, Mr. Bush is steadily and gaily working to undo his own propaganda machine and is reaffirming the image of an America that is acquisitive, gloating, and ultimately unreflective.  

Mimi Hanaoka

As Frank Rich so eloquently explains in “It Was the Porn that Made Them Do It” in The New York Times today, we can’t keep blaming pornography and Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl incident for the heinous acts of torture that have befallen numerous Iraqi people at Abu Ghraib. Or rather, we could keep playing this blame game, but that wouldn’t change anything, aside from allowing the blamers to deflect responsibility from individuals and from the military to that amorphous, seemingly omnipresent concept we like to call American culture.

Rich is right, no doubt. But I’m willing to go a step further in his discussion of pornography and question the relevance of culture to what has befallen not just the Iraqis at Abu Ghraib but people all over the world — even in the United States — for centuries.

No sex in your violence

Recently, I interviewed Chrisi Lake, a veteran porn star (the full interview will be published later this summer right here in InTheFray). As Christi revealed when we spoke, there is undoubtedly some misogyny in the pornography industry, and there is undoubtedly some violence. That violence likely both influences and is influenced by its connoissuers and its makers. But Janet Jackson showing a little skin — maybe even a nipple — wasn’t violent; erotic, yes; violent, no.

But even if you disregard Janet Jackson’s alleged influence on our violent culture and just focus on genuine pornography, violent pornography isn’t the norm. It’s not what most people — who make porn and/or consume it are watching — though you wouldn’t know that if you listened to the media or many outsiders who tend depict “the world’s oldest profession” as dangerous and violent in order to deter people from partaking in adult entertainment in one form or fashion. That is, blaming the porn industry and Janet Jackson’s indiscretion for the violence becomes a means to prohibit discussions of sex and sexuality, to keep those issues and images out of the public domain, to “purify” or cleanse the American psyche and maintain order in a time that seems, well, disorderly and chaotic, both inside and beyond U.S. borders.

If only things were that easy …

But they aren’t. Remember the 1950s? The 1960s? Vietnam? Korea? The onset of the Cold War ensured that the late 1940s and 1950s marked the peak of sexual containment inside U.S. borders (though there can be no doubt that many people secretly transgressed the strict gender and sexual norms of the time). Did those norms keep the U.S. military out of Korea? Stop the lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, or the Vietnam War?

You know the answer to that question as well as I do.

Though there is often a relationship between sexual culture and violence — some pornography is violent, rape is violent, crimes of passion are violent — the solution to the torture occuring in Abu Ghraib isn’t to question sexual culture first. The solution, of course, also does not permit us to disregard the relevance of culture altogether.

No -ism like militarism

This is not to say that we should focus on culture above the individual, thereby ignoring individual responsibility altogether. For it is despicable, painful even, to see the images of torture and abuse, to think that any human being could do that to another who, much like him or her, also has a family, desires, a heart, and a right to dignity.

But to say that we can separate the individual from his culture is problematic. After all, the culture in which we live indeed influences the ways in which we think, the ways in which we act. Is our culture the only thing that influences who we become and what we do? No, biology and uprbringing — if the latter can even be distinguished from culture — certainly who we are, who we become, and the ways in which we behave and stylize our identities. But culture — not just mass culture but also the subcultures in which we become immersed, play an enormous role in our belief systems, our personal politics, and our actions.

And for those who are a part of the military industrial complex, military culture — militarism — a way of thinking and understanding, the disciplinary structure, and even the toll taken on one’s personal life to go to, say, militarism is undoubtedly a subculture that desperately seeks to shape grown men and women into a certain mold. Unfortunately, today that mold seems to be one that permits — even emphasizes — dehumanization of the enemy and attempts to redefine some people as unhuman, as lesser, while defining oneself — and one’s nation and military — as potent, noble, and triumphant. And something about that’s got to change because we will probably never cease fighting wars. But we’ve got to discuss the ways in which they’re fought and the culture in which those who fight them are embedded.

There is a way of thinking, a way of relating to others — and a different way of relating to people from one’s own military versus the way one relates to the “opposing” military — that is in desparate need of re-evaluation.

Lessons from a bad blind date

A brief personal anecdote illuminates some of my experience with this mindset here: Last fall, a friend asked me to join her on a blind date with two guys she didn’t really know. I agreed to go only because I couldn’t think of a good reason not to go. And because the situation sounded a little sketchy, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of letting her go alone.

So we met these two guys, whom I discovered my friend met through Friendster, and as it turns out, they were in town for the evening to get away from their “work” at a military training camp about two hours away. We got to discussing what we do, and though I had some inkling of an idea of what they do, I tried to be open-minded. But once we got down to the nitty-gritty of what they do and what it is that they were going to do in Iraq  later that month, I realized I was going to have a tough time playing it cool.

“Well, my main job is to aim at things and drop bombs on them, you know, to destroy the Iraqis,” one of the guys explained. This, incidentally, was the evening after the United States paraded a captured Saddam Hussein around on television. And what did these guys think about this? Would they really have any reason to continue bombing “things” in Iraq now that Saddam had been captured and the United States had come to realize that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq?

“Well, yeah, I mean, we just take orders — we’ll be bombing things for a while until we’ve cut off their lifelines, you know, make sure they aren’t powerful enough to resist the occupation.”

Despite being the worst so-called date ever, my interaction with these two men that evening made me realize that both the “we’re just doing our job” mentality reigns in the military, enabling individuals like these two to deflect responsibility, to blame their actions on the necessity of warfare and of nation-building and responsibility of one’s own nation against another nation, and to do all of this without ever thinking about the fact that what they were doing was affecting other people who were much like themselves at the end of the day.

It was as if Iraq was this great, wide-open space devoid of life, and it was their job to flatten it out and start all over. And if there were people in Iraq, well, they were those two guys and their buddies; everyone else was a level or two below them on the totem pole.

(Not) always on my mind

There are international laws and agreements, particularly the Geneva Accords, designed to ensure protection of prisoners held in war so that, well, they don’t get tortured, abused, raped, and killed by prison guards. The United States, sadly, has rarely paid these agreements the level of attention and respect necessary to implement them in practice.

But these accords are paper documents with words that obviously cannot alter the minds and actions of those in the military. They can’t stop something that might be analagous to a crime of passion — or crimes of occupation.

Or rather, they can’t alter the mindset of many in the military without reframing the way in which we talk about war. When we fight wars — even when they’re fought in the name of “securing the world against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction” or “overthrowing a tyrant,” there is a peculiar assumption not just that we need to “save” the people inhabiting those countries, but also that we are in some way more human or of a superior type of humanity, that our lives are somehow more valuable, since, “Hey, we’re saving your country for you, aren’t we?!”

And that’s just my understanding as an outsider; I know that it’s much more complicated than that. I know that not everyone in the military is evil. I know that many people join the army so that they can go to school and to support their families, and I respect that. But that’s just one side of the story (even for those individuals). There are many who believe they’re showing some goodwill (like the guys on my bad blind date) even though unconsciously they maintain an aura of superiority or distinguish themselves from the people in the occupied country.

Whatever it is, however you want to explain militarism, it is a culture. It is a way of thinking about one’s relationship to violence and a way of thinking about one’s relationship to other human beings (and at least two different types of beings, mind you — the enemy and oneself), and a way of relating one’s relationships with people with one’s relationship to violence.

I emphasize this rather obvious point because while there are a handful of U.S. military officials in Iraq who will lose their jobs, be demoted, or be punished in some other way for the incidents at Abu Ghraib. Such incidents have been occuring all over the world — at Guantanamo Bay, in brothels on U.S. bases in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, Afghanistan, and many other places, I’m sure. Such incidents of rape and torture are also not unique to this century or this period in American culture. Such incidents have been occuring for much longer. It just so happens that someone finally spoke up and got attention from the media this time (which could be the result of a combination of a number of things). Perhaps they’ve happened in prisons occupied by countries other than the United States as well.

In fact, the most common factor in all of these cases is not Janet Jackson’s nipple. It is, rather, militarism, enemy territory, and the best excuses of all: “Boys will be boys,” and “I was just doing my job (because I was deathly afraid of the consequences of not doing so).”

In other words, this isn’t about a few jaded individuals. It is about an entire military culture, and I hope that “cleaning house” and getting rid of a few bad seeds in the military who got caught this time doesn’t lead us to believe that the military has become more benign, that it has changed the way the military and people who are part of the miliary industrial complex relate to and treat other human beings.

Am I saying it was the military that made them do it? No — those who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib probably weren’t given direct orders by Donald Rumsfeld to do what they did. But militarism and the painfully strict disciplinary regime that provides the military’s structure and social order just may have influenced and shaped the perpetrators’ understandings of their positions and responsibilities.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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I was happy to get back to the United States this time. What a shock.

Everyone who knows me knows about my love affair with Italy. I’ve made sure of it. A bad day in Italy is better than a good day in the United States. I’m having my baby on Italian soil so he/she can have it easier jumping cultures than it has been for me. Kings and queens had the right idea: the only reason to get married is to get a green card. But I’d rather die than get married. Why should I have to get married to be legal to work in Italy?

Why was I ready to come back from Italy this time? Was it my job? No. In fact, I resigned the morning of my return. Did I miss my boyfriend? No. He was there with me. Did I miss L.A. traffic? Not.

Here it comes: I wanted to swim in my smelly, ugly, cold Santa Monica Y pool. Aren’t there pools in Italy? Yes, and I have swam in them. The thing is, going to the pool is something I do day after day, so I just want it to be easy. When I compare a visit to my local YMCA pool with going to any old pool in Italy, it’s easier in the U.S. Why? In Italy, you may or may not need a doctor’s permission to be able to swim. Other times it’s just a money situation like it is here. Pay, swim. Sometimes there’s no towel at the pool in Italy like at the Y and you have to drip dry. It all depends. I can handle that for other things. But I don’t want to waste time on variables when I swim.

So you could say it was a time thing. Swimming and going to the gym take a chunk of time out of the day. Three hours gone (snap). Like that.

That must be it. After all, the whole point of the trip was to spend time in Italy together, sharing what I love most with the person I spend the most time with these days. My boyfriend.

Did we spend time together? Yes. Awake, or asleep? Well, a bit of it we spent asleep. Awake, we shopped a lot, an activity foreign to me. We ate a lot. Also an activity foreign to me. Although it’s a good habit to have, and it’s fun to do in company. We also argued a lot. An activity foreign to me. Well…

We do argue. Kind of. Most of the time we agree. In the United States that is. It works like this: Anthony states his opinion and does things his way and, for the most part, I go along with him. In a nutshell: While he likes physical comfort, I like mental comfort. He makes a lot of money, and gets more responsible things accomplished in a day than I do. I prefer to do the minimum responsible required so that I leave myself the maximum freedom to work on creative projects. Needless to say, I make a lot less money than he does. I also feel free to work on my projects. He doesn’t.

I say we don’t argue much in the U.S. because we spent a month together in New Orleans last year. Our relationship in New Orleans was easy; it was a dream. I loved it. Okay, he was working. I had just finished a job. My reward to myself was a block of time to work on short stories.

Hey, wait a minute. Now that I think about it, we really didn’t spend all that much time together in New Orleans. We couldn’t. He was doing film work, which means I spent 10 to 12 hours every day writing all alone. He would come home, we would eat or not eat, enjoy a little time together, go to bed. Weekends we spent gallivanting around Jazz Fest, flying up to NY (another story), visiting plantations, hanging out with set buddies, visiting swamps, and feeding marshmallows to alligators.

Maybe the trip to Italy was more difficult because we spent more time there together. Twenty-four seven really. And have we done that before? Not really, not since we started hanging out, and not ever for five weeks straight. Okey dokey, then.

Well, shoot. What’s ideal? What’s the solution? Why can’t everybody get along?

On the other hand, as my Aunt Shirley said this morning, it’s pretty remarkable people get along as well as they do. We build roads, we build countries. We haven’t self-destructed yet, despite the number of people and opinions co-existing on this planet.

What if she’s right?
Why do we try to push toward an ideal? (Is that American?).
What about ‘If it’s not broken don’t fix it’?

In Italy last month, we certainly heard a lot of badmouthing going on about the U.S. and what we’re doing outside our borders. What does that say about the relationship between Italy and the U.S.? Is it falling apart? Should it be fixed?

Well, can we fly there? Can they fly here? Yes. Can we learn Italian here and there? Can they learn English here or there? Yes. Can we share our products? Yes. Well then, sounds good. Not broken. Don’t fix it.

That was easy. Was it too easy?

Maybe the thing to ask is this: Should we be doing more to help them? Well, should they be doing more to help us?

Can’t we help ourselves and not expect too much from others? My friend Narayan says it’s smart to be as self-reliant as possible. That way, if others choose to help us, we’ll be appreciative rather than expecting they should, in which case we feel frustrated or offended when they don’t.

Or how about this: Can I shut up about what I love? More precisely, can I shut up about Italy? I did say we spent a lot of time together on our trip. I didn’t say how much we shared. I shared. Too much. Anthony is a saint.

It could be we share what we love to make sure that people are informed. That way, they can make choices and lead fuller lives. If we’re lucky it’s not because we want to shame them into acting, and doing what we want them to do.

I’m well aware that I sing Italy’s praises day and night. It didn’t help us in Italy. Did it break our relationship? Let’s see.

Are we still together? Yes. Do I still love him? Yes. Does he do things that annoy me? Yes. Does he love me? Yes. Do I do things that annoy him? Yes. But we also do things that are wonderful and loving and generous, too. Let’s say we appreciate each other more than we annoy each other. How do I know I can speak for him? Well, we’re still together. If at some point in the future he decides to leave me, I can conclude that I annoy him more than he appreciates me. But for now, we’re together and we like it. That means what we have is not broken. So there’s nothing to fix, right?

The real risk here is what it means to admit that for the first time in my life, I was ready to come back to the U.S. I am risking something: my identity as a trans-Italian. Maybe I don’t want people to think they’re right about me. I really am American at heart. Italy really isn’t so great. I’m just like everyone else. Whatever.

Or is it I don’t want to admit it to myself? Italy has been a big part of my identity for so long. Thirteen years now, and counting. It’s been my passion. What does admitting I was ready to leave my huge passion say about me? Does it mean my dream is dead? Am I no longer useful to people as a role model for pursuing dreams?

Who cares.  

I do love speaking Italian, and going over there. I love Italian culture. I admire their traditions of going home for lunch and taking a few weeks off every August. (These traditions are changing, by the way.) I don’t think it would hurt us to spend a little more time away from our jobs. People do have value if work is not their priority in life, you know. (Gasp!).

Regardless of how I appear, nothing changes my decision to start a grad program in Italian Lit this fall. What for? Well, because I love it. Huh? What are you going to do with a doctorate in Italian Lit? I don’t know. Use it as writing fodder, maybe. Same thing I did with my BA in Theater from U.C. Santa Cruz. (Funny thing is, most of my post-BA jobs have been in theater or film, so there you have it).