I Remember Africa

In Dreams From My Father, Obama talks about his first time in Africa. Reading it, of course, made me think about my own first...and only...journey to Africa.

It was about fifteen years ago. I'm not sure of the year. I have lost that passport, so I can't look at the stamp. I have only one picture from the trip. It is of me, and 3 friends, smiling in front of a wall. It doesn't tell me anything. If I wrote about my adventures, I misplaced those pages long ago.

I went to South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland with a friend, Laurie, whom I have since lost touch with. I heard she got married to a man from another country. I heard she had a baby, or two, or even three. When I think of her, I picture her on a large boat, looking over the railing with a child in her arms. They are circling the Galapagos islands and watching the birds. I can't call her on that boat and ask her if her recollections match up snug with mine. I have no photo album to refer to for details about our days. I have no journal where I can read about the feelings I had during that strange time. I can't tell you whether all my memories are true. But, this is what they are.




I remember a cab ride in Johannasburg. Our driver was a brusque, butch woman of Eastern European, or perhaps Middle Eastern descent. From her seat in front of us, she broadcast descriptions of the city as we passed through it. She was a charming tour guide, irreverent, generous and funny.

Pointing down one crowded, shabby street she told us, "That way is more direct, but I won't take you there. It's a bad neighborhood. Lots of criminals."

As she rounded a different corner, Laurie and I gazed out amazed at the display of wealth and taste. We saw plot after green plot of immaculate lawn. We saw crystaline fountains, carefully shaped fruit trees and flowering bushes. We saw lazy spreading mini-mansions built of something that looked like white marble. We did not see one single living person. "This is a good neighborhood, " our driver explained. The she laughed and winked at us in the mirror, "Lot's of criminals!"



I remember the street markets in Mozabique's capital city. Women sat eyeing us from folding chairs behind folding tables while their children played underneath. Between us and them were carefully arranged fresh papayas, colorfully printed cloth, and plastic bags of cashews. These things were not piled up in chaotic abundance, but rhythmically spaced-out, even and spare.


Mostly, Laurie and I went out together, but one day I went out by myself. I went farther down the street, and around the corner to a market I hadn’t been to before. There were fabrics and food, like the market in front of our hotel, but there were some other things too. Jewelery. Wooden boxes. Small statues.

Standing there. Looking at all these things, and at the women selling them, I didn’t notice the boy walk up to me. When I looked up from the table, he was already there, looking at me. Waiting for me to notice him, maybe. He was as tall as me, but very thin. He looked like a child, despite his height. He opened his jacket and took out a very small gun. His hand moved towards me with the gun in it. Suddenly, my body felt like an empty elevator shaft.

Before I saw the gun, my internal, invisible elevator had been on the top floor, full of happy people, ready to walk around and explore the view from up there. But when I saw that black metal moving toward me in that young man’s hand, the cable snapped. That elevator went rushing down to the ground floor. Far far away I felt the rushing weight of it falling inside me. The empty space it left behind swelled and shrank with the rattle and boom of the car speeding through it, the power of gravity pulling it effortlessly down down down. I was hollow. Cored. The parts of me that mattered were at once rushing and sunk.

I don’t know how long we stood there together. Me with my pale pink mouth open. He with his brown eyes questioning. The gun poking towards me in his long fingered hand. Finally I understood. He meant me no harm. He would sell me the gun, if I wanted it. He would give me a good price. I shook my head, told him I was sorry. I walked back to the hotel, dizzy with relief, wondering if I was in danger.

I was safe that day. It wasn't until years later, back home in the United States, that someone would pull a gun on me and mean it.



I remember my first high tea, complete with crumpets and clotted cream. Though we had just spent a week in London, I didn't experience this British ritual until we'd been in Maputo for many days. This was the only day we set foot into the fancy hotel where Europeans stayed when they were visiting the city.

I don't remember were we usually got our meals. From street vendors? From small, poorly lit restaurants?

Almost all my memories from Africa are about being outside. Most of the indoor places, except for this hotel and later, the hospital, seemed cramped and dim. I do know that, wherever it is we were eating every day, it made us feel poor and frustrated. We felt like we didn't have many options and had to settle for whatever reasonable meal we could find. This may have been because we could not read or speak Portuguese. I know also we were tired of worrying about whether or not the food we were eating was going to make us sick.

Maybe we went out for high tea the day after we ate an entire Papaya. "Papayas are safe," we told each other, "if you buy it uncut, because the thick skin protects the fruit." We bought one from the market in front of our hotel. Right there on the side walk split one in half with my pocket knife. We happily ate the whole thing between the two of us. We didn’t get sick. It seemed to be true, you can eat fresh fruit, in foreign places with questionable sanitation, if it’s got a thick skin. We ate that whole papaya and we didn’t get botulism or salmonella or whatever it is that makes US people chant "don't drink the water!" But, we spent a lot of time in the bathroom anyway. Papaya, we found out quickly, is a mild laxative. You don’t notice it so much if you just eat a few pieces. But, papaya is a large fruit, about the size of a butternut squash. Eating half of one in a sitting, you can’t help but feel the effect.

Yes, it must have been the day after the papaya incident that we went to the expensive hotel that none of the local people could afford. We wouldn't have eaten without the excuse of being exhausted and physically ill. We would have felt too guilty. None of the black people we saw on the streets could afford to stay there, or even to eat there. We were college-age kids, traveling on a tight budget, we couldn’t really afford it either. But there is a difference between the way the Africans couldn’t afford to eat there and the way we couldn't afford to eat there. For us, it was poor judgement and might mean we had to skip some meals later in the trip. We might have less cash for buying souveniers. For them, it was simply out of the question, undoable. Honestly, I don't even know if they would have been allowed in the door. Though the food was delicious, it was a strange, sad thing, sitting down like this for a bite to eat in a city, a nation, a continent, of dark skinned people. All I could see where white faces, white faces like mine. It seemed to me like we were all pale with shame, pink with embarrasment. It seemed to me like we were bleached of our humanity, and very much alone.

Let's Not Put Pencils In Our Socks

There is a prison in San Luis Obispo. It isn't really in the town, of course. It's off Highway One, on the way out to Morro Bay. The prison is called the Men's Colony, which is an odd name. It makes me think of Australia when it was first being settled by white people, and Molokai, when the lepers where shipped there to live. It also makes me think of Lord of the Flies, and the spooky castle in The Wizard of Oz.

The blocky buildings that make up the prison are the color of sand. Barbed or razored wire decorates their roof-tops like icing on a row of evil cakes. At least, that is what it always looks like to me. I can see it from my car, when I'm driving home the long way, and also from the hills along the trail at Felsman's Loop.

Sometimes, when I'm jogging along those trails, the wind is cluttered with noises I don't recognize. I think it is bells, and voices coming through loud speakers. It's hard to tell exactly what the noises started out as, because of the distance, and how the sound waves bounce off the curves of the landscape, turning sideways before they reach my ear. I squint and crane to see what's going on, but the people are never in view, only the buildings. I put my hand over my eyes to block the sun and wonder what it is like over there, inside that secret world?

Isn't it strange that all these people live here, right on the edge of town, and yet we don't know them? Despite our shared zip-codes, they are not part of our community. They're complete strangers, kept in their little concrete bubble. Who are they, why are they in there? What are their days like? What is it like behind those walls?

My friend J. knows. She works there as a psychologist. But just because J can know what it's like inside there, doesn't mean I can know. I've asked her before. She doesn't seem to want to talk about it much, or maybe doesn't know what to say about it. I asked her once what it is like being a woman and working with an all male population of criminals and captives. She says they don't respect her, or women in general for that matter. I don't know if someone actually said this to her once, or if this is just what she imagines that they are thinking, but to convey the attitude they project during her sessions with them she makes a bitter face and says, "Why is the vagina talking?!"

That is all she's really said to me when I've asked before what her working day is like. "Why is the vagina talking? Why is the vagina talking? Why is the vagina talking?" It's funny and abrasive and interesting, but it's like getting a punchline without hearing the joke. I end up still not knowing what it is like inside the Men's Colony.

But when I saw her last month, she suddenly opened up and had a lot to say about her job, and the world beneath the barbed wire. She gave us all kinds of details and an interesting story that I cannot stop thinking about.

First, she told us about the financial situation in the offices, and the way they are treated, as free people inside a place created for human captivity.

The administrative staff has an inadequate budget. They run out of basic things, the kinds of things you need to work with in an office, whether you are a psychologist or a secretary. As she's telling me this I try to imagine the frustration of working in an office without enough paperclips, white out, post-it pads.

In addition to being broke, they are under constant high security. They are not allowed to bring in purses or backpacks. They can bring their lunch, but everything else stays in a locker at the front gate. Prisoners might try to steal their cell phones. Random objects could be turned into weapons.

One of the staff there is diabetic. Most of her lunch break every day is spent walking to her front gate locker, where she gives herself an insulin shot, before walking back through the prison yard and returning to her desk.

These two factors, the tight budget and the stringent regulations, make for an interesting situation. I've worked in places where employees swipe the office supplies. You've probably seen it too, or done it yourself. It's so easy to pilfer Scotch tape and sharpies from those shining well-stocked cabinet. It's so tempting to casually smuggle them home in purses and briefcases. But Janice and her co-workers work in an upside-down world. They give into the temptation of sneaking office supplies in to their offices. What else are they going to do? They can't work without pens and staples.

I wonder if they ever get caught with a ream of paper stuffed down the front of a shirt, binder clips along the waistband of their underwear, rubber bands filling out their bras? Even if they did get caught I can't imagine anyone takes it too seriously. Wouldn't the guards just tell them to leave it in their lockers? Wouldn't they just try again the next day?

Whatever budget they have, I imagine they must save it for purchasing things too sinister to smuggle. Scissors, letter openers, these would surely cause concern if discovered. What about hole-punches? Could you do damage to a person with 3 hole punch?

Back when I had a job, I used to sell an inhalable medication device to health facilities in the Central Coast, including the Men's Colony. They never bought any. The "Handi-haler" comes with two short pins embedded inside the device. These puncture the hard plastic capsules and release the powdered drug inside. They told us they couldn't give this thing to prisoners because it could be converted to a weapon. I guess those pins are pretty sharp.

But, J tells me they give the inmates machetes for cutting leather when they are working in the boot shop. They give them embroidery and knitting needles for doing crafts inside their cells.

I used to assume the ban on our device was well founded. How was I to know if two half inch metal pins inside a plastic egg posed a threat or not? I didn't presume to judge. But now, knowing the inmates have needles and knives, those tiny points seem like a strange excuse for withholding medication. Maybe they are just trying to save money. Considering the office supply situation, that makes sense. But, J. told me another story that makes it sound like there is plenty of cash to spend on health care for the prisoners. So, my theory about their limited medical budget doesn't really make sense. Actually there are a lot of things about this next story that don't make sense.

To understand it, I try and imagine what I would do if I was sentenced to years in prison. I like to think I'd read a lot, educate myself. I could set up peer counseling workshops for my sister prisoners, write a book. Maybe I would have the emotional strength and purpose of mind to achieve these projects, but I doubt it. I can hardly find the motivation to do meaningful things here in Boulder, with the twin luxuries of physical freedom and financial security blossoming daily in my life.

More probably, I would suffer from depression. Isolation from normal society. Unbearable boredom. Mild to moderate mental-illness. I might do strange things to my body. After all, it would be the one thing I would keep unchallenged possession of, and could exercise occasional control over. I have experience with this already. As a teen, bored, isolated and depressed, I clipped my toenails to sharp points and painted them with tiny bright polka-dots. I cut chunks from my thick blond hair until the scalp showed through. When additional haircuts would have left me bald, I dyed it Manic-Panic midnight blue. This was not, despite appreciative hallway remarks from the jocks and cheerleaders at Walkersville High, a show of school spirit. I was desperate to change myself into something other than I was, so I could live a life other than the one I was living. I pierced my own ear 17 times. I sawed at the pale flesh of my inner arm with serrated steak knives.

After a while, pushed by the concern of my parents, and pulled by the challenge of after-school activities with new friends, I steered my self-destructive habits to a halt. I started to direct my energies toward healthier habits: debate team meetings, school musicals, photography class.

But, if the social habits and norms that surrounded me were the habits and norms of criminals, what would I think? If I had to sit in a metal cage the size of a phone booth for my weekly appointments with a mental health counselor, how would I feel? If I were confined to a cell for the better part of each day, what would I do? I imagine I'd do some strange things.

If, rather than being female and brought up in a loving family, I were male and brought up with abuse or neglect, I imagine the things I'd do might be even stranger.

So, I kind of understand this story, even as I grimace and flinch.

J didn't give me his name. It's hard to tell a story without a name, so I'll call him Bob.

Bob, like most men, had a penis. As I hear they sometimes do, he wished it was bigger. I imagine he is unlike many men in that he had the extreme leisure and the peculiar inclination to actually do something about it. I'm not sure exactly what. J probably told me, but the whole story seemed so disgusting and surreal, certain details from our conversation have become blurred. The vision I have is of broom-handles and electrical tape or, possibly, twine and river stones.

I'm pretty sure the broom-handle was part of a different, equally disturbing story that I'm not going to share today. I don't think they'd allow their prisoners to fill their cells with heavy rocks. Tape and twine both seem like hanging hazards. So, I'm probably getting the details all wrong. But, whatever tools he had, he managed to create an effective penis stretching device. And it worked! I don't know what he started with, or how long it took, but Bob now boasts a 14 inch penis. Amazing.

Fourteen inches! That is longer than a sheet of notebook paper, longer than a two -person Subway Sandwich. It is about the length of an English cucumber. I'm not talking about those dark green cucumbers with the waxy skin. Those are big enough and I'm sure would satisfy most men, and most women too. I'm talking about the paler ones, with the skin so thin they are sold wrapped in plastic. I'm talking about the ones that are 14 inches long!

I might stop at the store later to day and measure one. They might not even be that long.

Of course, you can't stretch an organ like that without consequences in the operation department. Bob now had a really big dick, but what is that worth if it doesn't work any more? It worked a little; he could still pee. It was tricky, but he could do it. It could not, however, become erect.

If I ran the prison, this might be the end of the story. Bob is well hung, and hang he must. Fair trade, I say.

But someone else thought differently, someone in charge. Someone, I can only imagine it was a man, felt that his situation warranted medical intervention.

Viagra wouldn't do it. Bob's erectile dysfunction didn't stem from vascular constriction. He was suffering from traumatic degradation to the very flesh of his member. J didn't see it herself, but she talked to those who had. They refer to the damaged part in navel terms. He had, they said, "an innie and an outie."

Only surgery could fix it.

I imagine they took him to the hospital in handcuffs. But, I cannot imagine what is involved in performing a successful penis reconstruction. How many surgeons and nurses are involved? How do they do it? What tools do they use?

I can't help wondering as well, how much does it cost? Do they charge by the hour, or by the inch? If it's the latter, then I know it was expensive, because the penis they created for Bob is STILL fourteen inches long!!! And now, through the miracle of modern medical technology, he can get a hard-on.

Apparently, he flashes all the female staff with it from his hospital bed. That sounds juvenile and offensive, I know. But, as J pointed out to me, who could blame him? The temptation to show it off must be irresistible.

Back in his cell, I wonder if he'll be satisfied. Will those surges of pride and delight at his enormous cock really last? How soon will he start to think, like a reverse anorexic, "If I could gain just one more inch, then I'd be perfect. Just a little bigger, and then I'll stop for good." How long before he's back at work with pantyhose and doorknobs...or what ever it is he uses?

How soon before the public pocketbook, which funds the prison, is able to pay off his medical costs? Is it related at all to the amount of time California was forced to issue state tax returns in the form of IOUs?

I'm not trying to say that prisoners don't deserve good medical care. I think they do. I think ALL people deserve good medical care. And, in a country like the US, where we could afford it, I don't think there's any excuse for not making sure that ALL people get it. But, I think to perform heroic operations and restore a non-essential body function to an inmate who CAUSED THE PROBLEM HIMSELF is sheer mismanagement. With this kind of thing going on, it's no wonder that so many voters loathe and fear the very notion of government provided health care coverage.

After hearing this story, I too am afraid of the strange catastrophes that socialized medicine might bring us. If health care reform happens, I hope the children of the working poor be able to see the same excellent doctors that I rely on? That would be great! But now I can see the down side too. What if we all end up like J and her co-workers, watching our paychecks shrink and our personal freedoms dwindle? What if our earnest and hopefull contributions to society are earmarked to finance outlandish cosmetic surgery for the criminally twisted? What if we all start stuffing pencils in our socks, just so we can make it through the day?

My Dream Bio (Guess Which Parts are True)

I have three jobs. Full time, I live a fabulously interesting life. Part time, I write about it. When I can squeeze it in, I sell what I've written to magazines.

As my work experience includes lots of living, writing, and selling, I am particularly well-qualified for this triptych of a career. It's no surprise that my insightful, informative and hilarious articles have been published in over 53 magazines so far this year.

I do not write fiction. I write true personal narratives. My favorite topics are those related to gender politics and the sub-cultural experience.

I used to write personal ads. My favorite one, "Romantic Speed Demon seeks Responsible Driver" was deleted recently. I now live with my beloved and assorted familiars, on California's breath-taking Central Coast.

My five favorite words are, "Let's play a game where..." My six favorite words are, "What are we gonna eat next?" Despite my playful nature and voracious appetite, I work hard and succeed at maintaining toned arms, sculptured abs and a perfect ass.

I have the best mother in the world, a perfect lover, and the most delightful circle of friends and family imaginable. And yet, I am not stuck up at all. Always on the lookout for new adventures, I rarely pass up a really good invitation. If you would like me to join you on one of yours, please direct your missive to the email address available in my "profile" (at left.)