by Jill Soloway
When we were little, my father was an anesthesiologist. But the pressures that went with the job proved too much, and around the time we moved to South Commons he changed his mind and decided he wanted to be a psychiatrist. Finished with putting people to sleep, he now wished to wake people up.
In college and beyond, I met a lot of other psychiatrists’ kids, and found we instantly felt kindred. The son of a New York analyst turned me on to the Shoemaker’s Children theory. Shrink parents are either too busy with their hundreds of other, more important, paying-client brood, obsessed with meta-analyzing everything, or just plain nutty-ass nutbags themselves. So, while children of the folktale walked to school barefoot, enduring the jeers: “Heh heh! Lookit! Ol’ Shoemaker’s Kids ain’t got no shoes!” shrinks’ kids go through life as raw, open wounds, little smoke stacks of nerves. “Heh heh! Lookit! Ol’ Shrinky’s Kid’s having sex with a stranger again!”
Do children of the practitioners of the Talking Cure need to act out, perhaps dabbling in the Fucking Cure to get attention? Maybe I did cast my net about in my late teens, twenties, thirties… all right, always. But, I didn’t see myself as a big ol’ skank ho, even though when it came to sex, my motto was, Gotta Try Everybody. I figured, what if you DIDN’T have sex with someone, and he turned out to be The One? And how would you know if he were the one if you didn’t have a glance at his psycho-sexual soul song?
I believed in love. I was searching for it, every single day, everywhere I went. But as hard as I tried to find The One, my attempts were hampered by my secret knowledge that I, Jill Soloway, wasn’t made for love. I figured I’d never find my soul mate. I’d never have a family, one of those Eileen Fisher extended clan families that take up two pages in a Vanity Fair ad, clean cousins and nieces, everyone out on a porch at the family ranch, women with silvery bangs, so many sandals.
Faith and I had it worse than your garden-variety Shoemaker’s Children. We were Soloway’s children. Less Eileen Fisher, more Capturing the Friedmans. I’m not saying there were unspeakable horrors in a basement tutoring program in our house. In fact, I don’t even know if there were unspeakable horrors in the basement in the Capturing the Friedmans house, because I refuse to see the documentary. All the Jewishness and fondling and first-generation Kaypros are just too damn grody when combined. For my own sanity, I have to pretend it never happened. For similar reasons, I refuse to see Schindler’s List.
No, The Soloway-Shoemakers Children isn’t a parable. It isn’t even a story. It’s the last line of a story. Fini. Faith and I were clearly meant to be the end of the genetic line. If our family had a two-page fold out ad, it would include a hell of a lot of freaky Jews. We had ’em all: gays, lesbians, bisexuals, asexuals, some of your early versions of transgender. My genetic messaging couldn’t have been clearer: No más Soloways. Stop making these people. No one in my generation was getting married, much less having kids. Gatherings dropped off to the occasional funeral. Cousins became e-mail addresses, then unanswered e-mails. My parents divorced, everyone’s parents divorced, and the Soloways’ genetic future was left in the uteruses of Faith and me: the lesbian and the hoor.
(When I let my mom read this and she got to that line she said, “No, Jilly, don’t call yourself a hoor, call yourself a… sex enjoyer!” Okay, our genetic future was left in the uteruses of the lesbian and the Sex Enjoyer.)
My sister came out of the closet in her early twenties. But rather than separate us into opposites, it reinforced our sisterhood—neither of us could see ourselves married to a man. It’s not like our household was abusive or our family was any more horrifying than anyone else’s. It was more like we didn’t really have a family. We didn’t hang out with relatives or have people over very often. My parents lived in their own world—my mom lost in her diet and exercise obsession, my dad either at work or tending to his depression, a result of growing up in London during the Blitz—plus some unfortunate chemistry. My parents had their own TVs and got together for meals and arguments. There was only one perfect marriage in our home, and it was between me and Faith.
Maybe it wasn’t our exclusive, budding-lesbian sisterhood that precluded the idea of finding husbands and making kids of our own once we grew up and out. Maybe we were all just too damn tired. Exhaustion was the most common affliction in our household. My Dad, after crafting psychological shoes for everyone in the village, would come home at the end of each day bushed, calling out: “Oh god, why me?”
He wasn’t the only man of his generation whose shoulders slumped with the weight of epochs of anti-Semitism. I don’t blame him, but this Jewish despair reigned like a constant humidity in our household, and felt like a toxin to my soul.
Mountains of resentment toward my father began to grow. He certainly didn’t see me through his pain, so how could he understand me? By the time I graduated college, the only conversations that didn’t escalate into a fight were those about the weather. My sister and I both made our way out into the world, Faith to look for the woman of her dreams, me to fulfill the dream that I’d never have to marry.
Somehow, with the help of luck, the stars, and some scotch tape, my sister and I managed to rise above our tainted lineage and actually reproduce. Faith settled into a Meaningful Lesbian Relationship, and, with a brilliant, handsome vial of sperm, she and her girlfriend had a beautiful daughter. At thirty, I decided I was going to be a single mom. The idea of pledging my life to a man forever was absurd, but I knew that I could promise to love my child forever. That seemed easy. Besides, Jessica Lange and Madonna were having kids without being married, and it seemed really cool. I wanted to be really cool.
I was involved with a man named Chaz when I started feeling the urge to have a kid. Chaz was a WASP from an established Palm Springs family, had numbers after his name, and didn’t have to worry about money. Every few months someone would die and he’d have another ten grand to spend. Neither of us had anything going—his dribblings of cash had sapped his motivation to make something of himself, while in my life, the hype from our Brady Bunch play was cashed out and Faith had moved to Boston. I had gotten so good at finding the best pot that I had inadvertently moved into distribution, making a decent living for myself by getting weed for my friends, paying ounce prices and charging them eighth rates. When Chaz and I met at a barbecue, we instantly recognized one another. We were both bored with everything. We went back to my apartment in the middle of the day and didn’t leave each other’s sides for a year.
Chaz and I were irresponsible together. We were those people who would turn up at your house without notice, ask if we could borrow your tent, open your fridge without asking, pull out a bag of lunch meat, then take off. If you thought you would never see your tent again, you were right. In my wannabe-hippie haze, I told Chaz that now that I was thirty, he should know that if I got pregnant, I would be keeping it. Chaz was fine with that, as long as I knew he was allergic to work and would never be able to support me. Perfect, I thought.
Get pregnant I did. The first few years after our son was born were wonderful. We landed back in the world—we had something to focus on: the most beautiful thing either of us had ever seen in our lives. But soon some instinctual urge toward earning scads of money kicked in. I got motivated. I didn’t want my son to go to public school and I didn’t want to shop at the Vons, the ghetto grocery store, anymore. Sitting in the food stamps office with the Latina baby-mamas was losing its appeal. I turned into Super Jew and went back to the CAA TV agents I’d alienated after turning into a stoner after The Real Live Brady Bunch. I was ready to make some money.
Chaz wasn’t. He lived up to his word about never supporting me. When my son was two, we went our separate ways, and I went back into the world to see if my soul mate was someone who was looking for a woman with a son.
Luckily, he was. After I wrote a spec TV script, I got hired on The Steve Harvey Show as a staff writer. I slowly worked my way up through the business. In production on TV shows, I had a day-in, day-out suppl
y of toolbelts. But there was an unwritten code among women in the business—sleep below the line, but don’t stay overnight there. And certainly don’t marry there. But when I got to Six Feet Under, the Key Grip put the cops and the Tom of Finland men to shame. He was the manliest man I had ever seen, a man who gave new meaning to the word Moustache, a big man with a little name, Dink. I couldn’t stay in my office, I had to see where he was all the time.
I remember calling my mom and telling her I was in love. She corrected me, saying that it was just lust, since I didn’t know him yet. She reminded me that I was about to seriously screw things up at the new job I loved.
“What’s his name?” my mom asked.
“Dink,” I said.
“There’s a Dink on every set,” she told me. “Go find one somewhere else.”
Ah, the ol’ “don’t shit where you eat” adage. But I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t shit where they eat. Everyone shits and eats in the same building, their home. Of course you shouldn’t sit down for a three-course meal on the floor in front of your toilet. I wasn’t planning to make long sweet beautiful love with him in the writer’s room, for crying out loud. Where are we supposed to meet people if it’s not where we spend all day? What was the big deal?
As usual, I didn’t listen. Smart woman, stupid pussy, another writer told me when I informed her of my plans. Dink and I arranged to watch a movie together—as friends, of course. I had entertained the thought that something more could happen. I never imagined that we would fall instantly in love.
But we did. For the first time, that magical chill that runs through your core to let you know He’s The One didn’t wane after sex. There were no games, no Rules, none of the wave the bunny, hide the bunny games I’d had to play with other men. We simply wanted to do everything together, walk through the world next to each other, every single day.
I didn’t know if my utter surety that he was The One was because he was actually my soul mate, or rather, because he was the most absurd possible final choice for a girl raised by exhausted Jewish intellectuals. Dink is nothing like me nor my people. He don’t take no shit from no one, and is the most protective man I’ve ever met. Based on the way he uses his immense power to protect people in supermarkets who get butted in line, I like to believe that if he’d been around, and in love with me, during World War II, he’d have given Hitler himself an ass-whooping he wouldn’t have soon forgotten.
Our love surprised me by getting stronger every day. In fact, he’s here in every word and page I write—cheering me toward success. It’s truly his support that even allows me to write all this. Okay, actually? It’s more like the exact opposite of that, to be truthful. It will be a miracle if he doesn’t break up with me after reading this. Where he’s from, people feel it’s rude to ask anything more personal than “Care for some sweet tea?” Every time I’ve read one of these chapters out loud at a show, our conversation in the car afterwards starts with the same question: “WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO TELL EVERYONE EVERYTHING??!!!”
One of the first things I was really excited about— after it was clear our couplehood had a chance—was that my new man came with a brood, a real brood, so unlike the miniature four-legged table the Soloways called a family. When his daughter Natalie announced she was getting married last Christmas, it was time for Dink and me to head down to Alabama to meet everyone.
Tuscaloosa was packed with the three B’s: Baptist Churches, Beauty Salons, and Barbecue. Everywhere we went there were those signs with changeable black letters. In LA they say things like “Happy Meals, $1.29.” In Tuscaloosa they said, “Christ is the Reason for the Season” and “Canoes and Children are Best when Paddled from Behind.”
The people were warm and kind, and I loved the way they unquestioningly gathered with one another every Sunday, the whole dang group at Aunt Susie’s. Just to visit. Every Sunday. Same people. Our family had moved to as distant spots as mathematically possible from each other without leaving the country. And all that I considered my extended family were the one-dimensional, five-inch-tall people created by James L. Brooks. These Alabama people knew a secret that had eluded us: Get in the same room with a bunch of people who are kin to you, try not to fight, eat mashed potatoes.
I also finally got to spend time with my boyfriend’s daughters. When Dink and I met, Natalie, over the phone, welcomed me into her dad’s life with a giant heart, a million-miles-a-minute high-pitched southern accent, and the loudest laugh you’ve ever heard. Like a sped-up tape recorder, she intoned: “I donno who you are or what you do, I don’t care if you’re a three-hundred-pound black man, if you make mah Deddy happy, I love you and I cain’t wait to meetchyou!”
As a complete aside, I must make mention of the oft-fabled Three Hundred Pound Black Man and his storied sister, the Three Hundred Pound Black Woman. I heard that phrase dropped again last week by a man who felt disappointed his ex-wife wasn’t ultimately happy for him after he came out of the closet. He told me: “I would have hoped that after the initial shock wore off, if she TRULY loved me, she would have said, ‘I don’t care who you’re with, be it a dog or a shampoo bottle or a Three Hundred Pound Black Man, as long as you’re happy.’”
This wasn’t the first time people had waved about these Three Hundred Pound Black people as the ultimate in detestable options. No one in my otherwise liberal landscape would dare pull out just one of those qualities (gayness, blackness, overweightness) and call it unacceptable. But somehow, when combined, they become exponentially unlovable.
Perhaps the world doth protest too much. Maybe choosing as a life partner a Three Hundred Pound Black person of our same gender is the key to happiness. If not, why all the propaganda declaring them the definitive wrong choice?
And what of these people of color who are chubby and gay? Do they have any idea they are held up as a trophy of troublesome blind judgment? Did any overweight, gay black people buy this book? If they did, are they now mad at me? And was that digression worth it? And will it still be here when my editor is done with my book? And what was it I was talking about?
Yes, eldest daughter Natalie pledged to love me even if I was a Three Hundred Pound Black Man, but Amy, Dink’s younger daughter by his second wife, was less open to my charms, possibly because at the time I decided Dink was my soul mate, he was not yet legally divorced from her mother.
Turned out Amy was very accepting of me. We all stayed on the same floor in the hotel when we were in Tuscaloosa for the wedding. Amy and I had a lot in common—mostly an unreasonable passion for The Real World. One night when we were in her hotel room watching the Paris reunion show, she went off on all the things she hated about her dad. “He doesn’t understand me! He doesn’t even try! He’ll never understand me! He’s never even tried!”
Amy taught me something that night, and not just that on Real World/Road Rules Challenge, the prize money isn’t cash, it’s in vouchers. She taught me something about girls and their dads. I knew for a fact that her father loved her like crazy and wanted so badly to understand her. I’d heard him say it over and over again, often to my annoyance if I was trying to read a new People magazine. But now that I loved Dink, I had a real window into the dad side, and I was able to see just how futile it felt to reason with the power of teen-girl dad hatred.
I thought up every possible comeback: “You need to let him know you,” “Give him a chance,” and “I think it’s time for you two to have a talk.” But nothing worked. When an angry girl wants to blame her dad for every single thing that’s ever been wrong in the world, nothing can stop her.
Later that night, from the hotel, this angry Jewish girl decided to call her depressed Jewish dad and just say hi. I hadn’t spoken to him in months. The last time he called was to see if the heat wave was as bad as it sounded on TV. As soon as he answered the phone, I said, “I love you, Dad.”
“People are flawed, aren’t they Jilly?” he asked me. Yes, Dad. People are flawed.
Not a week later, I was back
home in LA when I got a call on my cell phone. It was my mom. She said, “Dad’s in the hospital.”
“Whose dad?” was my first question. Even though her father was dead, I was furjumbled by her calling her ex-husband Dad instead of “your father.” It turned out my father had an aneurysm in his aorta and was at Northwestern Hospital awaiting open-heart surgery.
On the plane to Chicago, I cried, less because I was afraid he would die, but more because, ten years after their divorce, my mother was the only person he could think of to call.
When I got to the hospital, my mom had gone home to her new husband. My dad was in a bed in a room on a high floor of Northwestern Hospital, overlooking the lights of the city. Turns out Friday night is a really inconvenient time for surgery, so as soon as they’d discovered in the ER that he wasn’t critical, they decided to have him wait over the weekend and get monitored and fluided.
The unit was quiet. He hugged me and cried and thanked me for coming so fast. In his little hospital mini-dress, this giant from my childhood felt smaller than me for the first time ever. A nurse came in to change the tubing on his IV. He was in rare Soloway form, crying out in ear-shattering agony as she ripped tape from his hairy Jewish forearms. All the nurse said in response was a monotone, “he should shave those arms.” That night, like a good daughter, I rested his hands over a garbage can and shaved him up to his elbows.
Over the next few days, my mother, sister, and I sat in waiting rooms, most of our focus on who would go to the cafeteria when and get what. I have to compliment Northwestern Hospital’s remarkable tuna wraps. Frozen yogurt. Unbelievably good, thick, hot real turkey, green beans, and the most creamery delicious mashed potatoes you’d ever want.
On Monday morning, he had his surgery. One person was allowed to follow his gurney halfway in for a last good-bye. We chose Faith. Or he chose Faith. When she came out she told us that, as an ex-anesthesiologist and a practicing psychiatrist who recognized symptoms of anxiety, he was prescribing himself Ativan down to the final minute. His very last words were a suggestion that perhaps he could tolerate another something milligrams of flubeghshhh… and then he was out.
