Linda

Linda S. was the first bad girl I ever met. We were in grade school together, age eleven, and got breasts and periods before most of the other girls. It was our physical maturity that drew us to each other.

What fascinated me about Linda was that she knew exactly what to do about her maturity, while I was a clueless geek. She shaved her legs, used tampons, had boyfriends and smoked Marlboros. And she had style, wearing tight t-shirts, low-slung jeans and wide belts. She had beautiful long blond hair, a broad Slavic face and a big confident laugh. I could't understand why she wanted to be my friend.

Her Italian mother was divorced from her Polish father--the only "broken home" on our street at the time. The rest of the divorces didn't come until at least five years later in our Chicago suburb, including my parents'. Linda's mom, Carmella, always seemed to be cooking big pots of tomato sauce, and she scared me. Carmella was the only person who could wipe the smile off Linda's face, and she did it with shouts and hitting. Thank god I didn't see Carmella often; she had a 9-to-5 office job, so Linda and I could run around the house freely.

When I was in fifth grade, I was in a brief love triangle with Linda and my kindergarten best friend Wendy, but I eventually dropped Wendy for Linda. She was the only friend I wanted to be with. We liked to dance in the rain together, listen to pop music and put on glamorous shows for each other in the basement. I especially enjoyed lip-synching to one of Carmella's records, "Goodbye Charlie," by some singer like Dory Previn or Patti Page or whoever it was.

Anyway, Linda was seriously involved in all of my first kissing experiences: 1) She pinned her boyfriend Mike in the schoolyard one Saturday afternoon and forced him to make out with her to prove to me how long she could hold a kiss without taking a breath; 2) She instructed me and a neighborhood boy, Greg, to kiss each other on the lips because neither of us had ever done it before and it was time to learn; 3) We were bored one weekend night with no boys around and decided to practice French kissing with each other, which we did on my bed.

I haven't seen Linda in years, but I thought about her the other day after watching Madonna's 1991 documentary, Truth or Dare. While performing in Detroit, she gets a visit from an old schoolfriend, and Madonna describes her as a bad girl from a broken home who was a bad influence--she showed Madonna how to insert a Tampax, ran around with boys, smoked...

Basically, Madonna--one of our era's biggest bad girls of all--had a wild bad-girl friend in childhood just like my very own Linda. It seems like no matter who you are when you're a kid, it helps to have a bad girl around to guide you through tough times.

"Can I just say that I find it really irritating that everyone beats up on Britney Spears?" Madonna told Elle magazine in February 2001. "I want to do nothing but support her and praise her and wish her the best. I mean, she's 18 years old! It's just shocking. I was so gawky and geeky and awkward and unsure of myself."

Instead of perfume there will be rottenness

It's Good Friday today, and I'm reading The Bible. I struggle with it; I don't understand. Isaiah is a cruel, cruel chapter of the Old Testament. Reminding us of God's terrible disappointment in us and the punishment he has in store.

Yes, there are bad girls in The Bible, and God does not love them. Woe to the wicked! They let their women rule over them.

Isaiah 3: 18-24
The LORD said:

Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet; the Lord will smite with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts.

In that day the Lord will take away the finer of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarfs; the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; the signet rings and nose rings; the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; the garments of gauze, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils.

Instead of perfume there will be rottenness; and instead of a girdle, a rope; and instead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth; instead of beauty, shame.

Swish Blogade Hostess

Oh boy. I'm still cringing from this video that my friend Lisanne of Found in Brooklyn took at the March 9 Brooklyn Blogade. I'm not used to seeing myself on film. Do I really move and sound like that?

But in the spirit of accurately disseminating the local news and embarrassing myself, I give you here a video of me being a swish hostess in the Old Brick Cafe on Church Avenue in Kensington.

Blogade Review from the Laziest Girl in Town

I've always wanted an excuse to call myself "the laziest girl in town," and now I've found the perfect one. I was the hostess for yesterday's Brooklyn Blogade and planned the event, but rather than me going to the trouble of writing about it, I'm going to leave that chore in the capable hands of other Blogadeers.

Please go to the Flatbush Gardener's review, which has tons of pictures, including a fabulous one of me being a posey wanker. I tried to download the JPEG, but I couldn't figure it out and am probably stealing or breaking some law by trying, and anyway, I'm too lazy to figure it out. Just go to the Flatbush Gardener's link.

I received a really sweet thank you from Eleanor Traubman of Creative Times:
"When I think about what word comes to mind to describe yesterday's blogade, it's
GENEROSITY.

"First, Joyce set such a warm, welcoming tone for the event. Setting it up for folks to read was such a great idea, really gave us a chance to see each other in a new and deeper way that went a step beyond a Shout Out.

"Second, people who read were generous in terms of sharing different pieces of themselves through their writing - personal stuff, stuff that reflected who they are. That takes courage.

"Third, the folks who ran the restaurant just kept the food coming.....homemade food from their family's cultural tradition. I liked, also, that they got to be part of the event. I saw that they were listening to everything and seemed moved.

"Joyce said it well when she saw the afternoon as a way to humanize technology, see the human faces behind the blogs.

"I feel honored to be part of such an amazing, kind, smart, funny, savvy, and civic-minded group of people."

Thanks, Eleanor! And now here's the complete list of everybody else who came yesterday to the Old Brick Cafe in Kensington:

Blue Barn Pictures
Brooklynometry
Crazy Stable and A Year in Prospect Park
Found in Brooklyn
Hutch Owen comic strip
Luna Park Gazette
Midnight Cowgirls
Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn
Self-Absorbed Boomer
Shellytown
Washington Square Park

My god. Many of these links contain posts where people have already written about yesterday's Blogade. I've been scooped on my own event. That's what happens to lazy girls who want to appear as if hard work is beneath them. I hope somebody's making some money off of all this energetic reporting. Me, I'd rather swan about on the day of the Blogade, wearing a cute outfit and filling people's wine glasses and asking them if they're having a nice time.

Reviving Skittles, Part 8: Escape to Paris

Note to English courtesan lovers: I just found a real-live English courtesan's blog. She has a first from Oxford, fancies Wim Wenders films and the music of Massenet, and charges anywhere from £400 for 2 hours to £2400 for 48 hours. A 45% deposit is required. Check it out: The Diary of an English Courtesan

At the end of 1862, The Times announced that Catherine Walters’ Park Street house off Grosvenor Square in Mayfair was available to let and that all its contents were for sale. Curious mothers and daughters showed up on Park Street under the pretext of wanting to rent the house. But what they really wanted was to get a glimpse into the notorious courtesan’s life.

And maybe get a feel for what it's like to be a bad girl. I've noticed that some of the most interesting women in the world, especially the ones who are single and good at it, create lavish living spaces that are such an absolute reflection of themselves that it's impossible to imagine them ever living with a man on a daily basis. (In other times and places, Frida Kahlo and Mae West also created fabulous me-only spaces for themselves.) In Skittles' case, there was no space for a full-time man amid all the gilt ornamentation, cerise-pink silk and so much swansdown that it even covered the toilet seats.

Skittles didn’t care what the thrill seekers thought. She was going to Paris.

After years of partings and reunions, her relationship with Hartington had reached its logical conclusion after a few aimless visits and half-hearted letters between them did nothing to change things. The affair was over. (In 1892, when he was 59 years old, Hartington finally married for the first and only time in his life. His father had died in 1891, making Hartington the 8th Duke of Devonshire. The duke's bride was his longtime mistress, the Duchess of Manchester, whose first husband had conveniently died in 1890. Skittles continued to collect the yearly income Hartington provided and kept all his letters until the end of her life.)

Paris was good for Skittles. It rounded her out, helping her understand who she was—-and wasn’t. She saw that she would never be like the Parisian courtesans, with their wild flirting and emotional outbursts. The Parisians called attention to themselves with their extravagant dress and open criticism of the servants who waited on them at dinner parties. Still, Skittles studied their graceful manners in social situations. She heard how they talked about travel and politics and learned about their preferences in food, wine and perfume. She saw their ease in the world and imitated it, opening herself up to new experience.

Combining this sophistication with her British resiliency, Skittles developed a persona for herself: the refined and elegant Englishwoman of subdued taste. One memoirist wrote, “Everything was so quiet. The harness and livery of her servants and she herself dressed always in dark colors, so that no one unless he knew her would have suspected that she was of the demi-monde.”

Here she is, the Lady Skittles:

While the Parisian girls attended gambling parties and masqued balls, Skittles' poor French and homesickness contributed to her quieter ways. She rode horses and opened her doors to visitors from England. She also spent time in diplomatic circles, entertaining ambassadors, politicians and the young attachés who worked at the British embassy.

In her travels abroad, Skittles also learned the value of sleeping with the natives to learn the language. Her best French teacher was the sixty-something Achille Fould, Napoleon III’s finance minister, a skillful yet undemanding lover who showed her a few new tricks in bed as well as the importance of looking carefully after her money. A banker by trade, Fould taught Skittles the value of compound interest and provided her with an income in addition to the one she received from Hartington.

Maybe he saw himself as Skittles' savior, or a father figure who just happens to have intimate relations with his little darling every now and then, which can happen when a kind and educated man hires a prostitute. Fould was charmed by Skittles' attempts to improve herself as much as by her elegant beauty. She was his new cultural project. This suited Skittles perfectly because she was at a time in her life when she was hungry for education. She had already started to read literature and attend painting exhibits at the Barbizon School.

Just as important, Skittles was learning to be a grown woman. She found that she enjoyed her financial independence and property rights, and she had no intention of losing them to marriage. And now that finding a husband was no longer her goal, she found self-expression in sex without expectations. For a woman of her straightforward character, it was a relief to let go of the submissive poses she had adopted as a girl. She didn't have to hide her talents for arranging a seductive atmosphere, choosing the correct wines, making the first move and inventing new positions in lovemaking.

Thanks to Achille Fould, who was not a jealous man, Skittles found plenty of opportunity to practice her new talents in the small gatherings of rich, powerful and interesting men she invited to her salons. The most interesting one of all was a brooding young man with a strikingly pretty face and a poet's bearing because he was indeed a poet.

In Part 9, we meet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, a converted Catholic and virgin who "still trembled at the thought of carnal sin and eternal damnation, but as a romanticist longed for the love of some earthly goddess”...