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Everything You Wanted to Know about Maya but Were Afraid to
Ask...
Every wonder where I came from? Here's a year-by-year play of some of my biographical highlights...
0 - I am born in the wee hours of Friday, May 5, 1972, after 26 hours of labor, most of it rather mild, in Salt Springs, Nova Scotia. The morning before I am born, my mother is "aware of something stirring," but goes to a scheduled choir rehearsal that night anyway, and whiles away a few hours singing Mozart's "Requiem." She has taken her suitcase with her, however, which is a good thing, because by the end of rehearsal the contractions are 20 minutes apart. I am born sometime between 1 and 2 in the morning, but it takes awhile for my father to get the news. My mother finally reaches Mrs. Robley, the telephone operator, at 7 in the morning.
3 months - My mother stops breastfeeding me. The motive is uncertain, although we have a profusion of houseguests (including my grandfather, my step-grandmother, and "the dogs," a collection of yapping Yorkshire terriers), that makes it difficult for my mother "to find quiet" And besides, "everybody wanted to feed you, too." Unfortunately, this early weaning proves quite stressful to my gastrointestinal system. Not having read up on any literature regarding formula, my mother has replaced breastmilk with only slightly diluted regular milk.
1 - Despite the early trauma of tummy trouble, I am nevertheless a "quiet and observant" child. My mother recalls, "You were very happy playing with dust bunnies."
2 - The family moves to Israel - Mom, Dad, Sis, and me - where we nestle ourselves cozily at a kibbutz on the Lebanese border. When I finally start speaking full sentences, the words come out in a torrent of English, Hebrew, and Spanish (due to the Argentinian volunteeers on our kibbutz). No one understands me for awhile, even though I think I'm making perfect sense.
4 - Probably my earliest, most solid memory, and it's a significant one. The year I picked up my first basketball, and learned to shoot at the adult hoop. My companion is a deaf boy named El Ad, and we spend countless carefree hours on the court.
5-6 - El Ad is replaced the following year by a girl named Sharon in the role of "best friend." Sharon is a bit of an oddity, but I don't think much of it at the time. She has a particular fondness for eating insects, with a predilection towards dung beetles. Horrified parents and schoolteachers regularly find her at the sandbox on school grounds, her mouth full of crushed creatures. I admire her for this, but can only go so far as to sample a snail shell - just the shell, mind you, no snail attached. Sharon and I also have a little game we play called "Doctor," and one afternoon someone finds us in a compromising position and we are made to feel mortified by behaviors we were certain were fairly innocuous.
7-8 - After 5 years of kibbutz living, my family moves to the cosmopolitan center of the world - Waynesboro, Virginia. The heart of Southern Baptist Country. I am completely disoriented, of course (in addition to having to learn English), but manage to make some new friends anyway. Sean and Zack, who live across the street from us, are my basketball buddies. And Bea and Janet, two sisters who also live down the block, who remind my sister and me that we are going to hell since we don't believe in Jesus. I have my first vaguely sexual experience with the two boys (separately), after a wrestling match with Zack takes a bit of a turn. I am pinned by his giant 13-year-old arms on the beige carpeted stairs of his house when he suddenly softens and kisses me on the mouth. Sean comes barreling down the hallway and yells, "My turn!" then grabs me and leads me to his bedroom. "Wanna fuck?" he says, but my 7-year-old Hebrew-trained brain hasn't learned the word yet. I shrug my shoulders and basically we repeat the wrestling match I'd just been through with his brother. No fucking involved, just Hulk Hogan-like antics. A week later, Sean furtively passes me a note on our way home from school. "I would jump off a cliff for you," it says.
Academically, I turn out to be a bit of a math wiz. I am placed in my sister's 4th grade math class and get consistently higher marks than she does on our weekly tests. Competition is high everywhere, though - my father is teaching us both to play the piano, and our early evenings are punctuated by intense practice sessions. This is ALSO the year we are both introduced to the wonderful world of Scrabble.
My brother, Adam, is born that year. His arrival to me feels unremarkable, and I insist to my parents that he live in the basement so that my sister and I can hold onto our play room. No dice.
9-10 - After my father gets accepted into a graduate program in tropical horticulture, the family moves again - this time to Los Osos, California (near San Luis Obispo). We make the drive across country in three weeks, taking a northern route that brings us to places like South Dakota and Old Faithful Geyser at Yellowstone National Park . My mother makes coupon books for my sister and me to redeem for such items as a pack of gum or a Hershey Bar, and my father insists on playing "The License Plate Game" (who can find a car from Hawaii first?) but my sister and I are occupied by a new obsession - buying commemorative spoons from all the states we visit.
When we arrive at our new home, my sister and I begin yet another year at a new school. This one is a progressive private school at which much of the learning takes place on computers. It seems incredibly futuristic to be doing math problems on a TRS-80, but I also turn out to be quite a typist, and with the typing program I am learning from, I reach speeds of 80 words a minute.
Socially, the landscape seems a bit arid. My class only has 12 kids in it - 3 girls and 9 boys. The girls I don't find that interesting. Nina is a prissy girly-girl who's constantly combing her hair and trying (unsuccessfully, I might add) to be the teacher's pet. Natalia is a spoiled, slightly overweight child whose parents bring her McDonald's everyday for lunch. When I am nice to her she gives me French Fries, even though we are not supposed to be sharing lunches. No one wants anything from mine anyway - my parents appear to have turned into health freaks on the drive over, and my bag is full of competely embarrassing items such as cottage cheese-and-sprout sandwiches and cans of V-8. What I wouldn't give for a Little Debbie Snack Cake or maybe a Capri-Sun.
I do manage to have my first boyfriend that year, a preppy, rich kid by the name of Warren Findley. Our first and only date is at the movies to see "Return of the Jedi." I don't think we hold hands, but perhaps it's because our hands are full with overflowing bags of popcorn and Sour Patch Kids. The next day at school, Warren breaks up with me during a recess soccer game. He does this by yelling across the field, "Hey, you wanna break up?" and my response is a non-plussed "Sure!" I guess it is too early in the relationship to be disappointed by a breakup. Warren's best friend Ian White sidles up to me later and asks if I want to go out with him. "Okay," I say, rather non-commitally, but we don't even get to a first date. He also asks me out to see "Return of the Jedi," and this time my parents refuse to let me go.
Other memories from that year: writing my first poem, which I still have somewhere in the deep recesses of my scrapbook. It had to do with leaves falling off a tree. I think leaves-falling-off-trees poems represent a major part of my early work. Also that year I take a series of dance classes - a jazz ballet experience that really leave me traumatized for about 15 years. First of all, I have to wear a leotard and ballet slippers, which is awful enough. Then I have to attempt to appear coordinated doing an awkward series of bends and lifts and turns and leaps, which never seems to gel. I think I look all wrong for the part - I am the only girl in class without a ponytail - and even my least distasteful performance (to the tune of John Cougar Mellencamp's "Hurt So Good") is a clumsy one. I unregretfully abandon the thought that I will be a ballerina, and return to the basketball court, slipping effortlessly back to my tomboy identity.
11-12 - The graduate program finished, my dad has the brilliant idea of buying a farm to try out his newly acquired skills and interests. Land in California proves too expensive, of course, so we hustle ourselves to the East Coast for a mid-winter trip and look for properties in Vermont and New Hampshire. My parents settle on a rickety old farmhouse at the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and we return that summer to move in. My first night is a sleepless assemblage of horrific outside noises - foxes, gypsy moths, and creaky trees. Inside it's not much better - a torrent of buzzing mosquitoes surrounds my ears and face, and the house itself is out of some Stephen King thriller. There is even a little path that goes down to a nearby swamp that reminds me a little too much of "Pet Sematary."
The remainder of the summer is spent assimilating into our new digs. The kids peel wallpaper in the rooms we've designated, and workers and machinery arrives at our house and tear everything up. For the first time, I get to have my own room, but my sister's is adjacent to mine, with no doorway in between. We have a little bedtime routine we begin. "Goodnight, Maya," she says, and I follow, "Goodnight, Mikhal." "Goodnight," she adds. "Goodnight," I finish. We do this for the next 6 years.
My first day at yet another new school is a little scary. I have to take a bus, for one, and my class (compared to the one in California) feels huge. About 40 people. I feel like a foreigner, and certainly do not have the fashion sense I need to to fit in. Not that this will ever change, but those things are important when you're 12. Still, despite my clothing faux pas, I meet Becky Tanguay, who will be my best friend for the next 3 years, until we part ways for high school. I didn't realize this then - or at least it didn't quite click - but Becky's mom was gay. She lived with someone who was introduced as her "roommate," but now that I think about it, I think they were a couple.
I remember vaguely there was a motorcycle in the backyard, and a handful of leather jackets floating around the house, and that Becky's mom had one of those hockey haircuts that feature so heavily in the 80s.
That year I finally start pubescing, but only slightly. I've been obsessively reading "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" by Judy Blume and hoping, praying, that I would get my period just like Margaret, but to no avail. I do develop enough in my chest to merit a bra-shopping trip with my mother, which is mortifying enough. In the dressing room, I can't figure out how to put the things on, and my mom has to come in the dressing room to help me out. She hasn't seen me bare-chested for about 5 years or so, and I can tell it's one of those mother-daughter moments that moms love but the daughters absolutely despise. "Oh, Sweetie," she sighs as I reveal my barely developed breasts, and I want to die.
Armed with a new set of bras, though, I feel like I am beginning to fit in.
13-14 - I am deep in my Judy Blume period. I read everything ravenously, and make certain assumptions about my own development based on her characters. So I am disappointed when I'm not menstruating yet (this will come during the summer of my 14th year) and that I don't have a real boyfriend. No one even plays Spin the Bottle or Two Minutes in the Closet at birthday parties, so I'm a little confused about my own sexual inactivity and begin to fear that I am falling behind. I turn to the movies for additional help - "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club" in particular. I decide I am going to have sex by the time I'm sixteen, it just HAS to happen.
15-16 - It is definitely NOT happening. I am at a new school, too, and a boarding student to boot. Still, I decide that I deserve to be with some hot, hunky senior Jake Ryan look-alike. Unfortunately, the year seeems only to be full of algebra and pimples.But I begin to thrive nonetheless. I join the French Club, the school chorus, participate in a play or two. I become a good English student. I play a lot of sports. I sneak occasional cigarettes. I become one of those girls that guys like "as friends" because they can "relate" to them.
Meanwhile, my own female friends seem to be getting all the action,, and yes I'm resentful. This is a trend that will continue through college and beyond.
17-18 - These are the "back-up" years I have given myself for having sex, like Katherine in the book "Forever" by Judy Blume. I read that book many times, of course, mostly because of its reference to "Ralph," the nickname Michael (the boyfriend of the protagonist) gives his penis.
Also, there are fairly in-depth descriptions of what the first time is going to be like, and I believe that preparation is key. I don't have to worry, though, because it's not gonna happen.
I DO have my first real-ish boyfriend, though he is not the studly creature I'd anticipated. His name is Mickey Richardson, and with his skinny ankles and large lung capacity, he's the star runner for the cross-country team. He is also a Seventh Day Adventist, which means we are officially an interfaith couple (something that, for some reason, gives me a minor thrill). Our first kiss takes place in the darkness of the school's echoey squash courts. It involves, I remember, a lot of saliva. I am a senior, finally, but Mickey is a mere sophomore, and I have an inkling that this can't last. That older woman, younger man thing. My next boyfriend, Peter Baldwin, is the new kid that year, and in my class. He's also very skinny, has extremely pale skin from sun malnourishment, and plays the piano - all of this make him, oddly enough, THE hot item of the year. OUR first kiss we have sometime during the Christmas break, and a little too soon after Peter has had some wisdom teeth removed. "Ow," is what he says when I kiss him, and this is probably the harbinger of things to come, i.e. our relationship failure.
Peter has this thing about not wanting to have sex, which pretty much cancels out my Judy Blume deadlines. He tells me he doesn't want to be "the one," which I now realize is a sign of sexual underconfidence and not - as I thought then - an old-fashioned boy-next-door politeness. It doesn't matter, though, because Peter breaks up with me before we even get to third base. This is about a month and a half after we start going out, which is like a year in high school years. The scene of the break up: one of the common rooms of the school. I remember I have my head on his lap, and I'm thinking how everything is just so nice, so hunky-dory, and his little anemic voice pipes up and he says "I don't think we should be together anymore." I can't believe it - it just comes out of left field - and after a few stunned moments of blubbery conversation, I leap out of the room and have myself a good cry. No more boys for the rest of the year - college is around the corner, I decide, and the choices are bound to be more reliable.
19-20 - Hah! Boy was I wrong about college. First of all, all the guys at Brandeis are much shorter than I am. I stick to my studies instead and wade through a series of terribly depressing frat parties. The memory of those Old Milwaukee kegs still makes me nauseous.
The year speeds by, miraculously, and I land myself a summer job at a girl's camp called Forest Acres. Luckily, there is a brother camp down the road a couple of miles, and my first week I meet Jamie, the 25-year-old boy's head counselor. After a few weeks of stolen gropings in the woods, we prepare for the moment of truth and head to the top of something called Jockey Cap - a smallish mountain about twenty minutes from camp. Under the light of a starry sky and a full moon, I finally lose my viriginity. (Note: the moon may not have ACTUALLY been full, but I like to remember it that way).
The act is less of a big deal than I think it would be, especially when conducted on top of some very uncomfortable rocks. Still, I'm exuberant...and relieved to have gotten it over with. Unfortunately, both the exuberance and relief are short-lived. When I get back to camp to confide my new sexual status to my co-counselor, my entire bunk overhears our conversation, and the info gets spread like chicken pox throughout both camps. I become known as the girl who "hit the home run with Jamie," and this plagues me throughout the summer. I don't go back the following year.
Back at school, I discover there's a creative writing program being offered. I apply, get in, and start churning out some not-so-great poetry. I also start dating another man, Jason, a hunky specimen of a thing I ask out after spotting on campus. It's a real coup for me, or at least that's what it feels like. Jason is a former actor who's returned to school at the ripe old age of 25 (the acting career gone kaput), and when I first see him, my libido is panting. Tall, penetrating green eyes, with biker's legs and a body I can only imagine. It takes me a good two weeks to get up the courage to ask him out, and when he says yes I feel like I'm in one of those Hollywood musicals where the heroine gets her own tap dance number.
I am in a swoon for the month-and-a-half that Jason and I are together, and then it's over. Just like that. He decides that he should take advantage of the fact that there are 1200 women he could be sleeping with over the next two years, so he better get going. And he does. And I say "bye-bye."
21-22 - The poetry writing is getting a lot better. I spend the next two summers at a Jewish camp in Maine. For some strange reason, I am picked to lead the Saturday morning services. I have not had any religious training since I was about 10, but I wing it. Returning to college, I prepare for my final year. I focus on the task at hand, which for me means getting good grades. I do not, ever, think about the future, except for the moment I graduate. On that day, I walk around in my little black robe and my little black cap and get depressed thinking about the ensuing job search. Idon't get very far with it, and I spend that summer working at a clothing store in Harvard Square.
Luckily, we don't get paid commission, because I'm not very good at this job. I learn how to fold sweaters, but that's about it. Still, I seem to attract a certain proportion of our customers on the sole merit that I happen to be a great listener. But listening skills do not a retail wunderkind make and after 4 months, it is more than time for me to go. I decide to fly the proverbial coop once and for all. I pick the furthest place on the map I can think of - Australia - leaving that winter and arriving, miraculously, just in time for summer in Sydney.
I stay Down Under for three months, meet an English guy named Simon who's on the cusp of leaving the country to try to make it in San Francisco. I have one of those I'm-in-love-with-my-freedom flings that seem to happen when you're traveling in another country. Simon is 6'5", has that British accent thing going for him, and just adores American women. While we are apart, Simon writes me florid love letters wishing for a reunion. That following March, I arrive in San Francisco freshly crispy from the hot Australian sun. About two seconds into my anticipated reunion with Simon, I realize that there is no WAY this is going to work. I don't know why, but after three months in Australia, the novelty of the whole accent thing has worn off. But in those two seconds, I seem to have fallen in love with San Francisco instead, and when I start thinking about going back to a sloshy, soggy East Coast winter, I know that is SO not where I want to be.
23-24 - I arrive back in San Francisco after a brief trip home to collect my things. I get to the city on the eve of my 23rd birthday, bearing only two large duffel bags and a certain wide-eyed innocence. I spend the entire first week buying out Bed, Bath & Beyond and looking for work. It is a tough year - my internship at a PR agency brings in only $600 a month, but there is a highlight or two. Our big client is Ringling Bros. Circus and I arrange to participate in one of the clown acts during an afternoon show at the Cow Palace. On the heels of this experience, I take a trampoline class at the Circus Arts School and nearly neuter my instructor when one of my jumps goes awry.
My first real relationship materializes. I meet Robin on the basketball court at the Panhandle. Our first date is at a concert for a group called Superbooty. Apparently, this is the harbinger of things to come. We last - miraculously but exhaustively - for 10 months. Eventually, I move into my own apartment in the Tender Nob (or Upper Loin, depending on your perspective) and find myself amidst a throng of cross-dressing prostitutes. I temp for a few months, doing such college diploma-worthy tasks as alphabetizing and paper shredding.
25-26 - I am now in my second year at San Francisco·Peninsula Parent Newsmagazine. I am the youngest person in the office by about 20 years, but I am happier than I've been in ages. Within a year, I am promoted to managing editor, which looks very nice on my business card. Also that year, I have an affair, something very un-family-values-like, but I keep that under wraps for obvious reasons. I have, by this time, moved into the Mission, become a burrito connoisseur, and continue my basketball playing at Dolores Park, where I am the only woman on the court. I take tap dance lessons, highly unsuccessful. I also buy my first car, a 1982 red-orange BMW, from my boss at work. It is a very reasonable $2,500, but my boss insists that I also pay her in poetry, so I compose a birthday sonnet, a few limericks, and even a sestina. I happily accept my new commuter status (grateful to leave MUNI behind), and become very radio proficient, memorizing top 40 songs in little or no time.
27-28 - High drama years. The affair is discovered, a marriage is ended, and I embark on the broiling sea of romance. This is probably not the right time to be having a relationship with someone so recently available, but there is a whole Victorian quality to the thing which absolutely appeals to my "English Patient/Room With a View" sensibilities. In the middle of my 27th year, I also become romantically entangled with a woman, which is a new thing. While one would think this would lead to a period of piercing self-examination at the time, this doesn't actually happen until later, after things dissolve. By this time my other relationship is also over, I've left my job, and it's time to do something new. After sufficient time processing the tumultuous events of the year, I find a well-paying editorial job at a custom publishing company in downtown San Francisco. I start rock-climbing at Mission Cliffs and develop muscles I never knew existed. I also move again, to a chi-chi pad in Pac. Heights. I am floored by all this space.
For a little while I'm enthralled by working in the hustle and bustle of Pine and Battery Streets. I spend a lot of money buying casual business attire. I drink a lot of lattes. I even enjoy the 1B California Express bus ride for a while. All of these novelties wear off, though, and I leave my job within a year, ready for adventure. The adventure comes in the form of a three-month trip to England, where I write ferociously, drink lots of tea, and meet practically no one my age. There are a lot of 22-year-olds traveling, however, fresh-faced, buoyant, the-world-is-my-oyster-types.
I am nice and don't break their bubble about the real world.
29-30. Back from my trip, I find a job briefly at the Jewish Community Center summer camp as their assistant director. I quit after the second day of camp, though, when I realize my job title isn't really "Assistant Director" but "Crisis Manager." My last afternoon at the JCC I lose track of about half the kids, and when their parents arrive I have to figure out a polite, non-anxiety provoking way of saying "I have no idea where your children are." After the JCC, I really start digging in my heels with the whole writing thing. I live off my savings for a while, then get involved in the whole catering world. I assemble a tux together and battle some gender identity issues. I also learn that certain companies will actually have you do things like "serve the osso bucco at the 9 o'clock position on the plate" and that the trick of doing the work successfully is simply looking busy. So I develop a way of looking intensely involved in napkin folding, fork alignment and bread basket placement.
At present - Nearly half-way through the year and I can tell you that I've self-published my first book and been trying to "get it out there" by doing readings and talking it up at dinner parties. I held an official book launch in June, which was really a big art-food-music extravaganza with some creative co-conspirators that somehow managed to attract about 250 people. I can also tell you that I had a brief job writing scripts for a children's educational software program, that I still cater occasionally, and that currently I am doing a part-time stint at a website called Greatschools.net. Still doing some freelance writing when I can a chance (or an invitation) - have done some "fascinating writing projects" on household mold and trends in dentistry for a magazine in San Diego called Living in Style. What next, Woodworks Unlimited? Scrapbooking Bimonthly? Western Plumber?
Stay tuned.