[interlude: the dead duckling]

This afternoon we were talking about Custer's Last Stand at Little Bighorn, bottles of lukewarm water sloshing in our hands as we walked along the Schuylkill Banks. Our conversation relates to the title of this post in a way that surprised even me as I sat down to write this.

General George Armstrong Custer was a decorated veteran of the Civil War and the Indian Wars until he was killed in 1876 -- at age 36 -- during the Battle of Little Bighorn while trying to take Montana's Black Hills from Native Americans who refused to relocate to reservations. The details and aftermath of the battle are tragic and profoundly sad for both sides, and our exchange was thoughtful and poignant, as the talks between us -- two history buffs -- often are. But it was Custer's hair that made me weep over what I saw in the Schuylkill River as the sun was lowering over Boathouse Row today.

Custer's hair was yellow. Not blond, but yellow, from the stories of his contemporaries. And he wore it long, curled in ringlets and scented with cinnamon oil, with bushy yellow mustache and beard to boot. Whatever people said about the guy, he certainly wasn't boring -- and we were discussing just that when we caught sight of the otherwise-unnoticed drama playing out on the water before us.

The color of the duckling's soft belly -- "Custer yellow," you could say -- was startling against the brown back feathers of its mallard siblings and their mother, all right-side up, on the thick green of the river. At first, I thought the tiny duck had capsized, turtle-like, during its first swimming lessons and that mamma was trying to flip the clumsy baby over, hurriedly and annoyed, so that the group could continue. But something about the way she grabbed it by the neck and wildly thrashed it made my heart sink.

Still on its back, the hatchling's miniature feet air-paddled as its yellow chest fluttered and heaved, but then, after several violent shakes, it finally stopped moving. I watched, stricken, as the five other ducklings quickly imitated their mother's mercy killing: swimming to the scene, they surrounded their dead brother and alternately took quick nips to his still head and neck. My heart was breaking but I couldn't stop looking.

Mamma was near. She paddled slowly around the group and then started to swim away. The ducklings knew their cue and immediately broke behind her, diverging paddling lines streaming in the water behind them like ribbons. And then the mother stopped, invisible webbed feet turning her body halfway round, looking at the soggy patch of tiny feathers. Was she sad? Remorseful? Making sure it was dead? As she turned around again and continued with her brood out of my vision, I swear I could hear her thinking -- "he is gone the living must tend to the living" -- and the little yellow body slowly floated away downstream and sank out of view.

Bottom of the First, Part II: Roses Are Black, Bruises Are Blue

Among them were a young Baltimore police officer, a Wall Street exec with stockings and satin panties under his pinstriped suit, a pony-tailed I.T. guy, and a college instructor from a small Midwestern town. Six in all, the men silently slid the ropes attached to my wrist and ankle cuffs through the loops on opposite sides of the wooden frame. I kicked off the four-inch candy-red pumps to improve my leverage, to increase my "give" against sudden sharp motion. Mouthing the words to my favorite dark cabaret CD on the boombox behind us, I felt each brush of a muscled arm against my skin like a shock. My eyes shut tight.

A lifelong fan of roller-coasters, I'll ride one again and again until I can boast that I've kept my eyes open the whole time. Somehow I grew up thinking that if I watched the illusion of my own demise, I've conquered it; if I saw death coming head-on, it would slink away. And so it was in those few moments before the "scene" started. I forced my eyes open and consciously recorded every detail: other chessboard squares alive with their own dramas, cheap ballroom carpet and chandeliers, observers starting to gather around us in anticipation. Closer, the laying out of "toys" on a bench to my left: flogger, crop, dildo, violet wand, whip, and ... blindfold? Despite my protests, the last was gently placed over my eyes, hair lifted by one set of hands, strings tied by another. I could no longer say I was completely nude.

"It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure." So wrote Donatien Alphonse François (a.k.a. Marquis de Sade)in the 18th century.(Personally I would substitute "sometimes" for "always," but who am I to edit a renowned libertine, writer, and revolutionary? Wikipedia -- of all places -- describes him with a line I really like: "He was a proponent of extreme freedom, unrestrained by morality, religion, or law.") All digressions aside, though, in the "Scene" (which defines either an individual play session or BDSM in general), I had the reputation as a "pain slut" and "uppity bottom" who shunned the use of safewords. I expected tops to hold nothing back, and would of course offer the same in return. Give me all you got, but you can bet I will fight you tooth and nail. This is not theater with expensive costumes and props -- for me, it is a real and raw exchange of power. Both Dominant and Submissive walk (or limp) away forever changed, even in some small way; bodies and minds exhausted for a time, but stronger and bigger for the collision.

I knew it was coming, but the first strike still made me stagger. A crop to the thighs instantly transported me into a state of adrenalized hyper-awareness stronger than any drug. For the next half-hour or so, I was pure anima; sensing each new contact and moving toward it; the impossible child of Psyche and Aphrodite; alternately gasping, laughing, smiling, and sobbing.

I've always envied those who believe in Something, and only in the first few post-scene moments, when I was untied or taken down or picked up, I had fleeting flashes of an all-loving Absolute. Too soon, always too soon, the vision would give way once again to agnosticism, the keepsake stripes and bruises would fade back into skin, and only the memory of both would remain.

Bottom of the First, Part I: Roses Are Black, Bruises Are Blue

Imagine a chessboard. Imagine a chessboard the size of a hotel-ballroom floor. Imagine a chessboard the size of a hotel-ballroom floor in a D.C. suburb. Imagine that each invisibly demarcated 10-foot square showcases a highly specialized fetish, a wonderland on paisley carpeting where even just observing classifies as its own kink. Hundreds of players meet each year on such a board, sustained physically by the hotel's sneeze-guarded buffet and nourished emotionally by moving onto a secret space -- free of workaday identities -- where their true selves reside: be they ponies or riders, puppies or trainers, coma patients, sissy maids, exhibitionists or voyeurs, the ravagers or the ravished, the old guard or the neophytes. If you willingly tumble down this rabbit hole, you'll awaken in a nondescript complex somewhere near a strip mall, embarking on a three-day adventure that shares its name with the group that organizes it: Black Rose.

For those [I assume most of you reading now] unfamiliar with BR, I quote from its Web site:

"Black Rose is a not-for-profit organization which provides a forum for the many different expressions of power in love and play. This can include dominance & submission, bondage & discipline, fetishism, cross-dressing, to name a few.
"Black Rose is a support, education, and social group for adults who share these interests in the context of caring relationships. Black Rose is a pan sexual group, open to those of any sexual orientation. It is our goal to provide a comfortable, safe, and discreet environment where one can meet others of like mind. We are not a swingers group or a sex club. We do not make referrals. We are not a chapter-based organization. We welcome the interested, the inquisitive, and the discerning to join us as we explain, explore, and enjoy."

Not knowing what to expect, I went to Black Rose once with a dominant male lover. Startlingly and beautifully, I suddenly was among hundreds of "my people" -- not necessarily due to any particular fetish represented there, but because I was transported at once to a dreamscape where pawns were equal to kings, to an alien world populated by those similarly deemed deviant, dangerous, or deranged. Donning a red-and-black embroidered corset and long lacy skirt, I imagined I had stepped out of a colorized erotic postcard viewed furtively by Victorian gentlemen. I was not judged. I did not hide or pretend. I learned so much about how others give and receive pleasure. And I advanced onto my own square on the board.

Top of the First: The Phillies Kidnapped Me in 1980

Even as a 14-year-old straight-A student, I fantasized about sex and baseball, all intertwined together in dark and wonderful ways. Nineteen-eighty was the first season of my love affair with the Philadelphia Phillies; the first full year of my period; the spring when my mother taught me all about baseball while ironing my pajamas in her bra, lit cigarette dangling from waxy red lips, over-processed blond hair frizzed around her face, eyebrows drawn on crooked, shvitzing through menopause for, like, the tenth straight year. Her mother Sarah, who had emigrated from Poland to Philadelphia with her family as a toddler, had learned baseball as a way to assimilate; taught her daughter Sophie the rules and love of the game; and in turn, Sophie and I watched baseball together all that summer with my best friend D. My mother, Harry Kalas, and Richie Ashburn -- as all good teachers do -- instilled in their students a love that lasted a lifetime.

At that time in Philadelphia, there were FIVE daily newspapers: the Inquirer, the Daily News, the Bulletin and the Evening Bulletin, and the Journal (only the first two survive). Every day, I diligently clipped Phillies articles and photographs from each one and taped them into scrapbooks, little knowing that year would be the year the first World Championship came to the city. There they lay in grainy black-and-white newsprint: the men with tight pants who would become the objects of my first real sexual fantasies.

In my very active fantasy world, I not only joined them in sex, but also in sport: I decided I would become (drum roll) the First Female Major League Baseball Player. I enrolled in a girls softball league (position: catcher) and, accompanied by the jeers of neighborhood kids, had my mother throw batting practice to me in a nearby field every afternoon. And in the bathtub each evening, using a technique cribbed from my sister's copy of The Sensuous Woman, I closed my eyes and masturbated by positioning myself under the running faucet, on my back with legs spread, thinking mainly about tall blond pitcher Larry "L.C." Christenson, although I believe most of them eventually got a turn.

During that magical summer, I was no longer "Susan Finkelstein"; because all good baseball players had nicknames, I re-created myself as "Crisco Russell" (right-fielder Bake McBride was known as "Shake and Bake," and a big tub of Crisco shortening in the kitchen cabinet inspired me similarly). Somehow, I had convinced D. to participate in my little fairy tale, and together we wrote a long and complicated saga where I (as Crisco) was actually a member of the 1980 Phillies team (and the First Female Major League Baseball Player), sparking resentment and rage among many of my teammates. Their hostility grew to such a point that they hatched a plan to kidnap me -- possibly even kill me, but not before doing deliciously terrible things -- in order to remove the blight that Woman had inflicted onto Baseball. (Of course, my golden boy L.C. was never in on it.) At night, as I lay in bed replaying the highlights of that day's game, my thoughts inevitably turned to the players "teaching me a lesson"; in the dark of my Northeast Philadelphia bedroom, the long pillow in the carefully ironed pillowcase was transformed into each Phillie, who, one by one, forced himself on me, rough and hard and smelling like Spray and Starch. I had a very active sex life (though still a virgin) with turn-ons even then that would be categorized as abnormal.

What I wouldn't give to have the "Crisco" notebooks and letters back now! Who knows what 30 years and household moves and my mother's death have done with them? The only souvenir that has survived was part of D.'s gift to me on my Sweet 16: a kind of keepsake album with sundry mementos of our childhood friendship separated by five houses on Nester Street. A crudely typewritten letter on onion-skin paper bears the return address of the Phillies Front Office and the date July 6, 1980 (I remember laughing hysterically as I wrote it, showed it to D., and added it to the "file"):

We are sending this letter to you because we know you are a close friend and confidante of Susan Iris Finkelstein (alias Crisco Russell). We received a letter from Russell for a Mr. L. Christenson, saying various things. Here is exactly what was in that letter:

Dear Larry, I got your telegram -- please don't get married yet. I can't come back and live for a very long time. They all hurt me badly , I was almost killed. My career is over. I still love you, Larry. Please wait for me as long as it takes. One day, it'll all be over. I hope that day is soon. Love, Crisco

We were thinking that maybe you could get into the Vet to explain this. The police, of course, are all looking for Ms. Russell and this letter could be the lead we all are waiting for. Please get in touch with your friend, Crisco. It could be the most important thing you will ever do. If she was indeed harmed, we will need her to help convict her attackers. We know who they are, but we are unable to punish them because of confidential reasons. A reward will be given to you if you can bring Crisco to us for further questioning . Your involvement, of course, will be kept in the strictest confidence. Also, if you and Crisco come to us, maximum security will be given to you at all times. If you don't know the whereabouts of Russell, please come anyway. The thing that you think is not important could be of great help to the police and us.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Ruly Carpenter

Philadelphia Phillies Owner

By winter of that year, I had divested myself of a career as any kind of athlete; after all, 15 is much more grown up than 14 (funny how a year's time can bring such developmental change in adolescence). Apparently, L.C. didn't sell out his teammates in the end, Crisco never did make it back, and it took 28 years for Philadelphia to win the World Series again. But some things from that summer have stayed constant: the Phillies continue to alternately win and break my heart, D. has a whimsical streak she hides from the world, and I still masturbate in the bathtub.

Pregame: Why Fifteen Minutes Isn't Long Enough

Some would say my turn at Andy Warhol's "15 Minutes of Fame" has long been over, and perhaps they are right. But I think Warhol would have amended his 1968 allotment in this, the so-called Internet Age, where time is warped in freaky and unpredictable ways: some people never grow old, while new wrinkles on other faces are daily scrutinized; news stories can last 10 seconds or 10 years; and a woman, when publicly declared a whore or a criminal, is branded such for a very long time, regardless of the truth of the charge.


And so, here we are: Finkelstein once again "drawing attention" to herself, with apologies to Warhol for re-calculating his prophecy. All pretensions aside, though, I do believe I have something more to say. I want to contribute freely to the ongoing conversation in the electronic town square; I want to shout in the voice I was forced to check during my persecution -- uh, prosecution; I want to declare my love for sex and baseball and the patchwork remains of everything else in the way that artists have always needed to. And, in an attempt once again to convince myself that English is a perfectly good subject to major in, I close this prologue with a quote from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass":

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.

Now, onto the good stuff!
(For those who need refreshing, back story can be found on my Web page.)