A Funny Thing Called Love

Nancy Chan

Description

In March 1948 in a small town on the outskirts of the least sophisticated borough of New York City a young girl is born into a society that will in 10 short years explode, marking the start of the cultural revolution that swept across America upending the old structures in society and one’s inner stability. Hiding in plain sight was the sexual revolution.

Whose responsibility was it to inform this girl about the changes in society or was it too big for parents, teachers and ministers to wrestle with it?
In the world in which she grows up her parents are the actors and she is only a member of the audience, to be seen and not heard, encouraged not to speak. Yet, she experiences the silent influence of patriarchy, gender discrimination and class divisions as a vise and decides to rebel by surreptitiously exploring the one avenue that comes naturally, her burgeoning sexuality and becomes a victim of her own folly.
The end of her spiritual unconsciousness comes when she leaves the tribe and commits to the talking cure, a brand of therapy made famous by Sigmund Freud.
“Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.” -- Zen Proverb

Sujets

• Women
• Años 1960
• Biography
• 1960s
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 27 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663243171
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A FUNNY THING CALLED LOVE
 
 
 
 
 
Nancy Chan
 
 
 
 

 
A FUNNY THING CALLED LOVE
 
 
Copyright © 2022 Nancy Chan.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4318-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4317-1 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022915507
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 10/26/2022

 
In memory of Edward Louis Greene
W hen World War II ended in 1945, there was a sense of euphoria and liberation in America, but it was short-lived when the White House, with the help from the media, launched the cold war against Communism. The year I was born was 1948, when American artists and writers were beginning to realize that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only ended the war but also ushered in the dark side of the postwar era. The horrors of the German concentration camps were revealed. The Iron Curtain descended on Europe, and in 1950, a new war began on the Korean peninsula.
On the domestic front, J. Edgar Hoover conjoined the Red Scare with his hateful pursuit of homosexuals to launch the Lavender Scare and used Senator Joe McCarthy to do his dirty work by harassing vulnerable writers and artists, suppressing innovation and radicalism. Conformity and commercialization were the result.
Instead of deploying costly standing armies, in 1953, President Eisenhower issued the New Look doctrine, advocating use of covert activity and the manufacture of nuclear arms to deter enemies, and protect regions vital to our national security interests. Almost immediately, the Soviet Union followed suit, building bigger and more powerful bombs, threatening massive retaliation if its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe were compromised.
I recall the difficulty I had getting Mother’s attention when news of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 seeped into our home. I tried to have a conversation with her about it, but she was in a hurry assembling care packages in the kitchen and thinking about the safety of our relatives. “Where is Hungary?” I wanted to know. She was exasperated, and I felt frustrated. My questioning was getting us nowhere.
I lived in New York City, the epicenter of culture and possibility, but the Staten Island town where I grew up had its heyday during the latter part of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, when it was a vibrant company town of close to a thousand people at its peak, with mostly German, Austrian, and Hungarian immigrants. In 1836, Balthasar Kreischer, the nineteenth-century brick baron, came to this country from Bavaria, Germany, and built a successful business manufacturing bricks from the rich clay deposits found in Charleston, formerly known as Kreischerville. The clay was plentiful and close enough to the surface to be easily exploited.
The street I lived on ended at the shoreline of a heavily used tidal strait separating New York and New Jersey; it had been home to the petroleum and chemical industries. Six million gallons of raw sewage flowed into it every day. Following the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911, the Standard Oil Company of New York (SOCONY) was founded, and in 1935 Port Socony, a mammoth oil port, was created on 257 acres in southwestern Staten Island. It handled 250 million gallons of petroleum products annually and transshipped oil from oceangoing tankers and river barges for distribution throughout New York and New England. We lived several blocks away from Port Socony.
In 1935, my father, Alex, began work as a laborer for the Nassau Smelting and Refining Co., which extracted copper from old telephone wires, producing a hundred million pounds of refined copper annually. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that legislation was enacted to limit the use of asbestos-containing materials in the refining process.
As children, we walked from our house to the shoreline, passing mountains of red clay to arrive at the water’s edge, where we were met by a foul smell and the rusted debris of a bygone era. A feeling of abandonment was palpable. The only visible sign of industrial activity was the monotony of a daily parade of trucks moving in and out of town, carrying the commodity of clay to a far-off destination. From my vantage point, it was hard to believe that Staten Island was part of New York City.
The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 was the first time the events in the news affected my daily life. My mother, Olga, and I confronted the possibility of having to sequester in our basement in case of a nuclear attack. The stairs leading to the basement were off the kitchen. I opened the door to peer down the stairs, imagining the logistics of eating down there.
I remember being a happy child playing doctor with a neighborhood boy in the backyard while my mother went in and out of the house, hanging clothes out to dry. I remember looking over my shoulder, concerned that she might see me standing over Jimmy so he could look up my dress or lying down in the grass while he examined me. It would seem outlandish to admit that I was sexually aroused at the age of four or five, but I felt something extra about what I was doing and wanted to continue doing it because it gave me pleasure. A devilish little boy in kindergarten exposed himself to me while our teacher read us a story. I looked at his private parts and thought, Spaghetti and meatballs , never saying a word about it to anyone. In first grade, I liked a boy named Arthur. The same height, we stood next to each other in the back of the line. One day, I leaned over and kissed him.
I took lazy walks to the candy store with my sister, Arlene. With a nickel in hand, we pressed our noses against the display cabinet to choose from among the Malted Milk Balls, Red Raspberry Dollars, Bazookas, Mary Janes, and Tootsie Pops, while the aroma of sauerkraut and Hungarian sausage wafted in from a private room in the back of the store. With a quarter, we could buy a Pepsi and a bag of potato chips. Sometimes, it was our only source of diversion on long, drawn-out summer days with nothing to do.
Alone in my bedroom, I looked out the window as if I were watching television, enchanted by a family across the street playing together. The children happily chased each other around the yard, trying to avoid capture by Jeff, the grownup son, whose aim was to toss them one by one into the pool. In and out of the house they went, accompanied by the intermittent sound of a screen door squeaking open and then snapping shut, while the scent of a smoky barbecue drifted into my room.
I navigated the woods behind our house with my friends, playing tag and hide-and-go-seek at night. I enjoyed the exertion, using my wits to avoid capture. In winter, I skated under the stars on Haberkorn’s Pond, where a roaring bonfire was built to keep us warm. I was pleased with my ability to go fast while skating backwards. I flew down Winant Place on a sled on the backs of neighborhood boys in the middle of a blizzard, battling the wind and freezing cold. A scar on my right thumb documents the night a sled ran over it. But I was young and innocent and the mysteries of life had yet to unfold.
I started winning spelling bees in the fourth grade and by eighth grade had become the school’s undefeated champion. When my older sister, Lynn, competed and misspelled the word eager , I tried to console her by saying something upbeat. “Better luck next time,” I said, but she made a face and pushed me aside. Later, I caught a glimpse of her preening in front of the dining room mirror and thought, She’s pretty satisfied with her self.
I prevailed upon Olga to buy me things my classmate Beth wore, like a pair of red leather, fur-lined snow boots and ballet slippers made out of paper. Alex became curious about this original stylist and wished to meet her.