The Saving Grace of the Main Library
Theatrical ableism, an unforgettable compliment, and people making things okay
When Addie and I were in New Orleans, we spent almost every hour of every day on various adventures: we would wake up, make coffee, check our email and converse about a wide array of things while we leisurely drank it, then get dressed and head out, only to return late in the evening. That’s my life (when unscheduled) anywhere I feel like I belong. That is not, typically, my life in San Francisco.
But I changed that yesterday because I had research to do. I’m working on a novel that takes place in 1974, and I’ve been psyching myself up for the research process by delving into historical fiction (specifically, for the past few days, Judy Blume’s dazzling book for adults, In the Unlikely Event). You may remember that the heiress Patty Hearst was abducted in February of ‘74, only to resurface in April as Tania, now in cahoots with her kidnappers, the Symbionese Liberation Army.
My novel is not about Patty Hearst. But the first half of that story is relevant, because the first half of her story has felt relevant to me since I was in high school: Chick who comes from an astronomical family fortune gets kidnapped from her place in Berkeley where she’s living with this boring family-approved dude. She goes from unimaginable comfort to a claustrophobic nightmare, taken out of the closet in which she’s tied up only for meals. But those meals become conversations, conversations about politics, and she begins to turn her back on everything her monumentally wealthy family stands for. Her protective parents have been putting out calls throughout all media begging to hear her voice, and when we, Worried America, who’ve been listening to the SLA’s manifestos sent menacingly over the radio, finally see her, she’s got a gun, and she’s robbing a bank, and she’s Tania, rocking a revolutionary’s beret.
Is it wrong to admit that the first time I heard this story as a teenager, it gave me a lot of hope? Well, we are who we are. So my characters and their shenanigans are broadly in dialogue with the wild goings-on of the SLA, in a different way than most people were. As the editors of that hot new magazine, People Weekly, put it, “Even in the East Bay area of California, which has a tolerance for oddities, the SLA has been an unreal creation.” People hit the stands for the first time in March of ‘74, so they were all over the “spectacular bank robbery” that shocked the nation a month later.
When I stepped off the train for the purposes of entering the palatial Main Library that houses the city’s magazine archives, I momentarily regretted my trek. The elevator at the station got stuck, so I asked the guy operating it to open the door so I could use the stairs. As I headed up, a dude who was obviously severely mentally ill started imitating my gait and shouting “HA! HA! HA! HA!”
This was after I had to announce to a woman who was just sittin’ on the stairs chillin’, right in the middle, that “I’ll be where you are in a minute so you’ll probably have to move, just a heads up.” She rose and left without a word, because why would she apologize: that would necessitate acknowledging that a thing SHE WANTED TO DO inconvenienced that most terrifying of entities, another human being. White folks around here don’t take kindly to that acknowledgement, it’s a cultural norm.
Then came Mr. Ha! Ha! Ha! and his improv talents. Which he didn’t have, it was inaccurate. I’ve been imitated before. You know who gets it right? High school students. But it hits differently from a grown-ass man, so my heart was racing. Fuck this town, I thought. This is why I don’t leave my neighborhood, boring as my neighborhood is.
Then I walked into the building, that beautiful beautiful building, The San Francisco Main Library, and readers? All was well. Not just because of the architectural gorgeousness that surrounded me, or how angelically helpful the reference librarians were in procuring for me thick pulsing bound periodical-books of People (Chloe’s favorite magazine) and Popular Mechanics (Felix’s favorite magazine) and Ms. (a magazine that Chloe’s on the fence about, Felix is actually more intrigued) for the entirety of 1974. That was bliss enough. But just as I was riding that nerdiest of highs, the one you get from archival research, thinking life couldn’t get any better, this…this really attractive guy politely got my attention and said,
“I really like your hair. You remind me of a comic book character, I don’t know if you would know her. Tank Girl?”
I was stunned.
I can take or leave what I’ve seen of the comics, but no character on film affected 19-year-old me to the ecstatic height and where have you been all my life depth of Tank Girl as portrayed by Lori Petti. Immediately after watching that feminist achievement for the first time, I went through my vast collection of wild printed tights and colored fishnets and laid out every pair that I knew didn’t fit exactly and made them all into arm-warmers. I wanted to be her, exactly her, not just in aesthetics, but in a willingness to fight relentlessly, to kick ass with a sharp wit that never, ever dulled, no matter how brutal things got. Tank Girl begins with a violent fight — one that I found quite shocking to watch, actually, between her and two villainous dudes — but she never lets them take a damn thing away from her, no matter what.
Then Ice-T is a kangaroo-human hybrid?!
Tank Girl is a fucking revelation.
I couldn’t believe that anyone was comparing me to her for any reason. The fact that he was hot is icing on the cake, I’ll dance to that compliment from anyone: it did help make the moment even more dreamlike though. I said, “I. LOVED. that movie. When. when I was a teenager.”
He said, “Oh, so you do know! Is that what inspired you?”
I said, “…Not consciously, no.”
And he laughed lightly and we wished each other a good day, and I went back to my magazines, wildly relieved that I don’t live in an age of recipes for “fruit slaw” (FRUIT SALAD WITH MAYONNAISE) or Oil of Olay ads that ask, “Do you look too old to land the job you want?” or cigarette ads everywhere everywhere everywhere everywhere everywhere everywhere. Or an age where Sophia Loren, “at 33,” was declared by the good editors of People as “disturbingly old” for a Hollywood sex symbol. I’d like to say we’ve come a long way, baby, but that’s just advertising for Virginia Slims, “slimmer than the fat cigarettes men smoke,” it actually says that in the ad.
Fuck your nostalgia everyone! You’re just remembering the good shit! And while we’re at it, I need to get controversial and say fuck our national requiem for magazines. We can do far, far better in the cause of actually spreading literature and information. You’ve entirely forgotten how magazines (even Ms!!!) were just ad-vessels for Kool and other cigarettes.
People’s first issue had a feature on The Exorcist, and that also got me thinking. You know why the movie theater lobbies were filled with people having breakdowns after they saw The Exorcist? Because that’s how conservative-Christian regular America was! Rhapsodies about the pre-iProduct past are fiercely colored by everyone’s youthful romances, I am sure of it. Whatever you miss about 1974, it’s got nothing to do with technology or pop culture or the relative ease of getting by as an artist. It was your specific life.
And that goes for the 90’s as well. That era was homophobic as fuck, and the reason why it seemed progressive at the time is because things were inconcievably bad before.
But it’s only right to end topically. Because there are these assholes who leave their Target shopping carts right in the middle of the sidewalk — the sidewalk that leads out of the parking lot from the train stop to my apartment — and as I was coming upon yet another thoughtless red shopping-cart obstacle I thought, “augh, this again,” and then! a young woman who happened to be walking ahead of me stopped aside and moved the cart out of my way!
I thanked her profusely and said I really appreciated that.
Then I thought, “Well if that isn’t my entire relationship to San Francisco in a nutshell.”
