Pillow Talk: The Ultimate Conversation

 If I had any brains at all, I would write: NO INTRO TODAY a la Ziggy, and take the day off. 

The past week has been stressful in the best possible sense, and Sunday, the proof copies of THE POMEGRANATE arrived. Holding the book in my hands is always a total turn on and thrill. There is something uniquely satisfying about holding that physical entity in your hands. Of course, I refuse to read it. Not that it's not good, but I immediately start editing in my head and that's not good. Nope. You just gotta stop when the words are printed on the page. 

The journey of this book from inception to completion has been a long and, for the most part, exceptionally thrilling one for me. It began with a tiny story about a 12th century Jewish girl. Almost nothing is known about the lady except she was snatched on the way to her wedding and ultimately returned to Al-Andalus as an old woman. No one knows what happened to her or how she got from one place to the next. But I was intrigued by the snippet. 

There were years of research involved. The Third Crusade was a strange event even in Christian history. Richard the Lionheart was there. Salah Al-Din was there, Maimonides was in Egypt, and despite all the movies and TV dramas, there were a whole lotta Jews in Palaestina during the period. Tiberias and Tzfat were alive with Jewish erudition. It wasn't a stagnant period at all. And Jews came to the aid of Salah Al-Din in an effort to rid the land of the European Crusaders. The more I learned, the more I appreciated the risks taken to retain control of what was then called Palaestina. 

I also came to a deeper understanding and profound respect for women of the period. Eleanor of Aquitaine was a huge presence in the period. She was a piece of work and I love her to bits. She married then annulled her marriage to France's Louis VII, married Henry Plantagenet, produced a passel of kids including Richard the Lionheart and King John (aka Prince John of Robin Hood infamy) amongst others. She outlived Henry II despite his repeated attempts to get rid of her. She was tough, she was direct. She was Queen, and then Regent. No one messed with Eleanor.

Batsheva's (the protagonist) ability to speak her mind is central to THE POMEGRANATE. She had no trouble telling people where to get off the cart. I am equally certain that conversations similar to the ones she has in the book happened between husbands and wives just as they do today. Pillow talk is as ancient as marriage itself. There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to loving partners. That Batsheva can make her opinions crystal clear is not an unheard of skill in any generation; there have always been women like her. G-d willing, there always will be. 

Recently, I was in a conversation about the appearance of the women's rights movement. I maintain that while women's rights have been an issue from day one, it's only in the last 100 or so years, with the advent of mass  media, that our voices have been amplified enough to be heard. This is a no brainer. Granted, the printing press is a big deal if not the actual foundation for mass media, but a bigger deal is having your voice go out over the airwaves to millions of listeners. 

Thinking back to my misspent youth, I can recall with alacrity the first time I heard Bella Abzug giving a speech. Or, rather, a snip of a speech. It was on the evening news. Right around the time she announced she was running for Congress. I don't remember what she said, but I remember how she sounded: like  one of us... a card carrying  member with all the women around me who were beginning to emerge from centuries of gender repression. She said a lot of things during that run, but a couple have remained with me:

People need change. No congressional seat belongs to anyone. It belongs only to the people.

And 

A woman belongs in the house...the House of Representatives 

Battling Bella was my kind of politician: frank, blunt, and open. I even liked her hats...especially her explanation:

I began wearing hats as a young lawyer because it helped me to establish my professional identity. Before that, whenever I was at a meeting, someone would ask me to get coffee.

At one of my first jobs, even though I was a buyer, I was asked to get the coffee at every meeting. I resented it like hell.

The real trick was, Bella didn't say anything new; she said what women were thinking and actually saying for a very long time. Sure, there were glimpses of women who made the system work for them, women like Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great.....but until mass media happened, no woman ran for and won elected office.

Let me define mass media: anything that can be seen, heard, or read with days of publication or elocution. Books are the beginning, but until women were quoted (and usually vilified) in the press, heard on radio, and ultimately seen on television, gender roles were pretty much immutable. But that did not mean women were silent. 

The story of Batsheva Hagiz may be fiction, but what she demands of herself and of the people around her is neither new nor anachronistic. The bedtime conversations she has are ones that any woman could've had with an intimate partner at any time during history. Just look at Lysistrata. Sure, it may be an ancient Greek comedy, but it didn't spring from the brow of Aristophanes without some basis in reality.

Here's a fun-filled factoid you probably didn't know. The same year, 411 B.C.E.,  that Lysistrata was produced, another one of Aristophanes plays also made it to the stage: Women at the Thesmophoria. This one is a parody of Athenian society, focusing on the subservient role of women in Athens. Euripides is totally targeted by Aristophanes because of the way women are portrayed in his works. That the second play exists oughta be proof enough that women have been on the edge of revolt for a long time, and the men knew it. 

Even though the plays were produced and audiences attended, we don't know much about public reception because no one printed up the reviews and posted them on FaceBook or Twitter. We may have the scripts, which is a good thing, because that's shining a light onto the sneaky notion that none of this is really new. What is new is the aspect of broadcasting gender inequality. That really only goes back to 1869 when John Stuart Mill, a member of the British Parliament, published his essay on THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN. The key word here is PUBLISHED. In print. On paper. Available to read. This is a huge step. But he does something else revolutionary as well: he credits his wife and daughter:

As ultimately published it was enriched with some important ideas of my daughter’s and some passages of her writing. But all that is most striking and profound in what was written by me belongs to my wife, coming from the fund of thought that had been made common to us both by our innumerable conversations and discussions on a topic that filled so large a place in our minds.

If you think they didn't lie in bed discussing this stuff, you've never been married/partnered. 

Women have been subjected to subjugation since the beginning of time. There may have been a reason back when the goal was to be reproducing at a rapid rate because children died. Sure, pregnant women probably needed some measure of protection, although in some cultures, you deliver and go back to work the same day. (At least I had a week off when Senior Son was born.) And I get why men felt compelled to protect their families. This is a survival thing. But once clans, towns, villages, and cities are in place, the need diminishes while the subjugation continued unabated. After all, what guy doesn't wanna be an alpha male? Right?

Yet, by the middle of the 19th century, it was pretty routine for women to work. Men died; women had to support families. Necessity demanded women take on other roles. By the middle of the 20th century, the June Cleaver model was already wearing thin. Father did not always know best. And men still died...or just plain left...and women were de facto head of household. And as late as 1977, I could not get a car loan in my own name. Don't get me started about that.

Them days are gone. But not completely. There is a whole class of deviant men who are working very hard to turn our clocks back to 1902. They call themselves Republican Congressmen. If only their paramours would use pillow talk constructively. 

Read THE POMEGRANATE when it comes out later this week. Next week, there will links to the book and the new website. You'll be richer for the experience. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Learn to spell SCHWAIDELSON.

Before  you know it, that will be a very useful skill.