Flash Mob

A hat in the hand.

Dec 08, 2025

The other day on Facebook, a writer used the word “self-soothing,” and I read it as “self-loathing.” I wondered if they might be the same thing. Not really. I only wrote that now, thinking about the two words. In fact, I felt that neither “self-soothing” nor “self-loathing” were real things.

I know you want to tell me they are. I know you will fight for their reality, using your own experience to build a case. Take a breath. Now, off you go.

I’m saying the right hand can’t give the left hand a gift. I mean humans, not an octopus. I think the words “self-soothing” and “self-loathing” may be drugs for diseases that don’t exist. It feels good to receive a gift from a hand that isn’t yours. Obviously, masturbation is not included in this category. Masturbation soars sturdily on a majestic cliff overlooking a turbulent sea eroding giant boulders on the sand below.

The rest of the time, we need other people for pleasure. Think about it. This morning, I watched a flash mob performance at an airport. Suddenly, as is the nature of these events, a woman standing on the side of an atrium burst out in the opening notes of “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King, sung in the Zulu language it’s written in. People in the crowd looked stunned, as they always do, and they began recording the performance on their phones, as they fell into hushed concentration and respect and delight. Other singers joined in the choral sections, and musicians were already playing violins and a drum. Of course, the performance was rehearsed, and the flash mob has become a type of staged happening in public spaces. It doesn’t matter. I started to cry. I cried for these moments of joy and beauty people were giving freely and receiving freely. It was so beautiful because it was so human and the best of us. You don’t have the like the musical or even the formula of flash mobs. Sudden beauty and friendliness will take you, because they’re supposed to, and it’s where we are most alive.

On a more intimate level, you’re walking down the street and talking to the person beside you. One of life’s greatest pleasures. You are think-walking, which is it’s own kind of movement and its own factory of associations. What are you going to do? Talk to yourself? Maybe, but you know, in that case you’re not talking to anyone.

Even the gift from another person like a knitted hat you will never wear, a hat that’s so not you it’s comical, even that hat is a treasure. Although I know you will tell me—and I will agree with you—that buying a hat you love and will wear has its pleasures as well.

Now, you’ve got me thinking about that fantastic fuzzy blue hat I once bought on Broadway that everyone exclaims about when I wear it, and I look great in it. Maybe I pretended Richard had bought it for me. I think I sent him a picture before I went into the shop and handed over my credit card. In the days we were apart, whenever I asked him, “Should I buy this?” he’d say, “Yes,” because he knew the tragedy of regretting an unbought purchase is a thousand times worse than buying something you can’t remember what you were thinking at the time.

On to “self-loathing” not being a real thing. Work with me here. (If you are depressed, maybe don’t read further. Or do! Maybe you’ll feel better.) We say we hate ourselves, but do we really? I mean, I hate the awful way I have treated some people in the past and am probably going to treat some people going forward—I hope not, but I am who I am, it has recently dawned on me—and I kind of like that I exist in the form I exist in. I mean, I like my existence, and it has a form, and not only do I like my existence, I am guarding it as if it is the greatest treasure ever to have assumed a form. I am guarding it with the cunning and ferocity of a sharp-shooter trained to eliminate whatever threatens the principal it’s been assigned to protect.

That’s all I have to say about these words. You can think what you want. Who am I to stand in your way at the counter for bath products, and shake my head dubiously at the thought forming in your mind that a hot bath with these salts, and perfumes, and foaming whatevers will make you feel like a millions dollars and make you believe you will live forever. It works for me.

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First time

I don’t know why this post struck a chord on social media. If you have a thought why, please leave a comment below. xxL

The first time I had sexual intercourse, the condom broke. It was a fancy condom made of sheep intestine my boyfriend bought. We were in one of those apartments up by Columbia with the cats and the four roommates, and the pots in the sink stuck with pinto beans, and my boyfriend had heard that swishing Coke into a vagina killed sperm. What’s interesting looking back is I thought my life was over. If I got pregnant, my life would be a black sack. Abortion did not cross my mind. I didn’t know at the time my sister had had an abortion. The weeks I waited for my period were the black sack. It was 1964. Abortion would become legal in NYS in 1971. In 1967, I entered the women’s movement. Back then, most of the time we marched and worked to make abortion legal. In 1964, I was 17. Pregnancy meant the end of any life I would want, and, so, the end of me. Before women talked the way I am talking here, the way women and girls were hurt was ordinary life, it was the way things are, it was all of our experience, all the time, there were no words for.

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