{"id":14981,"date":"2015-03-07T01:58:14","date_gmt":"2015-03-07T06:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/?p=14981"},"modified":"2015-07-13T11:02:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T15:02:00","slug":"its-my-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/2015\/03\/its-my-bag.html","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s My Bag"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_14984\" style=\"width: 510px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Indianbag.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14984\" class=\"size-large wp-image-14984\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Indianbag-500x500.jpg\" alt=\"My old purse\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Indianbag-500x500.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Indianbag-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Indianbag-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Indianbag-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Indianbag-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Indianbag.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-14984\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">My old purse<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Ever since I came out,<\/strong>\u00a0when I was a grad student in &#8217;70 or &#8217;71, I have carried some kind of small bag. My friends at the University of California, San Diego, may recall that I was never without my red, mirrored Indian satchel &#8212; until it fell apart, dropping random mica chips under the campus&#8217;s fragrant eucalyptus trees.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, I occasionally wore bell-bottoms with lace I sewed on the cuffs and soft beige blouses, hoping not to get mascara on the silk: very hard to wash out. That was when the Cockettes<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"San Francisco&#039;s infamous Cockettes\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rfU9WOaJrNk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nwere kicking up their high heels upstate in San Fran; so I taught Marx and Melville in what was then called &#8220;genderfuck&#8221; drag. My students were too centered on surf to be distracted.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_14982\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/IMG_2066-e1425702372863.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14982\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-14982\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/IMG_2066-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"My new purse\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-14982\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">My new purse<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Now I have this cheap, clever indigo item I found at the Japanese store Muji, in a branch on Cooper Square in New York&#8217;s East Village, close to the old Carl Fischer Music building. Not to digress, but the last classical sheet-music purveyor in New York, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/mar\/06\/new-york-last-classical-sheet-music-shop-closes-frank-music\">Frank Music<\/a>, closed yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>So today I try to walk out of a big-box store, the one whose name makes most of us giggle because it&#8217;s slang for &#8220;fellatio,&#8221; having returned some organic butter that tasted like mastodon fat. The young person checking receipts was confused because I hadn&#8217;t a cart or any precious items in it and asked me to show her both my usual canvas &#8220;no plastic&#8221; grocery carrier, the one I had carried the bad butter in, and, for the first time, my other, little handbag.<\/p>\n<p>I spread open the large, empty sack with a smile, but also inquired why she hadn&#8217;t asked the shopper who had just left to open up <em>her<\/em> small bag. &#8220;But that was a purse, a lady&#8217;s purse,&#8221; the youngster said.<\/p>\n<p>In the space of a second, I lost decades. My face must have reddened, and my voice, always high, approached countertenor.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, this is MY PURSE!&#8221; I was back in some brave march, screaming for what we then called gay liberation. I felt angry, big angry, as I did years ago. It&#8217;s the only time travel &#8212; except in dreams or books &#8212; I have ever experienced.<\/p>\n<p>You are dead wrong if you think those dozens of marches, confrontations and arrests were ineffectual. They powered and achieved most of the change my husband and I enjoy now.<\/p>\n<p>The poor thing; she hadn&#8217;t a clue. &#8220;The manager makes us ask this. You have to open it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, I&#8217;m sorry, I won&#8217;t.&#8221; I was calm again.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Get the manager.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A line was forming behind us of carts holding lady&#8217;s purses, some of them as big as the Ritz&#8230;Cracker five-pounder, so she became increasingly upset. A silver-haired man with what he called a purse was not what her day allowed. Yet she asked me again to open it. Of course I didn&#8217;t, and she gave up.<\/p>\n<p>In case you&#8217;re wondering, this wasn&#8217;t one of my long-gone drag outings. Those clothes don&#8217;t fit.\u00a0Just the dark, dark bag.<\/p>\n<p>Dear readers, if you know what &#8220;Then hit &#8217;em with your pocketbook, Stanley&#8221; refers to, you&#8217;re in my world and no doubt understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever since I came out,\u00a0when I was a grad student in &#8217;70 or &#8217;71, I have carried some kind of small bag. My friends at the University of California, San Diego, may recall that I was never without my red, mirrored Indian satchel &#8212; until it fell apart, dropping random mica chips under the campus&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[455,457,460,458,461,36,456,454,459,462],"class_list":{"0":"post-14981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"tag-big-box-store","9":"tag-bjs","10":"tag-carl-fischer","11":"tag-drag","12":"tag-frank-music","13":"tag-gay-rights","14":"tag-gender","15":"tag-lgbt","16":"tag-muji","17":"tag-ucsd","18":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14981"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15216,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14981\/revisions\/15216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}