Lydia, the Bronx Woman

Lydia was from Rochester. She was Yankee. After dating a Southern girl for seven years it was refreshing to be with someone from New York. She, like the stereotypical Bronx-born girl, talked up front. There were no shy debutante mannerisms. She liked to have a good time, so she was always planning trips. My first venture to Manhattan was with Lydia our senior year of college. I was constipated most of the time, but she enjoyed the trip. We had Chinese food. We stayed with a music student friend of hers in a studio apartment. We stayed with a family in Brooklyn. They had a trundle bed upon which I was supposed to sleep, whilst Lydia slept above on the real bed. Unlike Gena Lydia didn’t mind having sex when there were other people around. I tried that a few times with Gena, but she was shy about that. We went on a trip to the beach once to visit my sister and brother-in-law. It was late at night and there was no one in the pool. I wanted to fool around in the water like Chevy Chase with Christy Brinkley in the movie Vacation. She would have nothing to do with it. I never told her this sexual reluctance was the reason why we broke up. I loved Gena, but we didn’t have the animal chemistry necessary to make the relationship endure. I enjoyed having sex with her, because she was beautiful, tall, and blond. I needed something more from her, because the relationship was becoming a burden. From the beginning I had treated her like a princess. I knew from past experience how to treat a woman well. Because I was a Graduate Teaching Associate, was playing gigs in the city, and writing original music I had a reputation. Those were the good days. That particular period of time still is troubling. It was the 80’s. The American people lived differently during that decade, as seen in any John Hughes movie. What is interesting is how different we as a country are now. There was a different feeling then, and after 9/11 it is difficult to justify that way of life. There were comedy clubs. There was live music. There, for musicians, was the prospect of “making it big.” I was struggling back then to gain notoriety through jazz/fusion music. I often wonder if this was a self-created neurosis. After losing my adjunct teaching job at the University of South Carolina I had a nervous breakdown. I didn’t know what it was back then, but it appeared as depression. For the first time in seven years I had no academic career. The prestige that accompanies a college teaching position disappeared. I became a local band flunky like everyone else, and as a result Gena did not treat me the same way. It is interesting that to keep a woman’s interest you have to be Superman. I since going through puberty have spent the majority of my time satisfying these requirements. As a result my rewards in the field of music were not as great as they should have been. I had always had a girlfriend, and that was my priority in life. The “look,” the “things-to-do-list,” money, wit, and humor are all necessary in keeping the interest of a woman. What you receive in return for this monumental effort is intimacy, which is necessary for your survival until you learn how to live without it. It was not until later in life I made the decision never to be dependant upon a woman again. If a nervous breakdown is that reward you receive for losing your job and a woman, then it is not worth it. It is difficult enough to handle a break-up resulting in loss, but it is important to go through that process because it educates us about the bereavement process. Bereavement is grieving over the loss of a loved one. Stack clinical depression on top of that process and you have a formula for misery, and not the Stephen King movie. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time, because your brain just shuts down. If you have lived the majority of your adult life based upon instinct, then you may have a difficult time also. You, to be truly self-actualized, must use your brain to control you life, not your emotions and instincts. If you are having fulfilling sex, that can be a good catalyst for instinctual creativity. That is how I operated in Graduate School during the 80’s. I spent two years teaching at a university to earn a Master’s degree in Music, yet I learned very little. I guess that is why they hire you as a TA, because you all ready possess the skills and knowledge to be successful in your vocation. If you spend all your time moving your knowledge to the minds of students, then there is little time left for the acquirement of new knowledge. That is the beauty of the doctoral program, especially when you are not teaching. Teaching music theory at Ohio State University, as stated by a post D.M.A female friend, was grading papers. Somehow I circumvented that responsibility, because the chairman of Theory/Composition thought I was too dynamic for the staid existence of a music theory TA. I was given the job of TA for Arts College 160, which in essence was being a glorified “hall monitor” for the two hundred plus kids enrolled in the course. I did have four recitation classes a week. My lovely cooperating professor saw fit to give me all four of those in a series beginning at eight o’clock on Monday morning. The clincher was what you taught had nothing to do with for what the students were responsible for the tests. They saw the recitation as an unnecessary burden. I was peeved, because I didn’t have my own class like I did at USC as a well-respected teacher of jazz. It took most of the academic year for me to learn the material for which the students were responsible. By that time I all ready had made the fatal mistake of letting my Southern hillbilly roots taint my teaching. I had never dealt with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and my inexperience with probably the most controversial artist of our century sealed my fate as a TA for Arts College 160. On a handout I asked what were called “leading” questions. I had phrased then in such a way driven by my own opinion to persuade the students to agree with my point of view. As we all know today this is unacceptable in the public classroom. You can not call George W. Bush Jr. a Nazi. You must present the information arbitrarily. I had never seen a bull whip stuck in a man’s ass, and I didn’t see the artistic merit in a photo of that sort. I was an artist, and to me my opinion was worth while. Fifteen years later finally I have acquired the wisdom and political savvy necessary to survive in academia. I have also solidified my choice as an independent scholar. An incubation period working in ‘real life’ has been indispensable. My question about Mapplethorpe was simply that his photograph of an African-American man sitting with a large erect penis reinforced a stereotype that black men have bigger dicks. In the American South this had always been comical, but at OSU in the Midwest the students didn’t take to kindly to my negative opinion. Who was I anyway compared to the illustrious Mr. Mapplethorpe? It turns out most of my female students liked looking at the penises of homosexual men. My opinion was it was not appropriate for a college level course, and we had no business discussing it. The controversial nature of his work was the sole reason why we had to present it, and because the Department of Art procrastinated informing me whether or not I had the position, I had no time to research and study the predicament. There were less than two weeks left before the start of the autumn quarter, and I was pursuing a doctorate in music composition, not modern art. While I regretted losing the financial support of the job, I didn’t miss being a lacky TA. This didn’t seal my fate in not finishing the D.M.A. degree. Keratoconus did. I had to stop going to school to have cornea transplants in both my eyes. After than I needed to be making money, so I began playing music professionally in Columbus. After a few years doing that and botching my one and only college level job interview, I began working for the cruise lines. I was disconnected from academia for a few years, because I had been working independently. I was extremely musically productive during this period, but my skills as an academic had suffered. Went I went to Cullowhee, North Carolina to interview I did not sleep well. The room I had been assigned in which to dwell was full of “hum.” I had hoped the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina would provide solstice from the aggravating hum sound some Americans had been talking about. It turns out the paper mill and accompanying Norfolk/Southern trunk line were operating in full force. I tried to sleep on the floor because the mattress was sympathetically vibrating, but I never did fall asleep the few days I was there. As a result I was sleep deprived, which we all know is one of the most severe forms of torture. I was in no mood to tell jokes and be affable, so I just conveyed the information. It was more important to this little school to have a pleasant personality. The chairman of the department also failed to convey to me he was the “Composer in Residence” at Western Carolina University. The job for which I was interviewing was responsible for four classes. They were sight singing, the MIDI Studio, Jazz Ensemble, and Contemporary Music Theory. Although I disagree with the process of solfege in sight singing, I could have taught the course. Before I began the interview I was faced with a decision. Do I humor the committee or do I get the job done? I chose the latter, and it didn’t sit well with the committee. I supposed to Dr. John West I was unqualified to teach at their high school. In reality my discussion of George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept was so far above the level of their perspective students, it was appropriate I didn’t get the job. Plus there was a salary cap at WCU. You started at forty thousand a year and would end that way thirty years later. The only way you could receive the minute raise was to procure an offer from another school. That would mean many hours spent away from your teaching job soliciting jobs at other universities. The capper to it all was when the Chairmen of the Department of Music said, “We don’t go for that bleep bloop music here.” They didn’t even have a Master’s degree in composition much less a doctoral program. The colloquial elements of a small town school in the North Carolina mountains were enough to extinguish my further pursuit of academic jobs. Luckily the cruise lines offer a variety of employment for competent musicians, and completing all the coursework for a Doctoral of Music Arts in Composition gives you the tools necessary to navigate the cruise industry’s cumbersome and clunky music notation. The experience of working on a cruise ship as a musician in no was reflects any tenant of my pre-doctoral graduate work. That period of short-lived musical prestige can be considered a child-like dream state not representative of the real life pursuit of music. That is why I don’t mind not having a girlfriend or wife. That would force me into the antiquated, dilapidated, and anachronistic notion that the American Dream still exists and you must follow that path. The reality is being a greeter at WalMart. I still compose music, because it is the right thing to do. I don’t care if academia, a record company, or Uncle Sam ever hears it. I know after I die someone will discover my music and it will be appreciated posthumously. It is easier to believe this notion than deal with the idea you are a failure in the field of music at the hands of those incapable of valuing music. I know what art is, and my music is art. It represents the life I am not living in America, so I must create it myself. The unfortunate thing about that is exactly what one Polish musician said to me on a ship. “My feelings are only for my music, Heir Mozart!” He of course was joking, but the crux of that statement if true. You have choices. You can invest your emotions in people upon which you do not know you can rely, or you can invest your emotional life in the arts. I know if with my mind I can create a feeling then that which is translated into music, I will have that emotion captured forever like poetry. You can not rely upon a human being for that. This musician was suggesting I was cloistering my feelings in solidarity instead of sharing them with friends. You probably know best when it is appropriate to invest your feelings. With Lydia I loved her, but I was not in love with her. I enjoyed her company, and we made love, yet still I did not love her. This she knew instinctively. She worked hard in bed and was a good lover, but in this case our emotional profiles did not match. Lydia lived in a campus house that was very popular. There were three other women living there too, and that made for a festive atmosphere of which I enjoyed immensely. We made love in her single bed each night, and that didn’t seem to effect anyone else in the house. We were seasoned lovers, and they even made fun of us one Sunday morning when we stayed locked in her room for most of the afternoon making love on the floor. Gena came about a year later. She was inexperienced and damaged goods. That is why I was attracted to her. She was sitting by herself at a band party not fitting into the preexistent social click. It was not easy getting her to talk, but I tried anyway. Was it like the spider and the fly? I had to work on her a month or so, before I could even bring up the idea of making love. I waited until I was going to a gig, and as she lay on the couch I whispered it in her ear, “ I want to make love to you.” Then I left. She had reservations about her own body, but with some coaching I was finally able to get her to submit. The oddest and most surprising thing she ever did was, upon arriving in Columbia home after a school fashion outing in New York city, she gave me a miniature mock fashion show. She announced her clothing and stripped in front of me as I sat on the couch. Needless to say that was enough of a clue of what she really wanted. I took her on the living room floor. One evening later on that same red couch and as we were watching television, I just pulled down my pants exposing my erect penis. For a total of two times in our relationship this being one, she bolted out of my easy chair, down to her knees, and began sucking my penis. It lasted only a few seconds just like the second time. We were staying at her parent’s home in South Carolina. We were both up late, and I was sitting watching television in my boxers. She was asleep on the floor. Slowly and nonchalantly she inched over, until she was in between my legs. Suddenly and unexpectedly she fished out my erect penis in one graceful movement and put it in her mouth. Again this lasted only a few seconds. What was it about a few seconds? What good does that serve? I guess it was supposed to be the precursor to a conversation about giving me a blowjob, because later she asked me if I were going to ask her to give me one. I just kind of expected it, and as a result didn’t get it. I treated Gena like a princess, and that must have been queer to her. Instead of being manly I made her feel like a goddess, and that must have been an insurmountable responsibility. You can’t expect average women to know how to treat a man well. It takes an adult woman to know about the art of love. That unfortunately is why you have to treat them like shit. They like it, because there is no responsibility for them to treat you well. They don’t know how. They respond more effectively to statements such as, “Go fix some supper, bitch,” and “Suck my cock.” I even had one that wanted you to throw her around. I just didn’t know how to do that yet, and this was when the crime of “date rape” was being invented. Force a woman to have sex with you? What a common fantasy for many people that has S&M overtones. It’s the big bad wolf. The U.S. legal system has ruined that prospect. Just like you can make a million from a spilled cup of coffee, better stay away from that sexual harassment. In some cases aggression is what is needed sexually to effect the recipient. Cave man say ,“Come back to cave and @#$%^ me!” It worked in that era. Are we so different now?