So said Senator Al Franken in response to the second brave woman who stepped up to accuse him of touching her inappropriately several years ago.  His not remembering is at the heart of the problem behind most of the rash of accusations coming from women who do remember.  The photograph in question couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds.  More significantly, it in no way invaded Senator Franken’s psyche or surprised him in a bad way or in any way changed his compass for negotiating life.  And, by his own powerful admission, it has not hung around to haunt him or cause him to feel undervalued or unclean.  Freud once wrote that jokes are funny or not funny depending on whether a person is on the inside or outside of the joke.  Al Franken was way outside what happened in that selfie.  Lindsay Menz was way inside those seconds that can be replicated by almost every adult woman alive today–and many men who, as boys, were subjected to unwanted behaviors from men like Kevin Spacey.

We surely know by now that all such moments/actions come from a given man’s assuming without any conscious thought at all that he is “entitled” to touch, speak to, or act around girls and women in any way he chooses, simply because of his skewed position of power attached to his sex.  And if that man has recognized power because of fame and/or wealth and position, not only does he assume he can act as he chooses but that he will get away with doing so.  Because we inhabit a patriarchy, that assumption has been true for the other side of a power system based on something as arbitrary as what sex a person is.  Little girls who are abused are told to keep silent either because the horrible behavior is “our special secret” or because “if you tell anybody, I’ll do something bad to you.”  Adult women, if we work outside the home, know that speaking to someone in our organization will brand us in negative ways at the very least.  And that speaking may well cost us a job we simply cannot afford to lose.  So a cloak of deep and destructive silence has kept women from healing or moving beyond the photo or touch or verbal assault.

Talking heads on TV keep asking “why now?” as if there is some logic behind all the women’s voices declaring what is our reality.  I have no easy answer to what may well be a useless question.  It may be as simple as “enough is enough” as said by some of the women making accusations.  But, just maybe, it is related to all women’s having spent two years listening to an aging, unattractive billionaire brag about his free reign to grope any woman anywhere anytime.  So as we watch the world of Hollywood and television and sport act quickly to fire or disavow all contact with abusive men in their midst, we surely are entitled to ask if it might not be time to “fire” the president?  After all, he relished saying “YOU’RE FIRED” on his reality TV show for several years.  Meanwhile, let us now praise all the women who are telling the truth about moments we do remember whether we want to or not.

In Twelve Step programs, the second step reads “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”  As I watch images from the recent weekend’s NFL footballs games, this step keeps going through my mind.  All those talented players, mostly black, are shown kneeling quietly and seriously as the American national anthem is played or sung.  Or they stand with linked arms–highly developed muscularly, of course–and thoughtful expressions on their faces.  I understand this “play” of theirs quite well, though when I try to watch an actual game on the field, I often can’t tell who has the ball or where it is.   Sometimes, I’ve even mused that the whole sport of professional football is an activity designed to make it all right for grown men to hug each other.

But these respectful protests against a president who is showing more and more clearly just how racist his core beliefs and preferences are move me.  Who knows why their overwhelmingly white owners are increasingly joining them in these respectful protests.  We do know why more and more of the black players and their white allies are doing so.  They are “coming to believe” that their fame as superb athletes on the field for a couple of hours a week does not change the fundamental fact that resides in their being black in an America no longer hesitant about voicing openly the most hateful ideas and feelings about black people of any kind.  What television pundits and late night comics are saying/doing around this issue helps me pull back from utter despair over where the country is headed.  We are being shown contrasting comments from the president about his view of NFL players (majority black) and NASCAR drivers (majority white) and this helps viewers understand what is going on.  When we laugh with Jimmy Kimmel or Trevor Noah or Conan O’Brien, we move further away from accepting serious proposals coming from the White House about who can travel to the US or who can vote or who can continue to receive health care.

So I stand in admiration of the football players who take off their helmets to honor the national anthem but kneel or stand in protest.  As several black spokespeople I’ve seen lately on CNN say:  “They are not disrespecting the flag or our country; rather they are acting in accordance with the Constitution of that country as they try to help its citizens work to make it a better place.”  They are coming to believe in a Power greater than their passing arms or running legs or deftly designed strategies for how to get to the goal posts.  That Power in this instance is standing up to someone invested with tremendous “power” whom they see using that investiture to shred the very fabric of the country they love.

Kate Millett, pioneering voice about the interplay of sexism and women’s sexuality, died this week from cardiac arrest.  Her landmark book, Sexual Politics, was published in 1969 to some rave reviews, some loud denunciations, and much thanks from women trying to figure out about our lives.  Millett grew up in St. Paul, just across the Mississippi River from where I live, and attended and got her B.A. from the University of Minnesota, where I worked for 37 years.  Of course I bought and devoured and taught her book and waited eagerly for the next one.  She decided to write a memoir that must have upset her mother who read a draft of the manuscript.  That’s where I come in.

In the middle of a week in the early 1970’s I received a telephone call from Ken Tilsen, well-known civil rights lawyer in St. Paul.  Somehow my name had been given to him.  He said he had taken Kate Millett’s case which involved trying to get her released from the psychiatric ward of the University of Minnesota hospital system where her mother had had her involuntarily committed.  Mr. Tilsen told me she had done that in an attempt to keep Kate from publishing the memoir that said things about her that she didn’t want read by the general public.  The reason Mr. Tilsen called me was the fact that he’d persuaded the hospital to release Kate for the weekend under his guardianship.  He wanted to take her down the beautiful St. Croix River that Sunday afternoon and wondered if I’d agree to spend the afternoon with them.  Admitting to his not really feeling comfortable about talking all that time with such an ardent feminist, Mr. Tilsen hoped I’d “rescue” him.  Needless to say, I answered in the strongly affirmative.

At the appointed time, I drove to where the pontoon was docked, parked my car, found Ken and Kate, and we all boarded for our outing.  The next three hours flew by for me.  Millett and I talked about all sorts of things having to do with the current state of feminism inside and outside of academe.  We also spoke about authors we both loved to read, never mind about their own sexual politics–Milton and Whitman and Wharton and Camus, among others.  She seemed to relax and, though I would never have asked anything about her present situation, she ended up talking about how important it was for her to rescue the manuscript from her mother’s house before she destroyed it. 

When we landed, Kate hurriedly spoke to Ken Tilsen who hurriedly spoke to me, asking if I felt able to drive Kate to her mother’s house off Cretin Avenue in St. Paul.  He said he dare not do it because Mrs. Millett knew his car.   It all seemed very cloak-and-dagger to me.  I also know how complex it can be to have a mother with a short leash and definite views about what a daughter ought to do and say and be.  So, without much thought about repercussions, I agreed.  Kate and I got into my car and drove rather fast to her childhood home.  I sat in my car while she went in.  She thought there would be no one at home at that time on a Sunday afternoon, but there was always the possibility that her mother would materialize, be angry, and call the police who might not look kindly on my role in all this.  But Kate hurried out undeterred and we drove even faster to where Ken Tilsen was waiting in his car.  As Kate got out clutching her precious words, I wished her all good luck and made my way home.

Reliving that afternoon after reading the excellent obituary in The New York Times, I felt really glad I’d not hesitated or worried or felt “unworthy” to be the temporary companion to such an important feminist writer and person.  And when the manuscript that had sat in my back seat appeared as Flying (1974), I of course snapped up a copy and read it in one sitting.  And when I think of this pace-setter, I let myself see her smiling in the late afternoon sun while we glided down a quiet and beautiful river with no need to be changing the world just then.

For many years, I’ve said, half in jest and entirely in earnest, “When I grow up, I want to write poetry.”  And I’ve made attempts down through the years.  There’s even a fairly good-sized blue file labeled “My Poems” that I look through periodically.  I’ve managed to send off a few and two have even been published in women’s journals that no longer exist.  Lately I’ve asked a friend who is a poet to help me think through one in particular that I wish could become a whole unit.  But I’m 80 years old, so I need to stop fantasizing some future adult poetic self.  So I thought a few days ago that I might try posting some lines here and see if that might help me be more serious about this wish.  People who study our dream life insist that writing down dreams helps us have more of them because they feel taken seriously.  So maybe I can help my incipient poems feel appreciated and taken more seriously by sending them out over this present-day medium.  So here goes:

“Wettest June on record”

rain fell often, soaking rain for hours

days of thunder, nights of lightning, sheets of water–

all welcome in this summer of broken drought

one day it fell so long and hard I heard

my mother’s voice at home

“cats and dogs–it’s raining cats and dogs!”

what could that adage signify?

did Zeus indulge a fit of pique, fling down small furries

to amuse himself and vex his people?