Liars and Saints

  The local pool is staffed by half-sleeping teenagers, and my daughter uses this to her advantage. She approaches the snack bar and demands both a Krispie marshmallow square and a ring pop. A well-adjusted adult might question this. But the teenager just hands the items to Susie before my husband can intervene. Susie has passed  the point of no return. Teenagers aside, this pool has quite a bit going for it. There are bright patches of mysterious tropical flowers. A far corner involves a perilously high "high dive"; for my daughter, that corner is a source of awe and terror. My son is so excited to splash in the kiddie pool, he actually begins to bounce on the toes of his feet. For him, clearly, there isn't a moment of worry about being observed or judged. Given that I'm a tutor, I have made some academic observations, and I have grave concerns about our local curriculum. It's not a shock to me that the pool's social media efforts are sketchy; if the social m...

  So many people endure bad breakups--but they cannot get outside of their own perspective. They see two roles--victim and evildoer. There is no subtlety. This isn't a fun story to watch or to read. What moves me about Hayley Kiyoko is that she can fully envision multiple sides of one story. In a clearly autobiographical tale ("Girls Like Girls"), young Hayley falls in love. She discloses details about her past. Somehow, the details become "public"--Hayley immediately concludes that her crush, Maya da Costa, has spilled the beans. This isn't fair to Maya da Costa. (And the allegation is false.) At the same time, Maya da Costa is a mess--struggling with the idea of coming out of the closet, reversing herself without attempting an explanation. It's fun to see these two circling each other. I am not sure anyone in an audience would fail to "relate." Happy to have spent time with this film.

  Jane Kenyon did extraordinary work with syntax; she did extraordinary work on the topic of antidepressant medications. With the wonder and bitterness of someone pardoned for a crime she did not commit I come back to marriage and friends, to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back to my desk, books, and chairs. Another gift Kenyon had was to build an unusual list: "friends, hollyhocks, desk, books, chairs." ("Happiness comes to the boulder in perpetual shade, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine....") Having been returned to life by a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, Kenyon feels skeptical: Unholy ghost,  you are certain to come again. Coarse, mean, you'll put your feet  on the coffee table, lean back, and turn me into someone who can't  take the trouble to speak; someone who can't sleep, or who does nothing but sleep; can't read, or call for an appointment for help. There is nothing I can do  against your coming. When I a...

  Joe Bird has a gay crush--but he observes his gay crush fooling around with the minister's son. To retaliate, he goes to the minister and reveals "the awful truth." He then watches in silence as the minister's son endures forced "conversion therapy." This is already a terrific setup, but then things get *really* weird. The conversion therapy involves a faith healer. The faith healer pretends to "cure" you--but in fact unearths a demon whose plan is to destroy you. The demon takes the form of the young man you desire--as sweet-nothings are exchanged, the demon prepares to rip out your intestines. Given that this is a horror film, we do see several acts of intestinal ripping. And this isn't the *only* problem on Joe Bird's plate. His mother--Mia Wasikowska--becomes convinced that it's unsafe to be gay in Australia. So she arranges for Joe himself to go through the faith healer experience. Joe doesn't fight back--or his fight isn...

  In one of my favorite stories, by Amy Bloom, a little girl struggles with trauma. The source of the trauma is her parents' separation. The little girl has no sense of perspective--given that she is a child--so she expresses her sadness by staging events from a genocide. She uses her dolls. My daughter's favorite game is Holocaust. She's been playing it for two years, since fourth grade, and she is unbelievably inventive. She found her old American Girl doll, Samantha from Park Avenue, cut her hair off with kid scissors for that ragged, doomed look, took the poor doll out of her plaid dress, wrapped her bottom in a dirty dish towel, and laid her in a pile of leaves. She crumpled soil into a cup and brewed it with boiling water. She came into the house... "It must have been like this--for THEM," Abby said. "Where'd they get the hot water?" I said. That's what I had been reduced to.... My son is not dealing with trauma, but he is dealing with sens...

 Sondheim and Arthur Laurents were often at odds; Laurents was, by most accounts, one of the most hateful human beings in the history of American theater. Sondheim eventually wrote to Laurents, "You have just enough talent to realize how mediocre you are." It's hard to imagine one person saying that to another person. There are moments of mediocrity in "West Side Story"--I'm recalling the adult characters--but Laurents also wrote "Gypsy." Can we think of "Gypsy"'s writer as mediocre? I admire the pendulum swings of "West Side Story," mainly in the Second Act. We start with Maria in ignorance; as far as she knows, no killings have occurred. We then get the brutal truth. We then retreat to a dream world, in which everyone has a restart, a blank slate. Think again: Anita shakes Maria out of her stupor. Think again: Maria melts Anita's heart. But the Jets then assault Anita, causing her to tell a vicious lie. But Tony is giv...