The most important event of my life happened six and a half months before I was born.
March 18, 1945.
With zero visibility, the Army Air Force C-47 Aircraft, a cargo plane en route to Randall Field, Cold Bay Army Base, Alaska, was flying blind on instruments, at 170 miles an hour, through a treacherous Aleutian snow storm. At 8:30am the pilot radioed his location to the Base. The altimeter read 2500 feet. Minutes later the plane began spiraling downward. Raging, tearing through the morning sky, it plowed into a vast snow field, cutting a swath for half a mile. Snow swirling up alongside the huge, grey structure as it propelled forward at great speed. Finally coming to an eerie stop on a precipice, on an icy volcanic peak Northeast of Cold Bay, 2000 feet above sea level. The fuselage lay between the edge of Cathedral Valley, the jagged tops of the Pinnacles and the Pavlov Volcano. One wing was still attached, pieces of the other and a motor strewn along the mountainside. Lying belly up, the plane now resembled a pile of scrap metal, like a black Rorschach ink blot on a white canvas.
My father, First Lieutenant Ernest T. Johnson, 29 years old, died on impact.The three remaining survivors, the pilot, co-pilot and aerial engineer camped in the wreckage for four days before a rescue team finally reached them by dog sleds. A doctor parachuted down soon after the crash, while food and supplies were dropped by plane. Six days passed before a ski plane could land and transport the wounded out.
Mother’s diary:
March 14, 1945. Darling called. Great Falls, Montana. Leaving soon.
March 15, 1945. Another letter from Darling. Nice & warm out.
March 16, 1945. Folks were up for supper and cake for my 27th Birthday. Stockings, powder,
cologne, cards and candy.
March 18, 1945 Went to Aunt Maud’s in afternoon & stayed for supper.
March 19, 1945 Letter from darling. Montana. Wrote him. Bed early.
March 20, 1945. Washed clothes. 2 letters from darling Ernie, one Canada, another Alaska.
March 21, 1945 Ironed. Went to Grange with Lorene. Bad snow storm.
March 25, 1945 Telegram arrived. Ernie was killed March 18th.
"The secretary of war asks that I assure you of his sympathy in the loss of your husband, First Lieutenant Ernest T. Johnson. Report received states he was killed eighteen March in Alaska in airplane crash. Confirming letter follows." It was signed, Dunlop, Acting the Adjutant General.
March 31, 1945 Received letter from Ernie, written 17th. Mailed 27th. The crew sent flowers.
When Mother discovers she is pregnant, very shortly after her husband dies, she most likely went straight from the doctor’s office to see her mother. Imagining the scene… mother runs into the living room, her face smeared wet with tears, screaming, “Mom, Mom!” as her mother rushed out of the kitchen, apron tied tight around her large waist, a dish towel still in her hand. Collapsing into her mother’s big, soft arms, bearing the scent of sauerkraut she had been cooking in the kitchen, “Mom, I’m pregnant, two and a half months.” Her face in a grimace,“I don’t want this baby. I want Ernest.”
“Helen, dear Helen.” shaken by the sudden news, “Please don’t say that. Of course you want this baby. This is a child of you and Ernest.” My grandmother tightly held and jiggled her daughter in an embrace, wanting to insulate her from the world.
Tearing away from her mother, her voice rises in anger, “He never even knew I was pregnant. This baby is an exchange for Ernest. God’s atonement for taking him.” She falls into a chair, continues to cry. I see Grandpa standing to the side, shaking his head with a look of confusion and helplessness. Young Nancy, mother’s twelve year old sister, her long, red hair tied in braids, arrives home from school, running into the house, tossing her books on the sofa. “What’s happening? Why are you crying, Helen?”
Grandma turns to Nancy with a soft voice, “Helen’s going to have another baby, and she’s just a little emotional at getting the news.”
Nancy, in her red plaid jumper with a white blouse, places her hand gently on her sister’s shoulder, “Why Helen, I can help you with the baby. I’m almost thirteen, I can take care of two babies.”
Helen looks up, pleading, “Nancy, dear Nancy, I hardly have the strength to be a mother to Douglas, who’s only five months old. What will I do with another baby? Thinking about Ernest is all I can do.” She let out a sharp blast, “I want HIM…” as she frantically searched all their faces. “Who will believe me?”
Mother’s longing for him bonded with her feeling of love, till finally, freezing into one solidified emotion never to break apart. Forever on, longing and loss were, for her, intertwined as the meaning of love which she shared with me.
Growing in Mother’s womb, soft tissues, organs, and copious amounts of blood and fluid circulated, expanded and slowly grew into my shape as a baby girl. Along with the physical development, human emotions were circling. Mother struggled, as she swallowed her grief, pushing it out in an exhale, only to be swallowed again. Her grief and despair quickly surrounded my every move. Her shaking body loosened my fetal position, giving me a sense of insecurity. In my warm place, I heard her sob and began to cry too, as the struggle to feel her love and affection yielded no result. Sadness poured into the fluid that buoyed me in the darkness. I learned before my birth, from Mother, that longing and loss were intertwined as the meaning of love.
Six and a half months after his death, I was born, October 9, 1945. The war had ended and an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. With my birth, I replaced dad in the threesome, Mom, Dad and Douglas. An exchange Mother never forgave me for. Born in the shadow of my father’s death, her feelings for me were conflicted. I believe she struggled to bury them, but she couldn’t separate them from me. I became a target she could direct her life’s greatest disappointment to. Without Mother’s love, I arrived in the world a stranger. A baby conceived with their love, but born only to a grief-stricken widow. She couldn’t blame God, so she blamed me - my crime of being born. My existence was living proof, day after day, she was separated from her love. Ambivalence was always at the heart of our relationship. Pulling me close, pushing me back, enticing me nearer, turning away, playing a game of hide and seek. Mother hid in plain sight while I sought her out. The only trust I had was her changeability.
Forever trying to connect with her, I tried with every bone of my body to be close to her. When the connection never happened, the longing only intensified. My love for Mother was the same I had for Father. Because they were both lost to me, I longed for both. My connection was to longing. Never knowing how to be present with Mother or Father, I was incapable of being fully present for others. Because I never had intimacy with either of them, my authentic self was left wanting from the very beginning. Always to live behind a facade pretending to be like everyone else, able to have relationships of love and caring, when in reality, it was all beyond my grasp. I was an actress from an early age. Never understanding the full meaning of why until many years later.
It was hard to accept Mother's ambivalence for me. Her conflicting feelings about me were always at the heart of our relationship. I didn’t want to accept the reality she had anything but perfect love for me. She had to be the perfect loving mother, and I had to be the perfect loving child. Of course none of that could ever be true for anyone, but I needed in my childhood to believe that. Upon this lie our relationship was built and maintained. An insidious game that developed between us; trying to fool ourselves, succeeding in fooling only the world out there who thought we were the ideal mother/daughter relationship. So alike one another, so close, when in reality we were rivals.
Michelle dancing with the Red Boa at The Golden Banana, 1979
Mother taught me how to strip. Well, not exactly. She taught me how to tease. I naturally knew how to strip.
Stripping to me, was like entering a time capsule, with all my anxieties and fears from childhood. I was taken years back to the knowledge of my not being wanted. The reality of having to entice others to want me, to love me. And the sad realization I was destined to perform many fantasies, but in the end they meant nothing to me.
The red feather boa suddenly streams onto the stage in a blaze of redness. Michelle heard the music and it touched a trigger inside her, rapidly turning on the balls of the gold platform shoes, creating a vision of the color flowing across the stage. With their whirling and twisting, the feathers conceal her for a moment here and there, but never completely. The bright stage lights illuminate the color as the boa wraps loosely around her naked body. Her only covering a red g-string covered with shiny sequins.
“Come on down here, Michelle.” A young man sitting at the stage yells, as he pounds his hand on the stage.
Michelle stops with perfect posture, poses quietly with the boa held close to her body. Then one arm opens the boa out to the side and then the other arm opens the boa, till it is held out in a straight line, touching the tops of her bare shoulders. She glances out over the audience, above the men and their voices. The lips, matching the redness of the feathers, send a full, red, lush smile out to the audience. The rose colored lights give her skin a soft pink hue while the strong color of the feathers provide a bold contrast against her white skin. She turns around in slow motion as she holds the pose. When she is again facing front she reaches down, unhooks the g-string, letting it fall to the stage. She lets her hand linger there, fluffing up her blonde bush. Her fingers, covered with bright red nail polish, reach inside, touch the moisture for a quick second, then slowly move to her hips, then upward to her waist, midriff and finally her breasts, which she caresses with both hands. Being naked is Michelle’s biggest disguise. Hiding in plain sight.
An absurd thought races through my mind, a discussion in a philosophy course about the question of self. Does the very essence of who I am come before the existence of me? Does what I do follow from who I am? Or is the reverse true, what I do determines who I am?
Who said that, I couldn't remember.
Michelle and Judy are the two main characters in this story, both of them played by the same female. 1979
Michelle plays her part well; an accomplished actress both on and off the stage. Her dancing is entertaining, her stripping seductive, and when she's on the other side of the lights she mixes well with the audience, moving among them talking and drinking. Always the drinking. Always ready for something risqué. Her behavior always on the cutting edge of being improper.
Outside of the clubs Michelle isn’t supposed to have an existence. When the face goes on; makeup creating the image of the fantasy girl with colors, accent lines, subtle emphasis of the features – Michelle appears.
And in the early morning hours, when the face is taken off, makeup removed, and the skin cleaned, Michelle disappears, at least she’s suppose to. Her role a very limited one; existence as a dancer, a stripper, a performer. Nothing else is asked of her.
Judy says, “Michelle’s pushing her limits. The bitch is playing with my head.”
Judy is the other female lead in this story. Judy goes to bed with a clean face. She grew up in small-town America, copious American flags decorating Main Street on patriotic holidays, the movie house open only on Friday and Saturday nights. Her mother, a first grade school teacher, raised both herself and her brother, Douglas, as best she could, after her dad was killed in World War II.
Married at twenty as a lost little waif, needing taking care of.
But that was years ago. Older now and by God wanting to do what she wants to do. Wanting to be free in so many ways, and not wanting to explain it to anybody. Trying to escape the rigid structure of faithful wife. Pushing herself to fly free, but finding unseen, strong bonds of reason and intimidation constantly trying to tie her down; take her back.
Michelle shouts in Judy’s ear, “You’re still a lost little waif who can’t take care of herself. Pleading and whining, I’m so tired of that. Stand up for yourself and tell them all to just shut up and accept you for who you are. You know who you are don’t you?”
Italian boyfriend, Gino…November 1983.
Gino calls and invites me to the Foot-Light Parade Ball, a big charity event in Boston, black tie with live orchestra, champagne and auction. When I arrive at his house he has music playing in the living room, danceable, dreamy music.
“You look fantastic. Ready to go to a ball?” he asks me as he pours me a glass of champagne and slips it to me as drop my coat on the counter and twirl out of the kitchen into the living room. Turning the volume up Gene leans against the staircase with his glass of champagne, watching me move around the room. As I move, dancing in front of the fireplace, around the coffee table and behind the leather sofa, Michelle begins to come alive and make the dance more seductive. Gene is swaying to the music as if he wants to dance with me, but he realizes it’s not a partner I want, it’s an audience. I’ve told him I’m a stripper but he has no desire to come and see me perform at the club.
Now I perform for him. The second song comes on and it’s even more appropriate for a strip than the first one was. I unzip the back of my dress, lower it to the floor and step out of in. I throw the dress on the sofa. Then I stand, legs spread apart, perfectly still in my black high heels, black silk stockings held up by a black lace garter belt and matching bra. I am wearing a g-string instead of panties. I hesitate for only a moment, then remove the g-string by undoing the hook on each hip, as I pull it through my crotch and throw it sideways where it lands on top of a lamp shade. I turn my back to Gene and undo the back of my bra. Crushing the bra into my breasts with my arms, I turn my head around to first one side then the other, holding my eyes down, as if looking for him. I drop the bra as I turn forward again, fondling my breasts with my hands. Moving to the music, I run my hands down the sides of my body ending with both my hands and fingers clutching my vagina. Pulling my straight arms tight I begin to masturbate. Suddenly dropping to my knees and leaning forward, arms outstretched, my hands catch me as I roll over onto my back on the carpet. Gene is upon me in a moment. He buries his head between my legs as I moan, bringing me to climax. Then he stands, removes his clothing and fucks me hard on the floor. When he is finished, he stands over me, staring.
“Get up there on the couch.”
I play along with him as I feign fear, swing my legs, covered in the silk stockings, under me and push myself up off the floor. I remove the garter belt, drop it, and walk slowly to the couch. The stockings remain up on my legs because of sweat.
Covering me with the throw on the back of the couch, “Now play nice, and just stay here while I get more champagne and make a fire.”
When a roaring fire is burning, he takes his white tuxedo shirt off, kneels by the couch, uncovers me and begins to lick my legs, slowly peels down the stockings.
“Now, I’m going to disarm you, by removing these spike heels.”
“You bastard. Leaving me with no defense.”
“That’s how I like you.” he smiles.
We never make it out the door. We have a private ball of our own. Gene makes us a light supper around midnight. After finally falling asleep on the couch, we wake at four in the morning and go upstairs to the bedroom.
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