This week’s Member Pick is “Yellow,” a story by Antonia Crane about the days following the death of her mother. The piece will be featured in Black Clock #17 this summer and is adapted from her forthcoming book Spent. We asked her to tell us how the story first came together:
“‘Yellow’ actually began as a love letter to Cheryl Strayed’s essay ‘The Love of My Life’ (The Sun, Issue #430) which begins ‘The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.’ I had become fixated on that essay because in it, Strayed’s palpable sorrow contained a sexually reckless rhythm that I related to as a dancer and sex worker. My own mother died of cancer two months into grad school and I was raging with grief. At that time, I quit my half-assed personal assistant jobs and chose to sit in the dark for two years at ‘Pleasures.’
“A lifelong dancer and athlete, I was more comfortable hurling my body at the world than eating or buying toothpaste. I remember that I could go strip or meet a client for money, but I could not remember to pick up toothpaste no matter how many times I wrote in on my hand with a black Sharpie. I came home one afternoon to a Walgreens bag on my doorknob with Crest in it and bawled.
“Strayed’s essay modeled the utensils I sought to stir up my own concoction of rage and loss that was tearing at my skin. I’m grateful she allowed me to cook in her kitchen. I was mourning my mother. I was dancing; and I wrote like a motherfucker.”
An investigation of the drone strikes that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki:
“One day in early September, Abdulrahman woke up before the rest of the house. He tiptoed into his mother’s bedroom, took 9,000 Yemeni rials—roughly $40—from her purse, and left a note outside her bedroom door. He then snuck out the kitchen window and into the courtyard. Shortly after 6 am, the family’s guard saw the boy leave but didn’t think anything of it. It was Sunday, September 4, 2011, a few days after the Eid al-Fitr holiday marked the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Nine days before, Abdulrahman had turned 16.
“A short while later, Abdulrahman’s mother woke up. She started to rouse his siblings for morning prayers and then went to wake him, but Abdulrahman was not in his bedroom. She called for him and, while searching the house, found his note. In it, he apologized for leaving without telling her and said that he missed his father and wanted to find him. He also said he was sorry for taking the money. ‘When his mother told me about the letter, it was just like a shock for me,’ Abdulrahman’s grandmother Saleha told me. ‘I said, “I think this will be just like bait for his father.”‘ The CIA, she feared, ‘might find his father through him.'”
Meet the woman who wants to reprogram the porn industry and change our perceptions of meaningful sex:
“Gallop’s residence in the Flatiron District–a glamorous and sprawling loft dubbed The Black Apartment–looks more like the set of a high-class erotic thriller than a casual homemade porn video. A converted YMCA locker room, it was actually used as the set for The Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘Nasty Gal’ video in 2005. The cavernous loft, filled with taxidermy and lined with bookshelves, windows, and a display case for Gallop’s 300 pairs of high heels, also serves as the base of operations for Make Love Not Porn when her staffers are in New York.
“As we sat there, Gallop facing me over a taxidermy statue of a mongoose fighting a cobra, she began to tell me the story of her fascination with porn.”
Why did America give up on charging for parking? A proposed solution to congestion and sprawl:
“There’s plenty to hate about driving—traffic jams, car accidents, speeding tickets—not to mention the endless headache of finding a spot to park. So what if you discovered an invention that could wean us from our vehicles, combating suburban sprawl and making city streets less dangerous, congested, and polluted? Well, that device has been around for nearly 80 years: It’s called the parking meter.
“Contrary to popular belief, the parking meter was originally designed to keep traffic moving and make more spaces available for shoppers, a measure often lauded by local businesses as much as the public who paid their hourly rates. Beginning with the first parking meter, installed in 1935 on the corner of First Street and Robinson Avenue in Oklahoma City, and spreading clear across the United States, the device was hailed as the great solution to our parking woes. Yet decades of poor meter implementation, inane off-street parking requirements, and technological stasis slowly turned our city streets into a driver’s nightmare.”
“Aaron Sorkin knows the weight of last words, and his last words to me, as we walk-and-talk out of the HBO press room, are: ‘Write something nice.’ He says this in the ‘Smile, honey’ tone of much less successful jerks.”
Those words launch Prickett into a funny, cutting attack on the pretentions and assumptions of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Through her eyes, the creator of A Few Good Men and The Social Network is guilty of an insufferable nostalgia for white male power, and she uses a press junket interview for Sorkin’s HBO show The Newsroom to diss the iconic writer in a way that’s both entertaining and thought-provoking.
Liveliest Profile of a Sprawling Corporation and its Straight-Laced Chief Executive
Big companies and their CEOs are tough to report on. Disney, led by the profoundly un-flamboyant Bob Iger and guarded by its disciplined phalanx of PR professionals, may be one of the toughest. That’s why Reingold’s story is so masterful—it explains Iger in way that’s vivid, thoughtful, and rigorous, giving us a sophisticated picture of him and his plans for the company. I wish Reingold would profile News Corp., Viacom, and every other American company, for that matter.
Investigative Story Responsible for Spurring Most Unintended “Holy Shit!” Uttterances
For me, this story’s surprises came in waves. First, there was the shock at how systematically and rampantly Wal-Mart bribed its way into Mexican retail. Next, there was awe at how Barstow nailed every crucial aspects of the ensuing cover-up. This is investigative reporting at its best—even-handed and rigorous, with no room for perpetrators’ excuses or squirming.
Best Confirmation that Super PACS and Karl Rove are Just as Creepy as We Thought They Were
You probably remember the media firestorm that followed this story, which quoted Karl Rove joking about killing Todd Akin (“If he’s found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!”). The glimpse of the inner workings of Super PACs that follows in Kolhatkar’s fly-on-the-wall account is fascinating reading, even months after the election.
Best Confirmation of, Admit It, What We All Were Kind of Wondering While Watching the Olympic Opening Ceremony
Those hot-bodied Olympians are having lots and lots of sex! Alipour illustrates hook-up culture in the Olympic Village with kickass reporting (big-name athletes go on the record, and are surprisingly candid) and just the right tone: The story is lighthearted and detailed without being prurient or icky, a tough order for a gossipy sex piece.
Clearest Portrait of a Misunderstood and Deadly American Subculture
Following the Tucson, Arizona shooting, Laskas set out to understand gun culture by working at a gun store in Yuma and profiling its clerks—the last line of defense between us and mass murderers. I love the way she leaves politics aside and zeroes in on her subjects’ humanity. The story appears in Laskas’s new book, Hidden America, a collection of her GQ stories about the many professional subcultures that make the U.S. work, from oil drillers to coal miners to migrant fruit pickers. Read it, read it, read it.
Best story about a monkey that’s really about the role of government that’s really about nature’s place in the modern world that’s actually, maybe, really just about a monkey.
This is the story I’ve linked and forward more than any other this year. I just loved this damn funny, poignant narrative about a renegade macaque monkey on the loose in Tampa, the people trying to catch him, and the others who want to let him remain wild and free, if lonely, among the billboards and greenways of Tampa.
The citizenry of Tampa Bay was adamantly pro-monkey. People had long been abetting the animal, leaving fruit plates on their patios. A few people, one F.W.C. officer told me, called the agency’s monkey hot line to report that they’d seen the macaque several hours or even a couple of days earlier—offering totally useless intelligence, in other words, presumably just to stick their thumbs in the government’s eye. The Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay, as people called it, had very quickly become a celebrity.
I continue to be fascinated by the John McAfee train wreck. I’ve known the McAfee antivirus founder casually online for several years, and wrote about him when his compound was raided by the Belize Gang Suppression Unit this past Spring. But that was just the carrot top. My colleague Josh Davis spent the five months this year interviewing McAfee to file this amazing report on a millionaire gone South.
McAfee picks a bullet off the floor and fixes me with a wide-eyed, manic intensity, his light blue eyes sparkling. “This is a bullet, right?” he says in the congenial Southern accent that has stuck with him since his boyhood in Virginia. “Let’s put the gun down,” I tell him. I’d come here to investigate why the government of Belize was accusing him of assembling a private army and entering the drug trade. It seemed implausible that a wildly successful tech entrepreneur would disappear into the Central American jungle and become a narco-trafficker. Now I’m not so sure. But he explains that the accusations are a fabrication. “Maybe what happened didn’t actually happen,” he says, staring hard at me. “Can I do a demonstration?” He loads the bullet into the gleaming silver revolver and spins the cylinder. “This scares you, right?” he says. Then he puts the gun to his head. My heart rate kicks up; it takes me a second to respond. “Yeah, I’m scared,” I admit. “We don’t have to do this.” “I know we don’t,” he says, the muzzle pressed against his temple. And then he pulls the trigger.
I’m not sure what to say about this other than it’s a great read and BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!!!
Springsteen came to glory in the age of Letterman, but he is anti-ironical. Keith Richards works at seeming not to give a shit. He makes you wonder if it is harder to play the riffs for “Street Fighting Man” or to dangle a cigarette from his lips by a single thread of spit. Springsteen is the opposite. He is all about flagrant exertion. There always comes a moment in a Springsteen concert, as there always did with James Brown, when he plays out a dumb show of the conflict between exhaustion and the urge to go on. Brown enacted it by dropping to his knees, awash in sweat, unable to dance another step, yet shooing away his cape bearer, the aide who would enrobe him and hustle him offstage. Springsteen slumps against the mike stand, spent and still, then, regaining consciousness, shakes off the sweat—No! It can’t be!—and calls on the band for another verse, another song. He leaves the stage soaked, as if he had swum around the arena in his clothes while being chased by barracudas. “I want an extreme experience,” he says. He wants his audience to leave the arena, as he commands them, “with your hands hurting, your feet hurting, your back hurting, your voice sore, and your sexual organs stimulated!”
Everyone has a fantasy about beating the house at a casino. (No? Just me? Okay, then.) And that’s because it basically never happens. Except to this guy. Don Johnson. (No. Not that Don Johnson.) Johnson beat not just one house, but three—The Tropicana, Ceaser’s and Borgata in Atlantic City, taking home $15 million from the blackjack tables in the process. Mark Bowden has the story of how he pulled it off.
But two years ago, Johnson says, the casinos started getting desperate. With their table-game revenues tanking and the number of whales diminishing, casino marketers began to compete more aggressively for the big spenders. After all, one high But two years ago, Johnson says, the casinos started getting desperate. With their table-game revenues tanking and the number of whales diminishing, casino marketers began to compete more aggressively for the big spenders. After all, one high roller who has a bad night can determine whether a casino’s table games finish a month in the red or in the black. Inside the casinos, this heightened the natural tension between the marketers, who are always pushing to sweeten the discounts, and the gaming managers, who want to maximize the house’s statistical edge. But month after month of declining revenues strengthened the marketers’ position. By late 2010, the discounts at some of the strapped Atlantic City casinos began creeping upward, as high as 20 percent.
I’m aware of the disconnect of a well-off, culturally elite, Left coast-dwelling, white guy picking a “best” story about race relations in modern America. So let me say, in a year when Trayvon Martin was needlessly shot dead and when race was an oft-used political poison during the election, this was the story (along with Kiese Laymon’s “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America”) that made me pause and think about race. “Fear of a Black President” is a brutal and depressing read and yet also a vital one. It’s also story that I think will stand the test of time. Ta-Nehisi Coates essay will be one that we look back on, in years to come, to understand where we were as a culture in 2012. And finally from a purely stylistic point, I found the deft touch with which he lands the closing paragraphs, after such a sprawling essay, both inspiring and intimidating. If only I could write so well.
In a democracy, so the saying goes, the people get the government they deserve. Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites. Any black person who’s worked in the professional world is well acquainted with this trick. But never has it been practiced at such a high level, and never have its limits been so obviously exposed. This need to talk in dulcet tones, to never be angry regardless of the offense, bespeaks a strange and compromised integration indeed, revealing a country so infantile that it can countenance white acceptance of blacks only when they meet an Al Roker standard.
Why the Red Cross hasn’t been as effective as small community groups when it has come to disaster relief post-Sandy:
The real problem with the Red Cross was not that it was stretched thin, but rather that it was simply too big, and its people too inexperienced in disaster recovery, to be able to respond nimbly to Sandy. Eventually, after a week or two, it will lumber in to affected areas and take over from the ad-hoc groups who provided desperately-needed aid in the early days. It’s reasonably good at that. But that’s clearly not good enough, and it’s certainly nowhere near flawless.
Of course, the Red Cross is burdened with massive expectations. If you’re stuck in a remote part of Staten Island without power or communication for days on end, no one’s going to blame Doctors Without Borders or Occupy Wall Street if you get no help — but they are going to blame the Red Cross.
With $117 million in donations comes an expectation that the Red Cross can and should be everywhere it’s needed, when it’s needed, rather than in a handful of places, a week later, offering food but no shelter or blankets or power or lights. But probably those expectations are unrealistic. The US is fortunate in that it’s not a permanent disaster zone: it’s not a country where Red Cross volunteers are ever going to be experienced in responding to such things. And mobilizing thousands of volunteers and tens of millions of dollars to provide food and shelter in areas without electricity or pharmacies or heat — that’s a logistical nightmare.
Why the Red Cross hasn’t been as effective as small community groups when it has come to disaster relief post-Sandy:
“The real problem with the Red Cross was not that it was stretched thin, but rather that it was simply too big, and its people too inexperienced in disaster recovery, to be able to respond nimbly to Sandy. Eventually, after a week or two, it will lumber in to affected areas and take over from the ad-hoc groups who provided desperately-needed aid in the early days. It’s reasonably good at that. But that’s clearly not good enough, and it’s certainly nowhere near flawless.
“Of course, the Red Cross is burdened with massive expectations. If you’re stuck in a remote part of Staten Island without power or communication for days on end, no one’s going to blame Doctors Without Borders or Occupy Wall Street if you get no help — but they are going to blame the Red Cross.
“With $117 million in donations comes an expectation that the Red Cross can and should be everywhere it’s needed, when it’s needed, rather than in a handful of places, a week later, offering food but no shelter or blankets or power or lights. But probably those expectations are unrealistic. The US is fortunate in that it’s not a permanent disaster zone: it’s not a country where Red Cross volunteers are ever going to be experienced in responding to such things. And mobilizing thousands of volunteers and tens of millions of dollars to provide food and shelter in areas without electricity or pharmacies or heat — that’s a logistical nightmare.”
Scientists are trying to uncover why some people are better able to recover from trauma than others:
After Ebaugh crawled up the rocky riverbank, a truck driver picked her up, took her to a nearby convenience store and bought her a cup of hot tea. Police, when they arrived, were sympathetic and patient. The doctor at the hospital, she says, treated her like a daughter. A close friend took her in for a time. And her family offered reassurance and emotional support. ‘For the first month, I almost had to tell people to stop coming because I was so surrounded by friends and community,’ she says.
Studies of many kinds of trauma have shown that social support is a strong buffer against PTSD and other psychological problems. James Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has done a series of experiments in which women lie in an fMRI scanner and see ‘threat cues’ on a screen. They are told that between 4 and 10 seconds later, they may receive a small electric shock on the ankle. The cue triggers sensory arousal and activates brain regions associated with fear and anxiety, but when the women hold the hands of their husbands2 or friends3, these responses diminish.
Social interactions are complex and involve many brain circuits and chemicals; no one knows exactly why they provide relief.
Scientists are trying to uncover why some people are better able to recover from trauma than others:
“After Ebaugh crawled up the rocky riverbank, a truck driver picked her up, took her to a nearby convenience store and bought her a cup of hot tea. Police, when they arrived, were sympathetic and patient. The doctor at the hospital, she says, treated her like a daughter. A close friend took her in for a time. And her family offered reassurance and emotional support. ‘For the first month, I almost had to tell people to stop coming because I was so surrounded by friends and community,’ she says.
“Studies of many kinds of trauma have shown that social support is a strong buffer against PTSD and other psychological problems. James Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has done a series of experiments in which women lie in an fMRI scanner and see ‘threat cues’ on a screen. They are told that between 4 and 10 seconds later, they may receive a small electric shock on the ankle. The cue triggers sensory arousal and activates brain regions associated with fear and anxiety, but when the women hold the hands of their husbands2 or friends3, these responses diminish.
“Social interactions are complex and involve many brain circuits and chemicals; no one knows exactly why they provide relief.”
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