University of Southern Maine USM Digital Commons Stonecoast MFA Student Scholarship Summer 2018 Hair on Fire: Essays from a Life Lee Kahrs University of Southern Maine, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/stonecoast Recommended Citation Kahrs, Lee, "Hair on Fire: Essays from a Life" (2018). Stonecoast MFA. 57. https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/stonecoast/57 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at USM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Stonecoast MFA by an authorized administrator of USM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Hair on Fire: Essays from a Life _______________ A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MAINE STONECOAST MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING BY Lee J. Kahrs _______________ 2018 1 Abstract This collection of essays comprises a memoir of the last 17 years of the author’s life, beginning with the decision to get sober and flashing back to her experience living through 9/11 in New York City. Her 9/11 experience was the catalyst for her decision to flee New York and seek a better life in Vermont. While she found love and the family she always wanted, her alcoholism grew until she decided to quit in order to save her family, and herself. Life in Vermont proved to be rich with the opportunity for a new career in journalism and domestic life in the county, replete with chickens and the annual quest for firewood. But with that rural life came the personal evolution that comes with sobriety, the reckoning with demons — religion, family — as well as the unexpected challenges evoked by medicine and marriage. Throughout this journey, the one constant throughout, the narrator’s Butch lesbian identity, comes more sharply into focus and informs all of her life experiences, proving that we are not all that different from one another. 3 Acknowledgements My mother has been telling me what a great writer I am since I could hold a pencil. She and my Dad have always supported my writing, clipping my news stories with pride, and I am so grateful to them for their unwavering belief in me. My writing grandparent Fran Bull has been reading my work since just a few years ago when I was applying to Breadloaf for fun. When I broached the idea of getting my MFA, she was thrilled and helped me with my application essays, even writing a letter of recommendation. Thank you, Fran, for your warm light of constant support. I also have to thank my wife Sarah. Even though we are getting divorced, she has always, always encouraged my writing talents. I got sober for me, but for her and for our family as well, and if I hadn’t, I would be writing this today. She has stood by me and encouraged me to pursue my writing since day one, and there is not enough chocolate in the world to thank her for that. Finally, while the entire faculty of the Stonecoast MFA program consists of talented and giving human beings, Susan Conley made a mark. She shepherded me and my self-doubt from day one as a Firstie when I cried in workshop over a stupid cat essay, then as my first semester mentor with encouragement that made me soar in my writing and believe that I was, indeed, a writer. In this final semester as my mentor once again, Susan has been a keen editor and supportive friend whose enthusiasm for my work has only grown. She pushed me for more emotional depth and challenged me to dive deeper to a place I was terrified to go. She did that because she believed in me. I am indebted to 4 her thoughtful criticism, stalwart support of my talent, and consistent belief in me to grow beyond Stonecoast, because thanks to her, I believe it, too. 5 Table of Contents Preface .................................................................................................................................1 Hair on Fire: Essays From a Life I Believe .........................................................................................................................13 The Wood Pile ...............................................................................................................22 Hair on Fire ....................................................................................................................30 Day Job ..........................................................................................................................40 A Piece of Steel ..............................................................................................................48 Eating for a Lifetime ......................................................................................................51 The Chicken Whisperer .................................................................................................59 Butch as I Wanna Be ......................................................................................................72 A Butch Primer ..............................................................................................................78 Road Tripping ................................................................................................................81 The Right Place ..............................................................................................................91 Ink in my Veins ..............................................................................................................94 Losing My Religion .....................................................................................................103 Pot Pilgrimage ..............................................................................................................114 Left ...............................................................................................................................121 Getting to Know You ...................................................................................................129 Never Forget ................................................................................................................137 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................144 6 Preface This manuscript was 30 years in the making. Thirty years of growth and evolution, of drunken nights and fuzzy mornings, of one night stands and failed relationships. This manuscript comes after three decades of dreaming, wishing and posturing, of discovering Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Kerouac and Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson and Jim Carroll, and copying a lifestyle without doing the work. It wasn’t until I got sober at the age of 43 that the real work began, and the sentences formed in my head, my words. It’s as if the alcohol plugged the brain veins carrying any literary prowess, and sobriety chipped away at the dam until it broke. That said, I’d like to thank Hemingway and journalism for teaching me the art of simplicity and spare style, Thompson and Burroughs for irreverence and originality. I’d also like to thank Joan Didion and Patti Smith for their intellect on the page and the sheer beauty of their words and sentences. I am also forever grateful to Leslie Feinberg, who put the Butch lesbian experience into frank and arresting words in Stone Butch Blues, as well as Alison Bechdel and Lisa Kron for Fun Home the Musical, based on Bechdel’s graphic novel, in which a lesbian was portrayed on Broadway for the first time. There are so many more, but the authors I’ve listed here are the key players whose work helped shape my literary consciousness over the years. Armed with these influences and the guidance of my Stonecoast mentors, the goal of this manuscript was to offer a new, multi-faceted voice in creative nonfiction. Over the last two years at Stonecoast, I looked around and realized just how underrepresented Butch lesbians are, not only in publishing, but in film and television as well. The result was my third semester project, 7 Butch Lives Matter: Examining the Dearth and Design of Butch Lesbian Characters in Modern Literature and Culture, from the “Well of Loneliness” to “Fun Home”. But I do not want to be another lesbian writer. I do not want readers to look at this manuscript as merely another lesbian book. The whole point of Hair on Fire: Essays From a Life is just that: To show that being a Butch lesbian is who I am, that it’s my life, one that includes many of the same aspects and forces of many other people, gay and straight alike. The essays I offer here deal with chickens and firewood and heartbreak and home repair and my relationship with my body, as well as gay-specific issues like coming out, and being rejected by the Catholic church. Walking around in this world, I see that straight people don’t understand the Butch lesbian, and may have little or no experience in knowing a Butch. Consider this manuscript my introduction, and attempt to remove some of the misunderstanding and ignorance. Still, if Stonecoast has taught me anything, it’s that the learning never stops. It’s not enough to read great works and put words down on paper. It’s not enough to hone the craft of writing by writing. I just learned this. In April 2018, with five weeks left before the Stonecoast thesis deadline, I rented a cottage on Togus Pond just east of Augusta. My goal was to do a big push on my thesis, and get to the point where all the front matter was formatted, all the content was written and the preface