NOTE: This very important story was written by Jennifer Graves, a friend of my sister’s from high school. Jennifer is now the suburban MN mother of six. She captures a fundamental truth about parenting: We all want our children to be happy, stable and loved. There’s a vote coming up in less than a month that could put an obstacle in her son’s way. And that is SO un-Minnesotan. Please read this piece and pass it on to someone you know who opposes gay marriage. If anything will change their view, her words will. ~A.B.

Some of you know this story. To others it will be new. It’s important to me to say it.

I was raised in Minnesota, near a slew of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. We went to church together, gathered for weekly meals, and had sleepovers. We went “Up North” to the cabin together where we fished, sang songs around the campfire, ate s’mores, built forts in the woods, and played mumblety-peg with Grandpa’s pocket knives. I treasure my childhood growing up with my family around me.

I am fortunate that all of my siblings, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles still live in Minnesota, and all live relatively close to each other. We still see each other frequently, and our kids now play together. We are a part of each others’ lives, and we are blessed by that.

When I married right after college many years ago, I moved to California to work in Silicon Valley with my husband, who was also raised in Minnesota. We built a life in California, had children, worked hard, made friends, and considered our friends and church as a kind of surrogate extended family. But as much as we loved them, there was something missing. We wanted our children to know their relatives. We wanted them to play chess with their great-grandpa, drink lemonade with their great-grandma, get teased by their uncles and grandpa, make cookies with their aunts and grandma, and have sleepovers with their cousins. We wanted them to be a regular part of their Minnesota family.

And so, after a decade of saying we would never move back, we moved back. We bought a house near my parents and my sisters. And we had sleepovers and made cookies and played chess. We celebrated new babies and weddings and graduations. We cried together over deaths and disappointments. My husband missed California at times – he missed being in the hub of activity for his chosen career. He missed the more temperate weather and the proximity of the ocean and the mountains. But he knew that Minnesota was the right place for our family, and that was more important for us.

We now have six children, ranging in age from 20 to 5 (pictured). Our oldest son was nine when we moved back to Minnesota. Some of you reading this know him and have watched him grow up from a young boy into a young man. This spring he graduated from the University of Minnesota, summa cum laude, with a double major, at age 19. As an excellent student, he had many options for college, but he chose the U because he wanted to be close to home and family. He comes home frequently. He plays and teaches piano. He is quiet, kind, intelligent, well-spoken, funny, and a good friend. And he is gay.

When he first came out to us, he said the hardest thing in accepting this part of himself was giving up the dream of getting married and having children. I told him he didn’t have to give up that dream. Everyone who knows him says he will be a great dad. Kids love him, including his own younger brothers, and he relates well to them – it is part of why he is a successful piano teacher. He wants a family of his own someday, and for now he looks forward to having that family in Minnesota – where his extended family lives, where he and his future spouse and children can enjoy the traditions he and I both enjoyed growing up here, and where he can participate in them with a large loving extended family, experiencing all the joys and sorrows of life together.

How sad and unjust it would be if he had to move to another more accepting state to enjoy the freedom to marry the person he loves. How ashamed I would be of my state if we were to send a message to him that he will not ever be welcome to enjoy the rights and responsibilities of marriage here equally with other Minnesotans. Same sex marriage is currently not legal here. But the amendment on the ballot this fall would make that permanent. At the very least, we owe it to LGBT Minnesotans to continue the discussion, not close it off with this amendment.

I know many in my circle of friends and family are conservative, Republican, and/or Christian. This issue crosses party and religious lines, however, and you can vote against the amendment while still voting for the party of your choice in other races. Your church can still refuse to recognize or perform same-sex marriages, while allowing the state to give the civil right of marriage to all of its citizens. Many religious and non-partisan organizations have stated their opposition to this amendment.

Do you have a son who you hope will someday marry the person he falls in love with? What if he came to you one day and told you he was gay? Would that change how you feel about him, or the hopes and dreams you have for him? Would you want him to have to leave our state in order to create a legally recognized family and receive the benefits and responsibilities of marriage? I hope my son someday feels welcome to start a family here and enjoy all the wonderful things this state has to offer, and that he continues to be a part of my Minnesota family. It would be a great loss to my family and to our state if he and others like him had to leave to receive the civil right of marriage as an equal citizen. He is not a second class citizen. Join me in voting NO this fall on the amendment to limit marriage, and send a message to my son, to all Minnesotans, and to all Americans, that we will not use our constitution to deny equal rights to our LGBT friends and family. Let’s leave a legacy of freedom and equality for all of our children.

–Jennifer Graves

My daughter is extraordinary.

I know, I know. I’m her mom. But seriously, she’s the kind of person you want in charge if you’re going to stage a rescue mission. Calm, intelligent, reserved. For years, she’s been the adult in our family. Her biological father is a burly moose of a man who smokes and swears and, gospel truth, reads romance novels. Her brothers are wild and impulsive. Her stepfather is a heady, dreamy mathematician. Her mother (that would be me) is the dramatic diva sort. Leni is our lynchpin—has been since she was two.

Here’s an example: My husband’s best friend, Bob, who is like a character right out of “The Big Bang Theory” (only moreso), collapsed on the volleyball court and was rushed to the ER with a bleeding aneurysm. John was devastated. The two have been compatriots in eclipse viewing and computer hacking since 1998. So he set about to visit his friend and perk up his hospital stay: Into the bag he was taking went the complete set of Monty Python DVD’s, an extension cord for Bob’s laptop and a six-pack of a particularly nice craft beer.

Leni, age 16, sitting at the counter and eating her dinner (after volunteering all day as youth director at a teen clinic) said to my husband, “You are not taking that beer to Bob. I Googled aneurysms and he cannot mix alcohol with his medications.” They settled, the two of them, on a takeout order of sweet potato fries instead.

Earlier this year, when I finally—after much debate—left my job in advertising to promote The Forever Marriage, Leni was stoic and unimpressed.

“You’re leaving a six-figure job to … what? Write a blog that people can get for free. Is that right?”

God bless him, John leapt to my defense. He has this theory about how I’m like the high-risk stock in our marital “portfolio.” And yes, I was making a decent living as a copywriter but as a novelist I could become a real star. While he explained all this, Leni simply stared.

Well, Leni was right. As anyone who read my screed about 50 Shades (see dramatic diva) knows. For six months I have worked to promote a book I dearly love with readings and lectures and a blog that I have enjoyed more than I can say. I’ve amassed a wonderful regular readership of about 10,000; I am reposted in roughly a dozen venues nationwide. Yet, to put it bluntly, I’m going broke.

This is the way of publishing in 2012. Something can be well-read and still not pay a dime. Competition for editorial space and teaching positions is intense and the market has responded by reducing (or, in many cases, eliminating) pay. I am deeply grateful to each one of you who has read so well and commented so thoughtfully and sent my work on, but Leni is right. I have responsibilities, including to that sweet husband who would work 27 hours a day to support my art. And I need to go back to work.

Because the best investment I can make right now is in tuition for that girl who is away at college, studying Naval Science and Structural Engineering. Luckily for all of us she’ll soon be in charge of the world…

This doesn’t mean I’m leaving forever. Only that I’m re-adjusting our marital portfolio, going back to a life of writing medical device headlines and giving up—for now—this three-times-weekly blog. I’ve heard from dozens of you this week, asking why I haven’t sent a new essay. They were sweet, concerned messages—most from strangers half a country away. You’ll never know how much your notes touched and cheered me. They also prompted me to write this.

If you subscribe, I hope you’ll stay on my blog feed and continue to receive updates. I am periodically seized by the desire to hold forth on the mysteries and complications of life. And while I can’t guarantee consistency, I do promise to stay in touch.

Thank you for reading. All great love.

Ann

I was meeting an old friend for coffee yesterday. She lives 30 miles west of MInneapolis; I live 10 miles east of St. Paul. We needed a spot that cut the driving for both of us. That’s how we ended up at a Starbucks/Barnes & Noble in the Galleria, a posh mall in Edina.

Or rather, that’s how I ended up there.

I’d had a week of shitty writing days, all related to the fact that I wonder if the work I produce simply has no relevance today. It certainly has no value. I will, for the first time in my life, spend more on writing this year than I make. This is partly due to falling rates but also to the fact that literary folk simply don’t, or can’t, pay their bills. Other than ELLE Magazine—which sent me a generous check within 60 days—I’m still waiting on nearly everyone who’s published my work in the past year. The reason I now appear in The Huffington Post is that at least they’re up front: They say they aren’t going to pay me and they don’t.

Meantime, the college tuition bills keep rolling in…

I’d already had a talk with my husband, a serious one, about how maybe writing is no longer a viable career and I should look for wholesale change. Even my friends who write ad copy tell me the market is contracting. More and more, business people simply gin up their own content—for websites, for billboards, for direct mail. They can use words functionally and if there’s no poetry or wit, well … unless you’re Apple, it doesn’t really matter. Besides, you can find wit on Facebook. Everyone’s a headline writer on Twitter. Technology mainstreamed words the way cheap, mass-manufactured automobiles made everyone a driver. Who, these days, needs a livery cab?

John and I stayed up late the night before my Edina coffee, making a list of possible alternate income-generating careers. But old habits die hard and when I woke up, I had the itch to tell a story—as I have every morning for the past 15 years. So I showered and dressed and headed to the Starbucks early, thinking I’d get in an hour of decent, uninterrupted writing time.

It took 40 minutes of highway driving to get there, which seemed excessive. There was a bottleneck where I needed to get off, so I bypassed the Galleria and took the next exit. Then I circled around to find the Barnes & Noble parking lot cordoned off with tape and orange cones. There were two security vehicles with flashing lights, and a channel 5 news truck pulled up near the front door. I headed for the ramp of the adjoining Westin Hotel, where I drove two miles per hour through a maze of SUV’s and little sports cars and—oddly—dozens of women in sweatsuits or pajamas, carrying pillows, blankets and fold-up camp chairs.

It looked like the oldest sorority sleepover ever. Middle-aged women in bunny slippers and bandanas, oversize college sleep shirts and metallic polish on their nails. I darted through the crowd, thinking I’d escape them, and opened the door of the Starbucks. Inside, it was like a Who concert. Smashingly loud, every surface covered, people lined up three-wide out the mall door.

I had been on the road 20 minutes longer than I’d anticipated and needed a restroom, so I found a frazzled-looking barista who was trying to clear tables. I asked for directions to the ladies’ and she recited them. Then I asked her if it was always like this at 9 o’clock on a Thursday morning and she said, “No, it’s because of the book signing tonight.”

She pointed out one of the clear picture windows to a Lourdes-like slow-motion parade snaking into the Barnes & Noble. There were those women I’d seen out in the parking ramp, plus hundreds of others. Older, younger, some holding babies. On the tile floor around them was strewn the detritus of a sit-in: nests of quilts and opened packages of food.

“They’ve been camping out here since last night,” the girl told me, her eyes gray with fatigue. “I opened at 5:30 and they were banging on the doors.”

“What’s the reading?” I asked, recalling my own reading at this very Barnes and Noble where I was THRILLED to see 35 faces in the crowd.

“Have you ever heard of Fifty Shades of Grey?” the girl asked earnestly. Then she whispered. “I think it’s porn.”

I hurried to the bathroom after this conversation, picking my way through the cluttered mall. Inside it was like a Port-a-Potty had exploded. Unspeakable stains covered every surface. I clenched my bladder and decided I could hold it. Someone handed me a flyer as I turned and left.

“Are you a freak for Fifty Shades?” the headline shouted. Below was an advertisement for a forthcoming book proudly in “the same genre.” Barnes & Noble would be hosting that author soon.

Now I would like to tell you that I had a calm response to all this, that I looked at it (as my friend would, once I called her on her cell and changed our location and sat down with her an hour later) in a curious, sociological way. What is happening to the women of America, my wise friend would ask, that they are obsessed in huge numbers with a badly-written book about sexual deviance and abuse? I would merely shake my head and try to calm my anger.

Because that’s the truth. That’s what I felt standing in that Starbucks: utter fury that this is the writing our culture assigns value at this point in time.

My objection isn’t to the sex. It isn’t to the overnight success of the author. I am, in fact, a huge fan of both of those things. My objection is to the reductive message: the “romance” that blossoms between an abuser and his captive. The ugly language. The fact that this is writing—so far as I know, because I must admit I cannot bring myself to read more than a few pages—that reinforces ignorance and closes off inquiry into the greater world.

So here I am, howling about this in writing. Which is, of course, what I do. But I’ve also had day to calm myself and decide that fighting this tide is ridiculous. And there is—whether I can see it or not—value in a book that speaks to more than 5 million people worldwide. I just don’t know where that leaves me, and the other quiet, literary writers I know. Do we operate at a loss, book after book, or give up and become florists?

I haven’t decided yet. I’ll let you know.

Author’s Note: Initiation was my first published piece of fiction, making the title doubly meaningful. It came out in Atlantic Unbound in 2001 and was drawn—as most of my stories are—from events in real life. I find myself nostalgic for the raw, confused girl I named Ruthie who was, of course, based on a young me. –A.B.

~~~

She had slow-danced with him twice under colored lights, so close she could let herself fall and his body curved to support her. After, she felt his imprint even when they stood apart.

Around midnight, they left the smoky bar and walked to the bank of the narrow, toad-green river that ran through town. The air was thick and yellow, with wide pitchforks of lightning that flashed over the water. Clouds moved over the full moon, concealing and then illuminating.

“The weather is changing,” she said. They were walking with four full inches of space between them.

“How can you tell?” he asked. The two stopped at the swell beneath which the grass dropped away to become soft river bed.

“I can feel it. Here. In my throat.” She touched the hollow in her neck with two fingers. He reached out and stroked the same spot with one of his. Then he moved forward and kissed her there. Which produced in Ruthie an odd, distant feeling as if she were sinking away from him, into the water, leaving the bulk of solid earth behind.

He whispered, his mouth hot on her ear. At first, she only felt her blood, flooding the veins under her skin. Then she heard the words.

“You want my WHAT?” Ruthie was standing close enough to see his face even in the periods of darkness. She watched his muscles tighten under the faint mask of baby whiskers on his cheeks.

“Your underwear.” He muttered, but she understood perfectly this time. Fraternity initiation, he said desperately—he had to bring a pair of panties, pretty ones from someone about her size, to the initiation ceremony on Friday. “They have to be … you know,” his head dipped lower. “Uh, recently worn. So the other guys know I didn’t just go to the store and buy a pair myself.”

Ruthie imagined a ceremony. A room full of boys in Polo shirts and blond crewcuts passing a pair of lacy briefs from one to the next so each brother could lift them to his nose and sniff delicately, making sure they were used. She didn’t say anything, just sat up straight, smoothed shreds of hair behind her shoulders with one hand and started fingering the buttons of her sweater back through their holes with the other. The boy stared out at the dark river and threw a few clods of dirt toward it, but they fell short, just dissolving back into the grass instead of making a satisfying ‘plunk’ as they hit the water.

“I swear I am not making this up.” The boy sucked in a breathful of stagnant river wind. He reached out, pulled Ruthie to him, eased her back onto the grass, and kissed her for a long time. His mouth worked gently, opening and closing across her face, the roughness around his lips lightly scratching her skin. She breathed in his warm, spicy male smell.

“I am not making this up,” he said again, stroking her hair.

Ruthie believed him.

~~~

She was having a hard time getting out of her pants. She couldn’t figure out how she usually did this: Did she simply lift one foot while standing on the other?

“You need any help?” the boy called through the door, which was propped open just a crack. One round, brown eye peered at her from the margin. Ruthie could feel it tracking her, making her body dance with funny little jerks and hops as her underwear dropped down to the floor.

They had walked back to the bar, after the riverbank, because he told her she was the kind of girl who required liquor in order to shed her underwear. Ruthie had been this sort of girl for such a short time, she felt it was prudent to take his advice. He found her a place to sit, at a tilted wooden table wedged behind the old pinball machine at the back door. When he came back from the bar, he was carrying a tray with four shot glasses of tequila, an assortment of lime wedges, and a shaker half-full of salt.

The boy showed her how to smear lime juice and salt together on the crook of her hand and suck it off after the shot. He held her hand firmly in his and used it for his own lime juice and salt. His tongue was hot and rough, like a cat’s.

Ruthie drank the tequila, her first shot, and then a second. The sharp taste made her mouth sting unpleasantly, and her thoughts were getting fuzzy, moving stilted across the screen in her mind like dreams or memories, even though they were really happening at the time.

Now she watched her white panties flutter onto the linty gray carpet of her dormitory floor. They moved like a gentle bird. Then her door was creaking open. “I’m coming in,” he announced in a voice that came from low in his throat. Thick and mellow. He shimmied drunkenly in the doorway, watching Ruthie, who pulled her sweater down as far as it would go past her hips.

Carefully, she bent her knees and crouched to retrieve her underwear from the floor. She could feel the air coming in an unfamiliar front, rising up between her legs. Folding the plain white women’s briefs neatly, she handed them to the boy. Solemnly, he tucked them into the breast pocket of his jacket where the elastic-bound edge stuck up, a soft triangle like the silk handkerchief in an Italian suit.

Speaking softly, he moved closer to her with his hands outstretched. “I really appreciate this, you know.” When he reached around her, Ruthie thought he would try stealing underneath her sweater where her bare skin was waiting, flushed. But instead, he pulled her close to him and hugged her, swaying from foot to foot and occasionally kissing the top of her head. The clothes she wore rose with every movement and a beautiful anxiety shivered through Ruthie as she felt her body from the waist down becoming exposed. “When I pledge next month, I’ll be thinking of you.”

Her face buried in his chest, Ruthie did not dare pull away to look at him. She had never, in her memory, been this close to anyone. (When her mother said goodbye at the gates of the university, she had grasped the fleshy upper parts of Ruthie’s arms and squeezed, in lieu of a hug.) At eighteen, Ruthie had never had a boyfriend. Never, before tonight, kissed anyone with an open mouth. She ran her fingers up and down the middle of the boy’s back and thought about ripping his shirt off, making the buttons pop off and fly, the way people did on television.

“You know,” he pulled away from her abruptly and for a second, Ruthie’s throat closed. “I want to give you something in payment to, uh, remember me by.”

Cocking his head toward his shoulder, the boy unpinned the diamond stud he wore in his left ear. At first, Ruthie was sorry. It had been one of the first things she had noticed about him: the way the stone glittered through his scattered waves of dark hair. “Here.” He wiped the stem of the earring between his thumb and forefinger. Then he stuck the butterfly hook on the back and held it out to her, letting it drop when she extended her hand.

Ruthie took the earring out of her own left ear and put in the diamond stud. She looked up at him, waiting for him to move her somewhere. The bed. The floor.

“Do you mind if I leave now?” he asked. His voice cracked with liquor and fatigue. Her stomach tightened and dropped like a stone, but Ruthie shook her head. “I mean, it’s a long drive back to Northwestern in the morning. And I’d like to remember you like this. Anyway.” He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, once.

She watched him walk out of the room and close the door with a muted click behind him. The quiet was too bright. But in the darkness, later, she discovered she could place her own hands against her body and pretend she was back by the river, feeling the power of making his heart beat faster.

~~~

She stepped down and poked with the toe of her shoe. She crouched and picked up the underpants carefully, using a pen from her backpack. They were hers, they had to be. The same brand, same style, same size. The same little rip in the seam at the hip where she always tore the tags out because they scratched her skin. She lifted them within inches of her face and smelled an odor like fresh blood, wind, and seawater. But there were no red stains, just a shiny smear of something gelatinous.

Ruthie held them, waving on the end of the pen like a flag, for a few minutes more. Then she dropped them on the damp cement. She rose and walked through campus streets that were foggy and deserted, canopied by wet trees.

They had looked ridiculous lying there in the rain. Embarrassingly plain and soiled, as if she had wet them, disgraced herself, and run away. She walked faster and the roof of her mouth burned with a mustardy taste.

She fingered the earring, still pierced through her lobe. A crust had formed on the back of her ear, under the stone, and she flaked it off roughly. Ruthie imagined the boy with trays of dime-store earrings, selecting a new one to use on someone else he would deceive into believing she was important, alluring, memorable to him.

In the car, on the ride back to Northwestern after the weekend, she could see his mouth opening and closing with the telling … her legs were fleshy and ugly, her elastic in her underwear was damp with sweat, her skin had a dark, meaty odor.

Or perhaps there was no car, no fraternity, no trip from Northwestern to scavenge for initiation. She looked around her, expecting for a moment to see him on the street. Laughing at her even now.

Ruthie’s body hung around her like something dead. No one was out, and the rain had begun again, thickening the air. She stopped walking, closed her eyes, let her head fall back and began to turn in slow circles. Now she could breathe more easily, and the feeling of weightiness had lifted. Slightly. It was never her he wanted. But the shred of clothing. A prop to conjure up someone more attractive, more lovable. More deserving.

A cool wind sifted through her hands and legs, and Ruthie quit spinning. She stood. Swaying.

Suddenly, she wheeled around and began walking back. Using her hand this time, she picked up the sorry-looking mass of cloth and carried it, between her thumb and forefinger, to her dormitory. She took the elevator to the sixth floor and exited, leading with the underwear out in front. In the laundry room, there was a sign hanging above the washer addressed “Dear Dorm-Mates,” asking that no one use the machines before ten o’clock on the weekends. It was signed, “Your Friends, Dee Dee and Corinne.” Ruthie checked her watch: 8:47.

She let the underwear fall to the floor with a wet smack and waited a few minutes, but nausea had begun like an itch in her throat. She felt as if she were full of warm gravy, and could wait no longer. She opened the metal top of the washer and pushed the hot-water button on the back panel. While the washer filled, she got the box of detergent from her shelf and poured in a full cup. She watched as the crystals swam and dissolved and erupted in clear, fat bubbles on the surface of the water. Clean and untouched.

A pounding had begun on the wall opposite the machines, and the muffled noise of someone alternately saying the word ‘bitch’ and retching delicately in a series of small coughs. Using two hands, Ruthie pulled the back off the stud in her ear, removed the earring, and placed it on her shelf behind a bottle of bleach. Her earlobe throbbed and she touched it, then looked at her fingers and saw one spot of bright, red blood.

Ruthie bent and wiped the blood on the wet, crumpled underwear. Behind her, the washer jerked, paused, and began to rock. She picked up the pants and dropped them into the mouth of the machine, then watched while they writhed through churning, soap-slick water, loose bits of gray coming detached and floating away, whiteness returning as the pants folded and danced to a rhythm as predictable and strong as her own heartbeat.

The full name of the place is Mancini’s Char House and you can find it from anywhere in St. Paul by following like the North Star the enormous neon sign that looms over the front door. Go through that door and it’s like traveling back in time—in about a dozen different ways.

Mancini’s opened for business in 1948 but it’s more like the mid-70′s inside. Very Love Boat. The chairs are deep, curved naugahyde affairs and there are lights flickering from the mirrored walls. A band made up of sixtysomething musicians in satin shirts plays enthusiastic, off-key renditions of “Rock Around The Clock” and “September,” by Earth Wind & Fire while people pack the tiny dance floor.

I’d never been to Mancini’s before last night, but I knew enough to dress the part. I wore a leopard-skin blouse and tight jeans and I looked like a cougar, plain and simple. In any other bar in town I’d have had the appearance of a sad, predatory middle-aged woman screaming for attention from young men. But at Mancini’s I was a baby, more likely to be the drunkard’s prey, easily the youngest person in the crowd by 15 years.

We ordered Scotch—which came in lowball glasses, filled to the brim and cost just $6—and settled in. My drink tasted strange and familiar, very Blue Horse circa 1984, when I was a 16-year-old runaway sitting in a bar much like this pretending to be tough. Back then I drank Cutty Sark with a twist because Scotch was an old man’s order and I knew no one would card me. Now, 30 years later, I never drink hard liquor. The first couple sips were fine but after that I started to feel sick, so I put the drink aside for John to finish and switched to ice water. This, I recalled faintly, might be familiar, too.

There were two-tops along the faux-brass railings and above them, up a few red-carpeted steps, booths lining the back walls. At each table sat a grizzled man, slowly nursing a drink. The women clustered in pairs or threes, with their short, silver hair and sparkling jet jewelry and smart pantsuits from Chico’s. “It’s a pick-up bar for older people!” John said, loudly whispering over the blaring saxophone. “Look, that guy is buying a round for the women in the corner.” And he pointed discreetly to a portly, bald man in a sportshirt and sweater vest, then to a booth with two prim librarian-looking ladies with cherries in their mostly-full drinks.

I ached for the man who looked so foppish and alone at his tiny table. I could picture him in a walk-up apartment with a tiny old-fashioned icebox and seven sweater vests, one for every day of the week. No way he had a chance with the ice queens upstairs.

The music changed. The band tried playing a Dire Straits song, which was a horrible, nearly unforgivable mistake. A tiny ancient couple got up to dance, the woman so unsteady on her feet that her husband had to walk with both arms around her just to help her to the polished wood floor. Once there, he held on to her as if he were keeping her from drowning. She swayed in her white, orthopedic sneakers while he kissed the top of her head. They’d been coming to Mancini’s for decades, I decided. They probably had their wedding rehearsal dinner here 50 or 60 years ago. They had no idea how bad the guitarist was disrespecting Mark Knopfler. They didn’t care and watching them, neither did I.

Then I turned my attention back to the lonely bald man. I steeled myself to be hurt and disappointed on his behalf. But no! The younger, slightly more glamorous of the two women (she was wearing earrings) was at his table, leaning over smiling and nodding. I tried not to stare as they talked for a few moments. Then the man picked up his drink, gracefully hoisted his body from the chair and followed the woman up to the booth where her friend sat looking grim.

The cocktail waitress (and mind you she was a waitress, not a server) came by to fill my water and John picked up my drink. We held hands under the table and watched as if we were at the movies. The awkward threesome ordered some sort of appetizer that came in a large white bowl; I couldn’t quite see what. The man ate apologetically, as fat men too often do. He ducked his head to take a bite. The woman nibbled daintily at whatever she held. Her friend, looking sour, demurred.

Suddenly, there were tambourines on stage and the musicians launched into a Spanish number that they sang with great gusto in their Midwestern honky-tonk style. (“Straight from Osseo, Minnesota,” the band leader said in his introduction. Indeed.) The couple in the corner, who had been inching toward each other for a good ten minutes, got up and headed to the dance floor. He extended his hand in a courtly way and she took it, the face of her wristwatch flashing along with the hanging disco ball. She was quite a bit taller but they didn’t let this deter them. They danced in a galloping manner for the rest of the song. And then, like magic, the music melted into a ballad. He of the sweater vest reached out and pulled the librarian close.

It lasted perhaps four minutes, but that was four minutes of sheer, all-out bliss. Their bodies were pressed together, his hand on the bare part of her arm, and they looked, each of them, profoundly grateful. Like people who have been painfully thirsty finally offered water. They closed their eyes and moved in small circles until the song was done.

We left purposely before I could see the story play out and drove home slowly along quiet streets. An infinite number of things could have happened at Mancini’s. Mr. Sweater Vest could have become drunk and creepy; the librarian might have moved on to another taller more expensive-looking of the single men. Maybe they ditched her disapproving friend and went out and had mad, anonymous sex in his car.

But I like to think that what happened was they parted at that point in the evening when they really didn’t want to and he got her phone number and today, he’s planning to call. They’ll go out alone, to a coffeeshop or an Italian restaurant and talk about their long lives and get to know each other.

That’s what I’m going with because it gives me hope.

I was in the locker room at my gym, wearing a towel and putting lotion on, when the phone rang. And because I recognized my book publicist’s number—despite the rules—I picked it up.

She was excited and talking fast. “I’m sorry…” I said, moving toward a corner that I thought might have better reception. “You got a call from Jeff Provost?” I repeated. “Who’s Jeff Provost?”

Then the line went dead.

Fifteen minutes later, from my car, I dialed her back. “Not Jeff Provost, Jeff Propes,” she said. Or rather, that’s what I thought she said.

“OK, who’s Jeff Propes?” I asked.

She didn’t sigh; she’s too sweet for that. But I know she wanted to. “Jeff Probst. P-R-O-B-S-T. You don’t know who I’m talking about, do you?”

“Not at all.” I wasn’t bothered because this sort of thing happens to me all the time.

Jeff Probst was on Survivor, my incredibly patient publicist explained. Did I know Survivor? I’d heard of it, I told her proudly. I thought it was a TV show that had something to do with an island but I didn’t know any more than that.

Well he, this host (why there’s a host on an island, I never did quite figure out…) was starting a talk show and his people had called her. They read my essay in ELLE, “On Growing Up Ugly,” and wanted to know if I’d consider being one of their first-week guests.

“Why?” I asked and I’ll admit I was wary. “Are people going to yell and throw chairs? Because I have to tell you, that’s just not my thing.”

She assured me that the press materials promised a “positive, upbeat” experience, much like Oprah—which, you’ll be relieved to know, is a name I recognize and a show I’ve actually watched once or twice. So I said fine, I’ll call.

The number my publicist supplied put me in touch with a young woman I’ll call Amy. Here’s how young: When I mentioned that my oldest son was born in 1988 she said, “Awesome, me too!” Amy had read my piece in ELLE and loved it. She thought it was perfect for a show they were putting together on different ways of looking at beauty. The girl was lovely, really. And I thought: Maybe being on this Jeff Propes show wouldn’t be too bad.

We had a short, simple conversation about logistics. Could I fly out to Los Angeles the following week, tape an interview, and return to Minneapolis the next day? Yes, I said, that would be fine. Amy described the show and its host, whom she informed me was a “totally awesome guy.” Then, just before we got off the phone, she cautioned me not to cancel any plans just yet. “This isn’t for sure until our senior producer says she wants you,” Amy said.

That afternoon, I was in the middle of writing a book review when the phone rang again. It was Amy’s superior, “Jane” calling. She’d heard great things about me from Amy; could we take a few minutes to talk?

An hour and a half later, we had covered every topic I’ve ever written about and a few that I haven’t because even I think some things are off limits. When did I first know I was ugly? Did my parents tell me I was? Did I think my children were attractive or ugly? Did they ever get teased? What about my daughter? Was she, perhaps, overweight or in some other way not quite right? Did she get teased at school? Had I ever tried to change her? How was my marriage? Were we well-matched? Did I ever think my husband might leave me? Would I try plastic surgery in order to get him to stay?

I liked Jane immensely. She was excitable and funny and apologized several times for asking intrusive questions. When I demurred she was instantly understanding. She told me again and again that I was funny and articulate and would make a fabulous guest.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw your picture,” she said as we were wrapping up our marathon conversation. “Frankly, I don’t think you’re ugly at all.”

I said what I always do when someone tells me that, how I appreciate their kindness and I actually don’t think of myself as ugly. That this was the word ELLE used in the headline though it appeared only once in my essay and then it was in reference to my self-image as a child. I am nontraditional-looking, I told her—not a beauty by society’s standards. And I’ve encountered some cruelty, even as an adult. But certain men (including my husband) have always been deeply attracted by the way I look and in middle-age, I think I’m actually MORE comfortable with my face and body than most of the women I know.

She congratulated me on my healthy perspective and told me how much she looked forward to meeting me. She also asked me to send photos: of myself, of John and me, also family pictures of me with my kids. By the time I hung up, John and I had to order takeout because it was nearly 7 o’clock.

Near ten central standard time, the phone rang yet again and I took it into my office. This time, a woman with a clipped voice introduced herself as Jeff Probst’s senior producer. I truly cannot recall her name so I’ll call her Trudy. The first thing she told me was that she hadn’t read my essay, she didn’t have time. And she hated to ask but could I summarize it? So I took a breath and began.

“I’m sorry to be blunt,” she cut in after about four sentences, “but I have to ask you straight out: Do you think you’re ugly?”

“Well, no,” I said.

“I don’t either!” she shouted. “I’ve been looking at your photos and wondering why we’re even talking to you. Because there’s no story here. I mean I’m really glad for you that you’re happy with who you are and you love your husband and all that. But that’s not what daytime TV viewers are looking for. They need something really unusual to get their attention. You’re just too … attractive. And normal. I’m sorry.”

“OK,” I said. I really just wanted this to stop. I was tired of talking and it was late and my hand hurt from holding the phone and I wanted to get into bed with that husband who loves me too normally and too much.

But Trudy was audibly frustrated. “What I can’t figure out,” she said, “is why this even got the attention it did. You’re an average woman who grew up feeling freakish and came to terms with her looks over time. That’s the universal story, right? That’s my story. I’m four-foot-eleven, hardly a super model, so I get it. But it seems to me all you did—really—was just state very articulately and in a way people could understand what most women feel.”

“Yes, um.” Why was I suddenly feeling guilty for wasting her time? “Telling a universal or essentially human story from a specific point of view … That’s sort of the purpose of an essay.” (But apparently not, I resisted saying, positive, upbeat daytime talk TV.)

“Oh.” Trudy actually sounded slightly sad. “Well, I’m really sorry this didn’t work out.”

We said our goodbyes and I walked out to the living room where my husband was nearly asleep with his book. “I’m not going on Jeff Probst,” I told him.

“Thank God,” he said and took my hand.

Imagine a world where the rich ascend in a glitter of opulence while working men and women struggle to feed themselves and stay off the streets. Where people are shunned for their appearance and forbidden to marry if the state does not approve of the partners they choose. Where religious leaders who wear long robes wield enormous amounts of power. A world in which children die and parents drink too much and panhandlers line the streets. Any of this sound familiar? It should.

The Mirrored World, Debra Dean’s second novel, is set in 18th-century St. Petersburg but as with all prescient historical fiction, it describes the plight of humanity in every era. It mirrors with eerie insight the conditions of today.

I’m no history scholar so I must admit, most of the story was brand-new to me. Dean writes about the life of Saint Xenia of Russia, a woman of the lower nobility married young to the great love of her life — a chorister in the Empress’s Imperial Court. Then a series of greater and lesser tragedies occur: There are deaths, both freakish and inevitable. There is the growing divide between those who have and those who don’t. An administration that wastes copious amounts of its citizens’ money and time on self-serving whims. A subculture of people who don’t belong.

When her young husband dies at an excessive cross-dressing “Metamorphoses” ball, Xenia realizes that her life has been squandered on a senseless striving upward and dedicates herself to the poor.

Here is where the story of long-ago Russia and modern-day America diverge. Xenia gives away all her possessions then dresses in her husband’s tattered clothes and wanders the countryside caring for the disadvantaged—all the while raving and muttering and smiling without provocation—but she is neither locked away nor heavily medicated. Instead, she is considered a “holy fool.”

This was before the supposed Age of Enlightenment, which would be brought from the West and imposed by Catherine the Great. Before “reason” ruled people like Xenia were treated with deference. Shopkeepers watched out for them and gave them food. Communities assumed that harsh conditions would cause a certain degree of madness. They believed that when God took away external ability He gave inward grace and that crazed, random behavior might actually be the way toward light.

But then the intellectuals came in: Spinoza, Locke and Voltaire. Mind you, their philosophies were mostly excellent, laying the groundwork for freedom of speech and religious tolerance. But the result was a loss of worth for those on the fringes, like Xenia. Never again would people who wander and speak in tongues and claim to feel the future be revered. Now concrete knowledge was considered the ideal.

The “mirrored world” to which Dean refers in her novel is an ancient, pious city called Kitezh that God saved, causing a lake to swallow it as the Mongol army raged toward its walls. The bloated, wasteful court of Empress Elizabeth (predecessor to Catherine the Great) makes a pilgrimage to worship at the lake where Kitezh disappeared, kneeling—with no sense of irony—on a velvet carpet and drinking its water from a goblet, then returning to the throne she’s ordered carried on the backs of her servants.

Like Arthur Phillips’ Prague, this novel demonstrates how privilege breeds nostalgia, how the pampered and aimless of each era tend to dismiss their own culture and hearken back to the finer, better times of lore. Whether an imperial princess looking for transcendence or Ivy League kids trolling European coffeehouses in search of meaning, we of the First World look endlessly for an elusive existence that makes more sense. And in a wonderful refractive way, Dean herself seems to be searching for her own mirror world with this book.

Full disclosure: I sat on a panel with Debra Dean in 2006 and found her to be an all-around lovely human being. We spent perhaps three hours together; she is hardly a friend. But we do have the connection of two writers in a strange city, talking about complicated, dark novels.

The Mirrored World is not an easy read and it’s not a warm, fuzzy before-bed book. It’s a beautiful yet reserved story about people and situations that, despite its long-ago setting, makes you consider your beliefs, your desires and your own imperfect life.

My ex-husband either couldn’t or chose never to pay child support. Frankly, I’ve never quite known which.

He was in bad shape after our divorce: going through treatment for alcoholism on the state’s dime and unemployed for the better part of a year. When unscrupulous movers stole everything I owned, he famously flew to Providence and helped me. He contributed in his own way, I told myself. And somehow, over time, that just became the way it was.

For years, I worked 14-hour days. In ’03, I taught five sections of freshman comp at two different universities, 30 miles apart. Then I lucked into a job as a food critic but that involved working mostly nights; my kids were on their own a lot, from a pretty early age. I produced a novel during the same period, rising very early—before anyone else was up—to write. I filled in with freelance gigs and eventually made my way into copywriting. Between all that and the money my parents silently “gifted” me I managed. Barely.

Then I met John.

The first thing I told him was that I didn’t want a relationship: It would be unfair to him and to my children, then teenagers. I would date him but we had no future. Six weeks later he was in my house helping my kids with their math homework. Three months after that, we were engaged. I insisted we would keep our finances separate but John told me that was ridiculous. Marriage meant you were all in. What was his was mine—and by the transitive property, what was his was also my kids’.

Meantime, my ex sobered up, found a steady job and met a woman far better suited to him. Once, I toyed with going after him for child support—our children were then 17, 15 and 11—but it seemed strangely unfair. I hadn’t minded paying for anything when I was single. In fact, I’d done so without a thought. Now that our combined incomes, John’s and mine, made life so much easier, it seemed wrong to complain.

And in the weird world order, there was something sensical about this arrangement. My ex was supporting his new wife’s children just as my new husband was supporting mine. I imagined us as if we were players in a sit-com: Their Northside household with its jumble of children and, eventually, grandchildren; our Southside one with its colorful assortment of two large boys and a girl. I wanted it all to be sweet-hearted and whimsical. And sometimes it was. But sometimes, frankly, it sucked.

I watched as my husband, a stepfather for three years, then four …. now six …. put fully half his income to raising these kids he’d inherited half-grown. Yet I watched, too, as my now-adult children struggled to find a place for him. He isn’t their father; but he isn’t simply their mother’s husband, either. He is in great part their benefactor. John is the reason my daughter can go to college debt-free, the reason my younger son’s wild escapades haven’t landed him on the streets.

The part I can’t make sense of (though I know it’s a universal truth) is that my kids’ still crave their “real” father. Often they rankle at John’s involvement in their lives, even as they’re benefiting. They roll their eyes at his quiet manner and boring corporate job while enthusing about their father’s more interesting way of life. Dad has a big, loud truck and better taste in music and he barbecues excellent meals like elk steak, they tell me. Dad’s house is more fun on the holidays; it’s raucous and there are tons of people there. Is it any wonder that’s where they’d prefer to be on Christmas Eve?

A month ago, when my youngest departed for college, John rented a U-Haul and packed it with her things—plus a futon from our house—and drove her 300 miles south to her dorm. There, he unpacked and set up her loft and helped her arrange her room, at one point running to Wal-Mart for zip ties to secure her mattress because it squeaked on her bed. Together, he and I paid her fall tuition, a stunning amount that didn’t quite fit on the legal line of our check. We attended her ROTC swearing-in and I hugged her goodbye while John stood by watching. We returned home to our empty house.

We’d marked our calendars for the one great event of fall: a Navy/Marine ball where we would dress in black tie finery and dance. We’d even taken lessons to sharpen up our skills. I turned down a writer’s conference because it conflicted. But when I spoke to my daughter last weekend she was bubbling with news.

“Dad is coming to the ball!” she crowed happily. “He said of all the things I’m doing at college, that one sounds best.” Then she paused. “I suppose you and John can still come, too, if you want. But there’s no need.”

And I’ll admit, this was the point where I almost turned into a shrieking harridan. Instead, I told myself this girl did not deserve a decade’s worth of resentment let loose on her during her first week of college and I cut the conversation short.

“What’s up?” John asked when I was off the phone. So I told him, still breathing shallowly.

And he shrugged. He SHRUGGED.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” he said. “She wants her dad’s attention. She wants him to be proud of her. This is the kind of thing he likes. So we’ll visit some other time.”

And it’s true. When I turn it around and look at it from my children’s point of view, my husband is exactly right. This parenting thing isn’t about fairness and the moment a divorce occurs, children are forever in a no-win place. They cannot make choices about whom they love according to some balance sheet.

My pledge today is to be a little less self-centered as a mother. And dammit, I’m working on it. But it’s hard. So for now I’m just following along, letting John take the lead.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post first appeared on Beyond the Margins, a phenomenal blog, resource and Internet community founded by a dozen Boston-based writers. I adore these people and their work. BTM is one of the best and most professionally-run writing forum I’ve seen and I was very flattered when they asked me to be a guest. In an effort to write something truly worthy of the writers and readers at BTM, I disclosed something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. My nonfiction consistently surpasses my fiction. And the recent contributions of Joan Didion and Christopher Hitchens to memoir have made me take another look at what I’ve long viewed as the weaker literary form. Hitchens knew himself better than any writer I can name, and that shows on every page. His nonfiction is a superb work of art.  —A.B.

When I applied to the University of Iowa’s MFA creative writing program, I sent identical packets to the fiction and nonfiction sides.

My dream was to earn both degrees simultaneously. Barring that, I preferred fiction. It was the more prestigious program, first. But also, writing novels seemed like a more advanced feat to me. Fiction was hard. It was art. Whereas creative nonfiction—the stuff that comes from life—seemed more like craft.

My packets each contained two short stories that I’d slaved over for months and a four-page memoir segment about my son’s getting ousted from a library story group that I wrote one night in an hour.

I received a form rejection from the fiction program, saying they had only 25 spots and competition was especially tough that year.

The following day, I got a call from the director of the nonfiction program offering me one of his 12 spots plus a full-ride fellowship with a teaching contract and a generous stipend.  “We wanted to make sure you’d come,” he said.

I told him I was flattered but what I really wanted was to become a novelist. “If I come, I’ll use the time to write fiction,” I warned. “I’m going to have to turn you down if that violates your rules.”

The man was calm. “Is it fantasy?” he asked. “Do dragons appear in the middle of your stories?” I assured him it was realistic modern fiction about Midwestern people in their 30s—rather like, well, me.

“That’s fine,” he said. “As long as you don’t tell anyone. Who will know the truth but you?”

That was a dozen years ago, and my writing life has continued along the path that was established back in 2000. My nonfiction flows effortlessly and garners a sizable audience. My fiction is a struggle. I’m incredibly proud of The Forever Marriage (my second novel) but it was hell to write and misses whatever makes stories popular—my fictional world is tilted, stark, cerebral, dramatic and dark. Not unlike my life.

I receive 25-30 messages a week from strangers.  Perhaps one in five is about my novel; the rest are about the essays I write at an easy clip of three per week. As for money—ha! My entire advance for TFM was exactly half the fee I received for an essay in ELLE (putatively to market the book). If I had to support myself with fiction, I’d starve.

I’m not the only writer living this grass-is-greener myth. Years ago, I had a brief friendship with a hugely successful, Newbery-award winning YA author. She spun yarns about magical animals and movie studios came calling.  But what she really wanted, she confessed to me, was a career in adult fiction. This children’s book thing was just a stopgap, a way to make millions while she worked on her real writing.

I read one of her short stories and it was flat: coy to the point of tedium for stretches, then suddenly ham-handed. Once she left the YA realm, her sparkling, whimsical prose just went dead. Our friendship ended (not coincidentally, I suspect) the year my first novel came out. But I’ve followed her career and so far as I know she’s never published anything geared toward adults.

Then there’s my mentor, the late Frederick Busch. I loved this writer like no other but even I must admit—and the critics agreed—his novels were hit and miss. He’d publish something lackluster, like Long Way From Home, but follow it with the simply glorious Girls and The Night Inspector. Then, just when you thought he was on a roll, he’d put forth a headscratcher of a sequel to Girls with North.

Yet, every one of Busch’s short stories was a study in perfection—the same went for his essays. In 12-page form, Busch had a rugged, masculine voice that married power and emotion in one great roar.

“Your novels are very good,” my mother said recently. “But I’ve always thought your nonfiction was better. So clear and true.”

She was only echoing what an editor said to me last year—“I’ve always thought you had it backward; you should be concentrating on memoir rather than using it to promote your fiction”—and, of course, what the Iowa Writer’s Workshop told me so long ago.

I probably won’t stop writing fiction. Like a 65-year-old marathoner, I do it at least in part to prove I can. I hope that I’ll get better and eventually, with diligence and practice, produce novels that are more widely read.

But I’ve stopped kidding myself: I know who I am as a writer. I’m a born essayist. Nonfiction is in my blood.

Earlier this week, I had some business with my son so I met him at an unfamiliar coffee shop in a rather gritty part of town. I recall noting (happily) when I walked in that the store was filled with a great mix of people: men in turbans having brisk discussions in some Middle Eastern language, retired couples reading the newspaper together, a young black woman in a wild, print dress and bangle earrings who sweetly handed me the cream.

I’d ordered my coffee and been treated politely by the three people at the counter. The barista made my drink quickly and apologized twice for being out of raw sugar. Then I took my cup and sat at a back table. Ten minutes later, my son walked in.

Max is large and muscular. He’s 22 but somehow still growing; I can’t be sure but right now I think he’s between 6-foot-2 and 6-foot-3. He helped us move last weekend and truly, he’s a wonder to watch. Max picks up couches and lifts them over railings. On this particular morning, he was wearing a silky pair of running shorts, a t-shirt and a long scarf tied like a bandana. He has a military buzz cut, Buddy Holly-style glasses and a goatee. When he arrived, he was on the phone.

I watched as he worked his way back to my table. He was talking to the person we had gathered to meet, so I didn’t want to interrupt. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” I mouthed and he nodded. I went back up to the counter and ordered (4 shots of espresso over ice with a cup of whole milk) and gave the cashier another $5. By the time I got back to the table, Max was off the phone. “They’re out of raw sugar,” I told him.

So he tasted the drink and went up to the counter about six feet from our table and asked for a small cup of hot water to dissolve some white sugar in. That’s when things turned ugly. “I only get water for paying customers,” the barista said, making a shoo-ing motion with her hand.

“But I am a customer,” said Max, and he pointed to his cup on the table. “I just want to make some simple syrup.”

At this point, the large man who’d taken my money came to join the barista. “We don’t need any of your crap here,” he sneered. “Service is for paying customers only, buddy. One more word and I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

If I hadn’t been standing there watching, if Max had only told me about it later, I have to admit I might have wondered what he’d done. But every word played out right in front of me and I can attest to the fact that all he did was ask, politely, for a cup of hot water. And he nearly got thrown out.

I walked up behind my son, which meant I was entirely concealed. Then I popped out to his right. “I bought that coffee from you, about three minutes ago. Do you think you could give us some hot water?”

“I’m so sorry, ma’am, of course,” said the cashier. The barista turned to draw the hot water and the man looked at my son. “No need to make a big deal of this,” he said, then strode off.

We returned to the table and Max was spluttering. I didn’t blame him. His entire morning had been like this, he explained. First, he’d been declined for treatment at a clinic. (This was, in fact, the reason we were meeting. Thanks to ObamaCare, Max is still on our health insurance but when he enters a medical office alone—with a Blue Cross Blue Shield card that bears his stepfather’s name—the receptionist invariably turns him away.) Then he took a bus from the clinic to the coffee shop and the driver called him a “faggy boy,” telling him to go home to the suburbs where he belonged.

The fact is, whichever way he turns, toward the establishment or the streets, my son is considered suspect. He’s big, he’s male, and he’s young. Of all the things you can be these days, this may be the worst.

The unemployment rate for males my son’s age has hovered for a year at about 22%. Men are less likely to go to college than women, and more likely to suffer from poverty, addiction and mental illness. In her 2010 cover story for The Atlantic, “The End Of Men,” Hanna Rosin accurately laid out the situation facing Max today. He is a 22-year-old “guest” in a women’s world. He struggles to find work, to get health care, to stay sober—to get a freakin’ cup of hot water at a Starbucks in South.

My daughter, on the other hand? She applied to college and was gifted a $10,000 scholarship on the spot simply because she is a bright woman going into engineering. (Note: My son’s ACT scores were exactly the same and his grades in high school were higher, but he was not even admitted to a comparable program.) She’s had a job since she was 16 and was recruited throughout high school for various leadership roles. Though just 18 she is treated with deference, whether ordering coffee or getting a tetanus shot. Yes, she’s worked hard for it but society cheers and welcomes her where it is often wary of and cruel to my son.

They are very different people. Some of this disparity no doubt stems from their behavior and appearance, some from their genes. But overall I’m here to attest that as a mother I believe this country and its current policies are set up 95% to favor my girl….

So here’s my question: Why am I reading non-stop in the news and on Twitter and Facebook about the “attack” on women? Why, for instance, is the rhetoric in my field all about women being passed over for literary opportunities and book reviews? Is it possible this is just a holdover from 20 years ago and no one has noticed that women are quickly gaining the upper hand: financially, professionally, intellectually … in terms of power and status and choice?

I read something recently that claimed even “the most dormant feminist” would object to a particular man’s writing. Well, I’m hardly “dormant,” but I didn’t object. (And I don’t much like being told what, as a feminist, I should think.) I believe in equality for the sexes. But I look at my kids and I tell you: We’re not treating them equally. These days, girls get the breaks.