Ten Years Later – contains mentions of rape, some profanity, mentions of prostitution and other ways of coping with extreme East Bay poverty, and mental illness and its treatments

I awaken before he does, and stare sightlessly out the window into the foggy SOMA morning. I would like to stay asleep, but oblivion eludes me and I am left with only a tightness in my chest, restless and unable to concentrate.

"What is it?" he asks, and I know he is surprised that I haven't already crawled on top of him.

But I'm not ready to talk about this feeling yet. I don't even know what it is yet.

"Nothing," I shrug.

"Come on. You can't fool a professional diagnostician. I know something's up."

"Just need some more coffee, that's all. How about you?" I bring myself into the present moment enough to gather the folds of my silk nightgown and move towards the kitchen. Clara and Pericardia will wake up soon and we need to make their lunches and get them off to the charter science academy.

"Stop. What is it?" he scowls, tapping his cane against the wall the way he does when he's frustrated with a case.

I don't answer.

"Look. You're married to the toughest, smartest doctor from Princeton Hospital. You're not back in St. Laurence begging for BART cash anymore," he says, sitting up to face our mirror and flexing his muscles.

"You remember your German romantic literature, don't you? I am the Ubermensch, the King of Workarounds," he grins, reaching out for my hand. "Not all-powerful, but pretty damn close. So please tell me what I can do for you. What's wrong? What is it you need?"

"It's hard to explain. Something I maybe should have done a long time ago. Something I owe the world."

"But what?"

"I feel guilty. That I'm smart and interesting and unique, but that it's all at the expense of others. That I'm hurting others by staying who I am."

"You mean all those regrets you told me? That was a long time ago, when you were in an extremely unhealthy situation. Things are different now. I can take care of all the little moral dilemmas you face. " He grabs a toilet paper roll out of the trash and uses it as an improvised megaphone. "Hello Dorothyyyyy," he calls. "I don't think you're in St. Laurence anymoooooooreeeeee."

"It's not just St. Laurence. It's part of who I am," I try to explain. "Even us. Look. I seduced you and used you as a powerful rich doctor who could solve all my problems and take care of all of my friends."

He shrugs. "So? You seriously didn't think I caught onto that? And I used you to get laid and to forget about Cuddy, so we're even."

I look up into his eyes. "Yeah, but I still shouldn't have been such a bitch."

I lie back down onto the bed, where he picks me up by the shoulders and sits me up next to him, so we're both facing the window, watching as the day warms and the tops of a few billboards become visible.

"You're a bitch and I'm an asshole. Come with me," he gestures grandly at the city, "and we shall rule the universe as husband and wife."

I can't resist a playful slap and a smooch at this point. But the dark, confused feeling soon returns.

"Seriously. However we got to be together, I love you. Much more than Cuddy or even Stacy or any of the girls I dated back in med school."

"But why?"

"Because. It's a logistical, headspace thing. It's all about the way my brain works, and yours too. You know when to let me concentrate and I don't get so overwhelmed and overloaded by your personality, the way I did with others. There are some things you just, well, get...and I actually feel energized by you, not drained. I don't have to make the same kinds of work vs family decisions with you, feel supported in who I am. And I only hope that I'm returning the favor."

"Oh. Oh my God," I moan, collapsing into his arms. "Wow. I've always felt that way, was just hoping for years, deep down, that you did too."

He stands up for a moment, pulls on a bathrobe and leans out into the hall. "Hey Peri and Clara, today we're trying a new experiment."

I hear the girls groan from their bedrooms. Now in elementary school, they've lived through several years of their father's quirky new ideas. From the scientifically correct nursery rhymes to the backpacking trips where they earned licorice candy for correctly identifying our local lizards and insects with field guides, our family's always been, well, eclectic and charming. Our house is frequently full of curious classmates, and I joke that Greg does this for the attention of his admiring bevy of nine year olds.

"Hey. Today you're going to design a lunch menu that's optimized for quick nutrition. Something that incorporates all five sections of the food pyramid that you can make before the carpool comes, and that will give you the nutrients you need for a whole day of sketching, jump rope, foursquare, whatever you girls do at school these days."

I ask, "So you're asking them to make their own lunches?"

"Yeah. You need me more than they do today, and a science project's a creative way to keep them busy. And come on, I'll show you something."

He beckons me into our walk-in closet, towards some drawers the maids never touch and which we've not opened in years. Who knows, maybe he keeps all his old high school trophies in there, next to my early attempts at novels.

"I guess I've never told you," he says, opening the top drawer. "But here's our secret stash of family jewels. Tranquilizers. A little secret medicine for anyone who ails you. So, does someone need these? Some jealous competing journalist, some cantankerous agent or publisher? Do you want these in your mother's coffee? In my mother's Earl Grey tea?"

"Thanks. But no. It's not that."

"Look," he whispers. "I have to admit it's a little hard on me to suggest this, but well, I pride myself on being modern and enlightened, not just slavishly following tradition or morals because people think I should. You know me," he stops and looks at the ground before continuing.

I nod.

"So - I know I'm gone very long hours sometimes, even for weeks on end, when I've got a tough case to solve at the hospital. So...what I'm saying is, I'll understand if you're, you know, frustrated and not getting your physical needs met. If you need a, well, a companion, I'll show you how to find one and look the other way. It's only fair, after all the women I've hired before I met you. And I know I'm older than you ... maybe you'd like someone closer to your own age? This isn't so easy for me, but I'll go with it, all I ask is that you be safe and that you find a hotel and don't do it in our bedroom, because, you know..."

"Aw. No, sweetheart. It's not that," I laugh. "You're doing a quite magnificent job in that department."

He grins, and I see relief in his eyes. And I hear the sounds of Clara and Peri chatting in mock British tones, pretending to be serving ladies for a medieval feast. As rational and tough as we are, they still retained a bit of playful romanticism, and I'm secretly glad they're headstrong enough to be unique.

"Well then, what is it then?" He bends and puts his hand on his bad leg, clearly in annoyance, and I feel bad for him. "You know, you don't usually do this to me. It's torture for a man, especially a scientist like me. I want to solve the problem and can't do it if I have to keep trying and failing to guess what's going on. And part of what I've always loved about you was that I didn't have to guess, that I'd always know what was on your mind and how I should react."

"Okay," I say. "I'll open up. A couple of years ago, my parents took me to a psychiatrist. They were worried I was too naive, that I couldn't properly read social situations and that people would take advantage of me. They thought Kristie and all those other people you met were screwing me over and that I couldn't see it and so couldn't survive in the real world. That I might act too weird or get frustrated at work and wouldn't be able to keep a job, or would just be irresponsible and selfish and mess up my life and hurt others."

He takes my hand. "Me too. I've told you that. God, I've been through every psych or detox program in New Jersey. Not fun. And not just as a young adult, too. And you can't even imagine how many people I've screwed over. But you have to learn to move forward."

"I know. But they suggested a medication, and I didn't want to take it. It was going to calm me down, make me less impulsive...but I'd gain weight and become less active, and get some nervous tics or possibly tardive dyskinesia, look unusual in public. And you know me, I'm Miss Cosmopolitan Princess, Life of the Quirky Cocktail Party, and didn't want to deal with that. But maybe I should. Maybe I should go ahead with it, give up myself and my mind for the sake of others if my mind's making me be a selfish bitch and harm others."

"Oh," he says, looking into my eyes with concern, pulling me close. I look up and see he's fighting back a few tears, despite himself.

He's quiet for a very long moment, before I excuse myself to kiss Clara and Peri goodbye. I'm now even more glad for the carpool service at the eco-friendly magnet school.

"I know," he whispers. "I suspected that, after I'd known you a few days. And I thought...well, all right, I hoped...that maybe we'd be okay being ourselves if we had each other. That we could together protect the rest of the world from ourselves, if you know what I mean."

"Yes," I say. "I know."

"And...the rational, utilitarian side of me says to do whatever you can to be as moral and well-adjusted as possible, whatever the cost, since there are so many more other people in the world to benefit from that, and only one of each of us. But, the human side of me cries out that I've finally found someone who understands me, and that I don't want to see you turn yourself into someone else."

I listen, nodding, as we move back to sit on the bed, still in our bathrobes. Luckily I work from home and have no meetings scheduled today, and someone else's covering his walk-in clinic hours this week in exchange for double duty next time around.

He closes the window against the burgeoning sunlight and whispers, "Look. I feel like I've just found you, and I don't want to lose you. Please."

I wrap my arms around him, and we collapse into each other, the Abilify prescription soon forgotten.

That was, I believe, the day we conceived Alex. The son he'd always secretly wanted, named for the discoverer of penicillin.

...

Pregnancy filled me out, making my body feel soft, clumsy, less defined at the edges. Wondering if it had affected my personality in a similar way, I surrounded myself with gentle stimulation to protect my limbs and enhance my creativity.

I'd subconsciously rejected femininity for many years, identifying with male heroes and film stars and action figures as a child and young woman. In high school and college, boys had found that cute and flirted with me before finding me too confusing and awkward and nerdy. Even my mom had called me a 'man's woman,' saying that I'd make someone a good wife someday.

But I wasn't consciously trying to 'get a guy.' I wasn't even trying to be a guy or tomboy, didn't feel drawn towards identifying with either or any gender, was just going along and doing whatever I had to, or wanted to do.

I didn't even really think about guys in a romantic or partner-sense until I got old enough to have to think about moving out to raise my children in a safer neighborhood and about raising the cash to survive and take care of our tribe/family of choice. A bunch of us had banded together on the Net, talking each other down from suicide attempts, writing letters and looking up resources for each other for emergency assistance, and helping out with rides and medicine and negotiations with landlords and shelters to prevent homelessness. Blood families were often absent or full of their own problems or without enough resources to take care of their own, so we formed our own families, groups of teens and young adults and a few older people, loyal till the end and pitching in to shelter and provide for those on the streets, mentally different, or escaping violent abusive situations. None of us would have made it without each other, and we weren't about to abandon anyone.

Women in St. Laurence didn't control money...we submitted to our parents before marriage, and our husbands afterwards. One of the biggest topics of discussion in our Sunday school classes at church was what a woman should do if her husband refused to tithe.

So the men in my life, outside our St. Laurence and Internet 'tribe,' were basically creative funding sources, tools to keep our tribe eating every day. And, eventually, for keeping the Rorschach Zeitgeist, the variety magazine I founded with friends and old classmates and still help publish, online.

'Survival's my wife,' I used to mutter to myself, 'and love's a mistress.'

I'd mentally rejected femininity as a child because from what I'd seen, it represented frantic stress, work, burdens, and guilt. Walking around behind the world with a broom and dustpan, overwhelmed and exhausted, frustrated with everyone else's selfishness and lack of cooperation. I'd been-there-done-that as a five year old, in a kind of macho (or shall I say macha?) act, sweeping the floor and panting exaggeratedly afterwards, complaining on a plastic play phone about how busy I was, picking up gift books about Getting Organized and Managing Your Life and Your Schedule the way other kids grabbed at candy and tearing my room apart.

All that, when I wasn't bartending! I'd already somehow discovered the poor woman's mental health care, or at least a facsimile of it, in my mom's kitchen cabinet, mixing up her colored sugars and spices into minicocktails in Dixie cups.

But now, as the wife of the baddest, toughest wealthy smartass doctor in San Francisco General Hospital, I could relax enough to explore gentler aspects of femininity, and I was enjoying it.

Lighting peach and lavender candles in our loft, enjoying the raspberry lemonade and hummus and rich decor of Hayes Valley's Cafe Soleil, a virgin Sweet Baby Jesus kiwi cocktail on the oaken barstools of Nob Hill's artsy Cafe Royale, and even trying a henna bodypainting and meditation class at Love of Ganesha in the Haight for my swollen stomach, I thought of what it would have been like to be pregnant back home in St. Laurence.

Those ladies were tougher than I could imagine, and I'd barely missed becoming one of them. I thought of standing on my feet all day ringing up groceries with the child heavy inside of me. Of coming home to haul heavy furniture and sanitize kitchens and bathrooms with bleach, of not having a car and trying to pick out the healthiest food possible from the corner mini-marts. Of asking around for hand-me-downs from relatives and neighbors, or setting up LiveJournal blogs to make friends and share cash for bus fare and thrift store clothes. Community and recycling before they were cool. And they still weren't cool, or romantic or rustic or pretty, they were survival.

"Life is what it is," I could hear my mother say.

Weird, I told myself. Only seven years away from your old life and now you're not sure how you could have handled it.

...

I walk up the steps towards home, steadying myself on the handrail with one arm and resting the other protectively atop my uterus. Living with a doctor has gotten me in the habit of anatomical correctness.

When I open the front door, I notice a few guests have already arrived, three hours early. We're hosting an event that's simultaneously a baby shower for Alex and the annual Rorschach Zeitgeist reception.

I start to chide Greg for letting people in before we had a chance to rest and see that everything was ready, but stop when I see who's here and realize they would have found their way in no matter what. A couple of our old groupies and hangers-on from my college days, they gulp Pliny the Elder and Schmaltze beers while showing off Ipads and Iphones to each other.

Now, how to hold up both ends of conversation with them for the next two hours and fifty-nine minutes? None of the three guys who are here write or make any type of visual art, despite repeated attempts to get them published in Rorschach Zeitgeist. We've even offered to print HTML code and the text for Iphone apps, but no takers.

One of them, Steve, glances hopefully, furtively, over in my direction. Probably a signal that he knows I'm taken and will keep his distance, but he wants me to know that should anything go wrong in my marriage, he's there and available.

I look back sympathetically, chat with him for a few minutes, ask about the new comic book museum in the Mission, then walk back to my husband. Greg saved the Rorschach, back when I was conflicted about reporting my rape and possibly losing my privileges to attend evening openings all over the Bay Area and make many of the connections so vital to our continued success.

Motioning for the caterers to lay out the vegetable trays, I walk into our closet and bring out a set of dolls, books, action figures, toy cars, etc for Clara and Peri and all the other children who will show up soon. We're even serving their favorite inelegant guilty pleasure, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

"You do realize this is all thanks to you," I whisper dreamily in his direction. "Without you, we all wouldn't be here."

He grins. "Yeah, so there better be plenty of chips and salsa and beer here. I'm not eating parsley all night!" And I laugh, remembering our first attempt at entertaining, when we underestimated our guests' hunger.

"And do I have to play doctor tonight? I know it's different for you, but I'm really trying not to bring work home."

Occasionally at these parties, after too many rounds of lemon drops and blueberry martinis, people made a game of asking him crazy medical questions. And he starts off giving serious answers, then before folks realize it, he makes his own game of thinking super-hard and giving silly advice.

I shrug and say, "It's up to you," knowing he won't be able to resist solving medical puzzles, even at a soiree.

Folks start to trickle in. A photographer and her sister who're anthologizing photographic images Germans have created of Native Americans, who set up equipment and begin a slide show as the first round of guests sip at their martinis and raspberry lemonades and snack on nuts and veggies and hummus...and yes, a bit of parsley!

A lady with three kids,friends of Clara and Peri, all part of a mime troupe and decked out in Victorian gowns and masquerade masks, and a couple who paint old-style Chinese restaurants but who met playing dulcimer.

Someone who works all day at an insurance company, then goes home to digitally alter surrealist-inspired photographs according to his 'Transcendent Dream Logic.'

The winner of the St. Clara Poetry Slam and Hot Dog Eating Contest, and an official, authorized Emperor Norton impersonator.

Tons of people who would never be under the same roof in any kind of natural setting, college kids and suburban housewives and professors and janitors and all kinds of crazy lovely folk, all chatting and eating and drinking together. People murmur and coo and congratulate me on being eight months along, winking knowingly at Greg and at my stomach.

"Mazel tov," Taub congratulates, toasting a glass of whiskey in our direction before tippling off in the direction of some girls young enough to be his daughter.

"Dork alert," a twentysomething kid with a Massive Attack T-Shirt who's scarfing down potato salad, pulling his girlfriend closer.

"Hey," reproaches the girlfriend, reaching for some nuts. "He coulda heard you."

"Cheers," grins Wilson.

"Congratulations," says Cuddy, sampling some parsley. "I wish nothing but the best for you - " She starts to say "you both," but something flickers across her face, and she pulls out a tissue from her purse and looks away for a moment.

He reaches out for her hand, and she clasps it. "How's Rachel?" he asks.

"She's all right. Off at super-sleepaway camp for gifted teens. And she mentioned you the other day. Was cleaning her room and found a picture of that old pirate cartoon you used to watch with her. The one I always made her turn off, remember?"

He grins. "Of course. She's a great girl, I'm so proud of her. Tell her I said hi and to have a great time," he says, and I notice their hands are still clasped.

So I reach out and clasp both of theirs, gently smiling at Cuddy. "Very nice to see you," I graciously say, then invite her to come by anytime for coffee with us and to bring Rachel to play with Clara and Peri.

I feel a little sorry for her, newly single again after separating from the investment banker she'd dated just a few weeks after breaking up with House. I overheard her saying there just weren't any good men out there anymore, that maybe nature intended her to raise Rachel alone.

"You mean, no perfect men," Foreman and Wilson had teased.

I thought about perfection for a moment. Was there such a thing as a perfect person, or a perfect partner for someone? Maybe or maybe not. Maybe it didn't matter. After all, House was the first man I'd dated, or been, well, involved with a nonprofessional context, to have a real fulltime job. He actually went to work during the day and brought home a salary and I didn't have to support him financially. Maybe that sounds like an unromantic thing to care about, but when you've spent hours every month worrying about which bills to pay when to minimize the overdraft fees, it is kind of a turn-on. Seriously, the Wells Fargo website with negative balances is one of the world's worst passion killers.

Later in the evening, a Croatian poetess and a comic book illustrator who specializes in pre-Raphaelite dragons arrive together, and unroll prints of their work for an impromptu show. Clara and Peri take a break from their coloring and come watch.

Getting up, I look around the room. These people are all so unique, I think. Way more interesting than my novel characters. I couldn't have made them up. Was like watching a living laboratory, a full-size petri dish of social interaction. What would happen next? One could never know.

I remembered how earlier in the day, Greg and I had gone to visit my eighty-seven year old widowed grandma, living in a mobile home a few miles northwest of St. Laurence. Her senior citizens' neighborhood was silent, aseptic, empty of dogs and children and perpetually pastel and seventy degrees.

We'd brought her copies of the Rorschach and some of the cheese and fruit we'd be serving later that night, and I'd taken her hand and tried to engage her in conversation. She'd greeted me, then acted confused and upset that I'd brought a stranger into her house without her permission, even though we'd both been visiting throughout our marriage.

My parents, who were taking turns staying with her, took me aside and explained that they'd been having a tough time with her lately. She'd been resisting wiping in the bathroom, taking showers, eating off of clean dishes, even opening doors and screaming at them to leave. They weren't sure how much of it was her losing her mind and how much was her attempts to somehow reassert some control over her life.

Maybe Greg could actually help, I wondered. He wasn't so bad at caregiving, I thought, going over some events from the past ten years. Our elopement and wedding, when he'd showed up outside my family's St. Laurence home at just the right time, during a lecture on room-cleaning and Not Helping My Friends, and carried me off on his motorcycle to Reno before anyone could look at the text messages on my cellphone and get upset. Finding Thirteen passed out in her apartment, her sickness, eventual hospitalization and death. He'd choked up at her funeral, barely able to get through the ironic tribute he'd written, and said she was like a baby cousin or little sister to him. Finding housing and career coaching and positions at the hospital for younger members of my 'tribe,' which he now called 'our' tribe and had adopted as his own.

Even a medical-billing telecommute position for Kristie to do from home on her own schedule, which led to her and I writing recommendations together for cheaper, fairer, easier and more affordable healthcare costs and accounting procedures, which we presented to an administrative panel at SF General and a committee of state representatives. And, sadly, I remembered Kristie's funeral too, the viewing and burial down in Santa Cruz by the sea, with Fleetwood Mac's Beautiful Child playing and calls for people to adopt shelter dogs in her memory. He'd scattered a bottle of Adderall over her grave, along with a few of his Vicodins, a touching gesture even though we'd heard the next morning that tourists and hipster teens had ransacked the site to unearth the pills.

I came over and he was upbraiding Grandma. "You're just a weak old lady. You can't be nice to anyone, you can't keep the dishes clean, you can't even put them in the dishwasher. You're nobody! And I bet you can't even stretch your legs up and down."

Horrified, I'd rushed over to defend my grandmother, before I realized he was eyeing her prescribed exercise chart and using reverse psychology, and she was putting her plate in the dishwasher and stretching her legs...and grinning at him.

I warned him that her moods changed and that the strategy wouldn't always work, which it didn't, half an hour later. In previous visits, he'd tried complimenting her lovely home and her looks, hoping it would make her pay more attention to them, tried distraction, tried giving her choices with limited alternatives, tried explaining things in a calm, repetitive way...all of which he tried again, but ended up nowhere, so he pulled out his last resort, chamomile tea with a soothing voice and a few Vicodins mixed in with her blood thinners.

"Not all the time, you know. Just when she's about to go through something mentally painful and humiliating, like your husband giving her a shower. Mental pain's still pain, so it's just like giving someone pills after breaking their arm."

My parents looked at each other, but thanked him. On our way out, he turned to me. "Or, for the mental pain of being alive...and being me."

I just held his hand on the way home.

Suddenly, my mind shook itself out of the memories and back to tonight's soiree. A dangerous species had arisen in our living room petri dish: a political discussion. And one of the worst kind: not between the religious-right Republicans from Danville and San Ramon and the San Francisco progressives. Those often actually get resolved rather quickly, with shrugs and laughter and an appeal to how different we are and how strangely beautiful it is that we're at the same party. No, this discussion is among the progressives, about differences in terminology.

I saunter over to Greg and start to clue him in on some of the Bay Area identity-politics debates.

"Oh, I know. We had that back in Jersey. Half the time it resulted in someone trying to sue me and get me thrown out of the hospital for saying the wrong word to a patient. But I meant well. I wanted them to get pissed off at me, rediscover all their righteous indignation and harness it to fight off their disease."

I shrug, remembering Greg's controversial past. He's always liked to think he has a method behind his madness.

"Sometimes that works," I say, thinking of my teen years and my desperate attempt to prove to my parents that I could, in fact, stay organized and handle my life. "But it also makes people hate you."

He laughs. "Oh, I'm used to that. Worth it when it's for a good cause though."

I take his hand. "I hate you," I coo.

"Oh, I don't believe you for a minute. Gotta be more convincing than that."

"I HATE YOU!" I whisper loudly.

"What?" asks a nearby stranger with a glass of water.

"Oh nothing," his friend reassures him. "Just House. Being himself, as usual."

After a lull in the conversation, I resume explaining Bay Area progressive politics to my husband, letting him in on a secret under my breath.

"Usually in my life identity politics mean that someone identifies ten times what I make as rightfully theirs, because of something to do with my family or ancestors that has nothing to do with my personal situation. Then when I go to rectify things however I can, they pick on whatever desperate thing I'm doing to earn the cash as an affront to their community. And if I complain, I'm coming from a place of privilege."

He shrugs. "Yep, that's about right. And they did that in Jersey, too."

A couple smartly dressed women, with large "Keep Your Laws Off My Body" buttons, approach, taking my hand with looks of concern. Greg and the people near us step aside, as the women's posture suggests they want to speak to me privately.

After a few minutes, I wander back to House, literature about rape after-trauma and counseling in hand.

Now I shrug. "I know they're just trying to help," I say. "And I was polite, and I respect that. But they won't let me forget. Won't let me live my life now, enjoy you and the children and the magazine. It's as if my rape has to define my whole life now, that I have to go be traumatized or have to go be an activist, when I already had a whole life going that I wanted to go back to. Isn't it supposed to be, you know, my body, my choice?"

I gulp down some tonic water and look around the room. I'm ranting, and I'm just getting started.

"And I bet if I try to explain any of this to them, they'll freeze up and shut me up and say they're 'triggered.' Well, fuck triggers. Some people are so sensitive they can't come across any reminders of their assaults online, while meanwhile here I am out there every night reliving my assaults in the hot tub place with strange men to earn enough cash to pay for the disaffected, impoverished, trigger-happy feminists' Internet access!'

I believe in compassion and minimizing suffering wherever possible for all living beings, regardless of levels of privilege or past experiences. So I'm not saying to go trigger people, just to stop and look at the big picture and create real economic opportunities and community empowerment along with watching tone and language. Class and disability and other issues matter as much as race and gender.

House looks thoughtful. I'm actually not sure who annoys him more, militant activists with obvious blind spots, or sleazy men who come on too hard or rape women.

I continue. "Sometimes it's as if the whole world wants me to be some kind of obedient wifey, stitching on a little sampler with my legs crossed. Rapists, of course, want to control me, have me please them. But then the social conservatives want me sitting there at home stitching words about chastity, while my family and neighbors and boyfriends wanted me to stay home and stitch rhymes about safety, and now the feminist movement wants me to cross my legs and stitch about my trauma! No one will let me out of the sewing room and the kitchen to define my own life. When do we get to stop being victims and survivors and actually survive?"

He throws an arm around my shoulders. "Well, MY wife does NOT have to stitch on any sampler!" he affirms. "Unless, of course," he looks around to see if people are listening, and if he's creating the desired effect.

"Unless, I can come and uncross your legs while we sew diagnoses on the thing together," he says, pantomiming writing onto a stretched cloth. "How about Von Hippel Lindau Disease? Or Ankylosing Spondylitis? Or the Bubonic Plague? Now wouldn't that be a clever gift from the hospital giftshop? Bring it home as a souvenir for the kiddies?"

Everyone laughs. Now that he's securely in the center of attention, it's time to play doctor.

Tipsy, silly party guests come up to him with strange symptoms, some real and some fake, and he gives them a diagnosis.

"Too easy. Ethanol overdose," he snickers at a young man resting on our couch.

"Parsley overdose," he reproaches Cuddy, and she gives him a faint smile.

"Trimethylaminuria. Caused by the body's inability to digest certain amino acids, gives off a strong fishy smell," he calls out to an old gregarious friend of ours with an earthy sense of humor.

Eventually, the party ends, and we say goodbye to the last of the guests and partycrashers, ask the caterers and maid to clean up, and put Clara and Peri, and ourselves, off to bed. Clara and Peri can take some of the artists' sketches to their rooms to look at in the morning, and we...well, we find our own adult amusements, carefully spooned into each other, both nurturing each other and what we now know are twins. Alex and Philippe, from the middle name of the physician who pioneered handwashing as a sanitary procedure.

...

It's a Sunday afternoon in late fall, and Greg invites me to go for a drive.

"Where?" I ask, but he just beckons for me to follow him, and I get in the car. Clara and Peri are at a friend's house for a sleepover, and the magazine's between issues, so we've got some time to ourselves.

After forty minutes of driving, I recognize where we are. We're across from the St. Laurence BART station, near the former location of the cheap diner where the guy forced himself into my car before attempting to rape me, right about twenty years ago today.

The diner's long gone, was a Bakers Square, then a Shari's, then some kind of knockoff place with every third brand name misspelled that sold hard liquor and cheap purses, then a check cashing place, now it's a cracking, weed-strewn foreclosed hovel. People wander the streets, some aimlessly, some picking up cans to redeem for cash, some drinking cheap beer out of brown paper bags and chatting with neighbors.

He pulls over, stops the car, and gets out for a stretch. Clearly in a good mood, he grins and slips snacks and Vicodin tablets to all the nearby wheelchair-bound street people.

"Now, if you live in San Francisco, and you're born into the Tenderloin or the Bayview, it's not easy, but you can theoretically walk over to a Goodwill and pick up some work clothes and walk over to another neighborhood where there are jobs. But, how the hell would you ever find your way out of here to find work?"

"You don't. That's why we need to invest in employment and infrastructure and local community here. People are still people here, and can be amazingly resilient and resourceful with empowerment and realistic resources. Supporting local small business and entrepreneurship, attracting investment and capital, promoting telecommuting opportunities so the elders and housewives and young women can safely earn some cash from home while caregiving. And awareness training for corporate HR departments, so they don't discriminate based on gaps on resumes."

"Hey, you should be an economist. Or a sociologist."

"Well, I try, as a journalist."

The 24-7 fastfood place, which now closes at eleven, is open, and the smell of stale ketchup mixes with diesel fumes. Its magenta sign flickers, casually in and out of sync with the St. Laurence Shopping Village marquee, a faint purplish hue decorated with a graffiti mural.

I wouldn't have remembered this place at all except for the fact that everyone keeps bringing it up, since I'm a registered-trademark survivor now and have lived through, or attracted, or irresponsibly tolerated, something horrible.

Rape sucks. But losing the ability to go out and create beauty and encourage people through the Rorschach Zeitgeist and to provide for and protect our chosen family/tribe would have been horrible.

And, incredibly, unbelievably, Greg understands that. As with the conceptual artist patient he had years back, whose right to choose he stood up for when she thought about not having treatment that would compromise her mental capacity, he's always had nothing but respect for my ability to make rational choices among a set of imperfect alternatives and do the best I can to care for and do right by all who are involved. I've thought about making buttons for us and the medical staff, "Trust People...even when everybody lies."

I reach out and take his hand. "I know where we are," I whisper. "This is where it happened, this parking lot."

He looks over. "I know."

"I still feel guilty about it, that I didn't report it at first. That I wasn't willing to stay home and sacrifice, that I maybe contributed to the assault of other women."

He looks over in my direction again, with a mixture of tenderness, incredulity and confusion on his face. "Well, you were going out at night to break up fights between Kristie and her husband, remember? If you'd been kept home for your safety, she could have died, remember? And you were providing an outlet and a light and hope to so many through including them in the Rorschach. And you still are. I'd have to kill you if you'd let yourself give that up."

I'm at a loss for words and simply stroke his hand and smile.

"Let me tell you something," he says. "There are different kinds of people in the world. Those who build and sustain societies, and those who benefit from that and have the luxury of living in them with clean consciences. Doesn't make it any easier to handle the loneliness and inner conflict of being in the first group, but at least you know where you are."

It's true. There are the crossing guards and kindergarten teachers and ministers of the world, and then there's us and the rest of our crazy crew, a wild mixture of Peter Lake, master trickster and thief from Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale, Angel Tungaraza, baker and artisan from Gaile Parkin's Baking Cakes in Rwanda, starting from scratch to take the bitterness of life and render it sweet, the Prize Winner from Defiance, Ohio who supported her whole family of ten children off of her winnings from writing contests, Vianne the rebellious chocolatier from Chocolat, Kowalski the free-spirited, self-reliant racecar driver from Vanishing Point, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and all the various other mavericks and scoundrels who break rules when needed to keep everyone else safe and fed and alive.

He reaches into a cooler into the back seat, taking out two martini glasses, olives, a bottle of vodka and another of tonic water, and fixes us both drinks, toasting to me.

"Wanted to redefine this place for you, celebrate and honor the anniversary. This is not a place where you were weak, this is a place where you were brave. Like the Spartan child who stole a fox to bring back to his starving family in wartime and let it eat out his stomach rather than have it escape and be discovered. You took care of your own and of your dream here, and you wouldn't let anyone stop you. You can be my heroine, if you like."

I raise my glass and we toast, clinking our fine glassware together and putting the top down to enjoy the day. This is what I love about House. Plenty of other men would have brought me flowers, chocolates, wine even, but only he would have been clever and insane enough to drive me back to the scene of my rape for an anniversary celebration, and I love him for it.

"You're magnificent, please let me have your babies," I coo into his ear, unbuckling our seatbelts and falling into his lap. We embrace, and I grimace, feeling a sudden contraction. "Wait, I think I am. Seriously. Right now!"

He looks around and shrugs. "So, should I be crazy and deliver them myself, here in the parking lot? We've got pliers and WD-40 in the trunk."

I look around in mock horror, to which he replies, "Nah, maybe next time. Let's get to Stanford Hospital!" while putting the key in the ignition.

On our way to the hospital, I look around at the panorama unfolding outside our car, on both sides of the Bay. The multicolored graffiti on warehouse walls, the plastic bags and cigarette butts, the dive bars, where people of all generations raise their Heineken glasses and, like the Pink song, don't get fancy, just dancy.

The shipping port, with rows of multicolored truckbeds and traincars arrayed before the whitecapped water, the shopping centers, full of California girls in sandals after Labor Day, the yellowed hills with marshgrass redolent of decay, the sparkling tech firms, ethnic restaurants, and medical and financial firms.

I look over at House, and notice he's humming. "The words of the prophets are written on subway walls, tell me more..." and I chime in with Rob Thomas' Street Corner Symphony.

And I think, this could be part of the meaning of our lives, the search itself a part of the answer. Stopping to observe, to watch and learn, to find and celebrate the spirit of the times, to scavenge and observe and celebrate the beauty and mystery of the wonderful chaos all around you, wherever you are. This is the Rorschach Zeitgeist, the summation and quest of our existence. And a pretty damn good birthday for Alex and Philippe, if you ask me.

Das Ende!