Carol Kirkpatrick, possibly the brightest writer I ever met in a writing group (proof positive being her ability to scribble out a pithy, brilliantly crafted story on the spot) had the additional charm of treating me to an oral history of Brooklyn whenever we walked its streets together. Combining warmth, depth, humor, and subtlety well into her 90s, she will always represent perfectly what I’d like to be when I grow up. My hope is to charm you with this sample of her writing:
Madonna/Whore
Those were the parameters of growing up female in the decade 1945-1955.
It wasn’t just a continuum—it was the simultaneous experiencing of the world experiencing you as both these extremes and all points in between at the same time. You weren’t a person. You were either a good girl or a slut. Sometimes both at the same time. How did we deal with it. Ineptly. Psychotically. Schizophrenically. Tragicomically.
How did anyone survive? With deep and terrible scars.
