(Read Aronson’s play in Ensemble Anthology: Art & Hybrid Writing by International Women, no. 1.)

During the 1990s, unique snack food vendors appeared across the steamy South Florida urban sprawl: dressed in string bikinis, thongs, or other provocative stripper-style clothing, the “hot dog girls” gnarled traffic while hawking fast food and cold drinks from metal carts parked on high traffic commuter routes. In court and in the press, they fought for the right to work in public in clothing of their own choosing.

In the 1960s, poets and friends Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton met regularly for drinks at the Ritz bar in Boston, where they discussed their suicide attempts and shared obsession with death. (Both women eventually killed themselves.) The two also shared bouts of madness, difficulties with their mother/wife roles, poetic genius, and a confessional style of self-expression. These two women writers were poised on the razor’s edge of the feminist movement.

Now, Plath and Sexton come alive again in the postmodern personas of hot dog girls Silver and Roxanne. By addressing the audience in dual monologues rather than speaking to one another in dialogue, the hot dog poets present with beauty and rancor the choices all women must make between the suicide of silence and bringing the unmasked female voice to life.

Interview with Virginia Aronson

What got you thinking about writing a play about the Hot Dog Girls?

When I first moved to South Florida from Boston in the early 1990s, I was absolutely mesmerized by the Hot Dog Girls. Women who sold wieners and soft drinks from vendor carts on busy streets. Women dressed like strippers in teeny bathing suits and leather boots up to the mid-thigh. Busty, sexy women with long pretty hair and huge smiles. They were causing a whole lot of trouble with another crowd new to this Northerner: Southern fundamentalist Christians. God-faring folks who were horrified at the sight of exposed flesh. Then there were the soccer moms who didn’t want their kids to see women in scanty dress from the windows of school buses. Did they never go to the beach? The rubbernecking caused traffic congestion and fender benders. Local newspapers were filled with complaints. Cities slapped down ordinances, new zoning laws were created overnight. Hot Dog Girls hired lawyers, citing their constitutional rights. They felt they had a right to utilize their own bodies in advertising a product in order to make a living. I was fascinated.

And you also chose to make the script in free verse and invoke Plath and Sexton in the characters. How did this come about?

Just before I moved to Florida, I attempted to write a play about these two Boston poets. Before they were well-known, Plath and Sexton would have drinks together at the Ritz hotel across from the Boston Common, where they would talk of their mutual attraction to suicide. Eventually, of course, both would become famous and die by their own hands. I love their work and tried to write a play that incorporated images and events from their lives and writings. It felt flat to me and I couldn’t make it breathe.

Once I moved to the land of Hot Dog Girls, I decided to write the piece as a verse play. When I began writing poetry about Florida’s Hot Dog Girls, the voices of Sexton and Plath were influencing me. I could imagine them, mothers and wives, women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, women struggling to have a voice in a man’s world, and their situation seemed quite similar to those of the women in bikinis on the side of the busy streets in downtown Miami and Sarasota and Fort Lauderdale.

Can you talk about Silver and Roxanne, their last statements. Silver talks about suicide, Roxanne about opting to live on.

After Plath committed suicide, Sexton wrote about her, and about their friendship. Sexton chose to live on, and did so, despite her depressions, for many years. Then she too ended her own life.

What discomforts and surprises did you encounter as you got into the writing? These are not exactly “nice girls.”

They may not be “nice” but they are doing what they can to survive. Why is a Hot Dog Girl less acceptable than a Miss America contestant? Or an actress who takes her clothes off for a scene in a film? Why is it okay to dress like the front cover of Cosmopolitan on a date, but it is not okay to dress like his fantasy woman in order to sell him a snack? Why do we encourage 13 year olds to wear push-up bras and tight short-shorts, yet turn their heads away when we pass a strip joint? Is it somehow different for women to marry for money and/or have sex with the man who just paid the tab at their favorite restaurant? What exactly is so “nice” about that?

Call me a feminist or a radical, but I didn’t have any discomfort writing “Double Exposure.” When the play was performed in downtown Lawrence, Kansas, there were fist fights outside the venue. I, for one, think that might be a sign that the Hot Dog Girls touch an exposed nerve. In Florida and elsewhere.

Media Coverage:

Palm Beach County also tried to prove that thong-clad hot dog vendors were traffic hazards, but a traffic study showed there was no link between traffic snarls and the women. Nevertheless, county commissioners in January 1992 passed an ordinance requiring vendors to wear wider thongs after complaints from residents that the women were a religious and moral affront and should be forced to cover up. Responding to a lawsuit filed by a hot dog vendor, a state court later ruled that the law was unconstitutionally vague. The vendor, Gloria Gonzalez, sued the county again last week, seeking reimbursement for wages she lost while the law was on the books. The general reaction from venders is that they don’t cause accidents, drivers do.  —from a DVD on HDG NEWS

Vendor Stands Out
April 27, 1991

If some Palm Beach County residents were angered by the sight of roadside hot dog vendor Gloria Gonzalez wearing a string bikini, they haven`t seen anything yet. A new vendor wearing pasties-like stickers and a string-bikini bottom has attracted attention at Military Trail and Belvedere Road west of West Palm Beach. About 20 people called county offices to complain this week. Gonzalez became nationally known as county commissioners debated and decided not to pass a law to make vendors cover up. Her clothing was modest compared to her newest competitor.

Vendor Sues County
Staff reports, November 17, 1993

Gloria Gonzalez, the bikini-clad hot dog vendor, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking damages against Palm Beach County for lost wages. Gonzalez was arrested in February 1992 for violating a newly passed county law that prohibited the wearing of thong bikinis by roadside vendors. The charge, a misdemeanor, was later dismissed because Gonzalez wore a French-cut bikini allowed under the law. A county judge later ruled the county’s vendor dress code law was too vague to enforce. In her lawsuit filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court on Tuesday, Gonzalez requests the court to declare the county’s vendor dress code law a violation of her due process rights under the state and U.S. constitutions and to prevent the county from passing a similar law in the future.

—from Sun-Sentinel files

Read Double Exposure in Ensemble Anthology: Art & Hybrid Writing by International Women, no. 1

A Couple

About the Painting, “A Couple of Authors: Cynthia and Barbara”

Helen Redman

Cynthia and Barbara chose desert colors-deeply connected to their life in the Anza Borrego Desert for the background of their painting. To show the interweave in their relationship, I used each woman’s choice on her side of the canvas, but layered the two different colors together at the center.  They were one of the most mirrored couples I have ever observed; even their dress, conversation and gesture echoed each other.

Their sharp and moving book (Look Me in the Eye, Old Women, Aging and Ageism, Minneapolis: Spinsters Ink, Second Edition, 1991) opened my eyes to the societal discounting of old women, ageism in the women’s movement, lesbian and gay services, health services and in the politics of beauty. I asked both of these writers to add their own text to the canvas; each with great thought painted the words (printed out below) on to the canvas.

Excerpts from the right side of the painting by Barbara Macdonald:

“Beneath all imposed silences lies power.”

“This is my body doing this thing.  I cannot stop it.  My own body is going through a process that only my body knows about. I never grew old before. Never died before.  I don’t really know how it’s done.  I wouldn’t know when to begin for no time would be right.”

“The truth is I like growing old.

Excerpts from the left side of the painting by Cynthia Rich:

“A white-haired woman with a grey-haired woman talking about lunch…still they know who we are and they know our power.  They know we are a threat.”

“Our task is to take in these bodies as part of these souls.”

Ocean Clouds

Prayer Flowers in the Desert

Solstice Light

Vibrant Field

Winter Moon

Summer Pulse

Tree Slumber

Tree Park

The Logging River

Summer Smoke 1

Summer Smoke 2

Summer Smoke 3

Hidden

See more in Ensemble Anthology no. 1

Grizzly

San Francisco

Packing Medicine 2007

Our ceremonial life was disrupted with the onslaught of the gold rush to our area in the mid 1800’s which brought genocide, disease, and destruction to our way of life, our culture, and to our environment. This was followed by more devastation by the lumber industry and by the removal of our Indian children from their families to boarding schools.

In the 1960’s, the struggle to restore our indigenous rights escalated. There were great efforts among our people to assert our given rights to our traditional ways, such as fishing and land use as well other basic rights like education and access to good health care. At the same time, a renaissance began of our tribal cultures, including language, traditional arts, and ceremony. I have been fortunate to be a small part of this ongoing renewal along with family and community. Young and old have worked together to renew most of our ceremonies. Many of our people now dance, sing, and pray to “Renew the Earth,” to renew our natural foods, to get rid of sickness, and to renew our minds, bodies, and spirits. This painting, called “Remaking Our World,” illustrates part of our world renewal ceremony, we call the White Deer Skin Dance.

Remaking Our World 2005

I think my first conscious expression of renewal and transformation in my paintings began to evolve fifteen years ago after my intimate involvement in renewing a Karuk girls’ puberty ceremony for my daughter. The ceremony is about the transformation of a girl into a woman. It is a rebirth. My painting shown here illustrates this transition and reconnection to the spiritual world. The girl is blindfolded for the duration of the ceremony and looks inward through prayer and isolation from the outside world. When her feather blindfold is removed, she has been reborn, looking out into the world with the new eyes of a woman. The experience with my daughter was a rebirth of a ceremony, a rebirth of a girl into womanhood, and a rebirth of myself into a deeper spiritual realm and connection to my culture and ancestors, and to the Earth.

Rebirth into Womanhood 2007

Several years ago, I went through a personal transformation when I received a traditional tribal tattoo on my chin which is called Thúkin in our Karuk language and now called a “One Eleven” because of the three stripes. This experience was a rebirth for me, and brought a renewed interest and desire for other Native women in our area to receive this special gift. With the devastation of culture by the early 1900’s, shame instead of beauty became associated with this tradition. There were only a few elderly women who had the tattoo when I was a girl and none were living by the early1960’s. About twenty years later, a handful few women chose to get tattooed by the only available method using a machine. Then in 2004 I was honored to receive my tattoo using a traditional tapping method. The painting here expresses this time of renewal and pays honor to our great grandmothers who wore their tattoo proudly.

Tattoo Woman Returns 2005

In our cultures there is a belief that Spirit Beings inhabited the Earth before Human Beings came into existence. As the time of Human Beings drew closer, these Beings transformed into the all the things of the natural world that would help humans to survive and flourish. They became the food and medicine plants. They became the animals, the birds, the fish, and ocean life. Some became the Mountains and Rivers and Rocks. These Spirits gave ceremonies to the first Humans to renew our way of life and to remind us of our connection to the Earth and to the Spiritual world. We have stories that tell us about the time of the Spirit Beings and how things came to be in our world. Some of my paintings illustrate traditional tribal stories that often express the transformation of Spirit Beings into the world and time of Human Beings. In this painting, a young woman Spirit person is transformed into Abalone when she tries to escape from a young man who betrays her love.

Abalone Woman: Transformation 2005

Renewal is important to our natural world and to the survival of the traditional way of life of our tribal people. Many of us feel that the rivers in our area are our life blood. They have always provided one of our main sources of food, the salmon. Recently, the health of our rivers and our salmon have become threatened by dams on the Klamath River that have created toxic levels of green algae. I had an opportunity to work with some high school Native youth to create some large painted panels that address the importance of salmon to our people in ancient times as well as today. The renewal and life cycle of our salmon, and the current threats to their survival, have also been a focus of my own personal paintings. The survival of the salmon is like the canary in the mine. Its survival reflects the survival of our natural way of living. I have included here a sample of the large panels done with the students as well as one of my own paintings.

Traditional Fishing 2007

Hope and Renewal Swim Against the Current

Recently, I created a painting to express my deep concerns about the state of the world we are in. I feel sadness when I think about the destruction caused by humans to the Earth. This includes the injustices against each other and to other living things. Because of this, there is a great imbalance in the world. Humans have a responsibility to help restore that balance, yet most refuse to accept that responsibility. In this painting, I wanted to convey my belief that the Earth cannot wait any longer for humans to wake up and so has begun to heal and renew herself. Transformation and renewal can be a frightening and painful experience, but it can be the beginning of something new and beautiful. We as humans can be part of an effort to heal and remake our world to one of balance and harmony, or we can let the Earth and the Heavens do it for us. I just recently attended one of our “World Renewal” ceremonies that renewed my hope that we can be part of the healing power.

Earth’s Tears of Rebirth 2010

as if we were dreaming

as if night

came from the iris

as in the giving we gave way

and one wild bloom

lights the next

what’s left

falls into rags

and grass lays down at our feet
 

__Last night of his life Dan finishes his shift at 24^th evac and slips past watchtowers to Long Binh jail. He carries some Quaaludes and a pocketful of notable weed.  Since King got wasted, the brothers over there need serious calm.  His regulars he finds that night standing on crates.  He looks up to see they’ve wrapped their hands in electrical tape and are working gingerly to roll a string of razor wire inside the tent flap.

Whoa.  Is that for folks comin or goin? They look surprised to see him, say, Don’t you got ears, man?  He best carry his ass back over the ditch because 720 is fixin to toss the place, the whole camp, talkin strip searches and a whole range of indecency too cruel to abide.

That waft Dan walked through, fresh indeterminate insult in the usual hover of sweat, piss and mud, he recognizes now.  Gasoline.  LBJ’s gonna burn tonight.  He doesn’t care.

They say, Truly, man, this shit is urgent.  Just leave what you got and fly.  Dan does, and he considers writing Glynnis the truth. That’s no mortar that crushes his skull.  Please. More likely the business end of a shovel.  Although inside his skull the blow does register as mortar, not blunt but concussive, almost tidal, arriving like a wave or some wind traveled long distance across space and time.

***

vocabulary lesson

In tutorials

with my brilliant student the doctor, taking time off from medicine to write her book of unspeakable truths, I play the village idiot, maybe because I both wanna know and don’t.

—Okay, here on page 79.  What the hell?  Q’ed?

—Oh that.  Game over.  Beyond gorked.  Think O.  Now add a tongue hanging at 5 o’clock.

She looks inclined to demonstrate, but in my head I’ve driven a rental car from the airport, parked, found the right elevator and my own set of images:  railed bed, curtained glass walls, my mother’s half-shaven skull, blood in tarry bubbles at the bite of each staple and yellowing with bruise her face, vacant, collapsed.

Q’ed, cruel and exact, I understand as the term I wished to hear each time the door to her room swung open.

peephole²

Your Uncle K asserts

the late ‘70s offered neither a particular nor general moral sense.  Not in any city in America.

—I do recall moral despair, he says.

If it’s not too late for introductions, your Uncle K, commentator and helpmate, is my third husband, the one who has so far stuck.

***

“vocabulary lesson” and “peephole” first appeared in Seattle Review, Vol. 2, nos. 2 & 3. Reprinted by permission from author and Seattle Review.

Read more of this in Ensemble Anthology no.1

Read more of this in Ensemble Anthology no. 1

An editor of a gardening magazine recently questioned whether this kind of gardening, where ethics and aesthetic merge, using local natives and natural models, is truly representative of “the fine art of gardening.” “Some might consider such simplification the abandonment of gardens as art,” he says. Yet choices are made, plants arranged, an aesthetic developed. It embraces all I know, all I hope to know, and all I wish I knew but never will about this set of ancient processes and associations.

Is it the way of a lazy gardener, as this editor says? I find that horticultural challenges are infinite. I will never run out of species to attempt to bring into this space. For example, I want to establish a stand of Indian paintbrush in the scrub, a red, apricot, or yellow hemi-parasitic plant that probably grew here once but has not so far survived in my garden. Indian paintbrush hosts a particular kind of aphid-eating mite. This mite lives in the flower, where it eats nectar, till a hummingbird comes along to share the nectar. At this juncture, the mite runs up the hummingbird’s beak and into its nostril, where it sits tight while the hummingbird flies down to Baja California. As the hummingbird approaches a nectar-producing plant, the mite gets ready, rears up, and races down the nostril, down the beak, and into the flower. It must move so quickly that it may outrun the fleet cheetah. By establishing this flower in the garden, with its as yet elusive cultural requirements, we may be facilitating this mind-boggling nasal journey.

***

Revised somewhat from Gardening with a Wild Heart (University of California Press). Reprinted by permission from the author.

Read more of this in Ensemble Anthology no. 1