Triptych Interviews
Kate
Monday, September 19 (After Chapter 37 of Triptych)
KATE: Hi. I’m Kate.
aroslav: Nice to meet you Kate. I’m aroslav.
KATE: Are you some kind of professor?
aroslav: Sort of, but that’s not why I’m here.
KATE: They said an interview. What do you want to know?
aroslav: All about what makes you Kate.
KATE: Are you a stalker?
aroslav: No. Just a friend of Tony’s.
KATE: Okay. But you are kinda old and creepy.
aroslav: Noted. Now how about we start with your full name.
KATE: Katarina Mirela Holsinger.
aroslav: That’s a nice German name.
KATE: Austrian surname. A hundred years ago. Great-great somebody emigrated from Austria.
aroslav: Okay. Austrian. What’s the rest of your ethnic mix? You have such an exotic look.
KATE: What’s that mean? Exotic. I think it’s from Shangri-La, or maybe what you say about a belly-dancer. Are my eyes funny? Do I wear a grass skirt?
aroslav: Whoa. Sorry, Kate. It was meant as a compliment.
KATE: I know. I’m kidding. I do have funny eyes and have been known to wear a grass skirt...at my grandmother’s request. Let’s see. My great-grandfather Paul was the son of Austrian immigrants just after World War I. He was drafted for service in the Second World War and to avoid prejudice, they sent him to the South Pacific. He was part of the occupation of Okinawa. That’s where he met my great-grandmother, Akemi. She was a war-bride and didn’t speak a word of English when he brought her back to Wisconsin. They lasted about one winter and she was begging to go back home. So the story is that he moved back to the South Pacific, but he wouldn’t go back to Japan, so they ended up in Hawaii.
My grandfather Ken grew up there and married a Hawaiian girl named Iolana. They moved to San Francisco to be hippies and ended up in a commune in Oregon. That’s where my father, Oke was born. Assuming my grandfather was actually his father, that would make him half Hawaiian, a quarter Japanese, and a quarter German. Of course, he married a Romani gypsy named Vadoma who was living on the commune, which makes me half Romani, a quarter Hawaiian, and an eighth each Japanese and German.
Okay? Exotic enough?
aroslav: I couldn’t have made that up. How did your mother happen to come to America? Or did your father meet her in Romania? It’s so unusual to hear of a Romani who isn’t with her people.
KATE: Frankly, she’s never told me the details. She keeps it hidden. She may even be an illegal alien. What I know is that her attitude was and continues to be fiercely independent. She was contracted to be married after first blood, about twelve or thirteen. She ran away. Somehow she managed to come to America, and crawled into the commune. She’s never left. It has the same kind of community feeling that the Gypsies have, but is more conservative about the care of children. She married Dad when she was eighteen. I was born the next year.
aroslav: How old are you Kate?
KATE: Um...Don’t tell, okay?
aroslav: Just between us.
KATE: I just turned eighteen.
aroslav: ??? You are a sophomore in college this year. That would mean...
KATE: I wasn’t quite seventeen when I started at PCAD. I never told anyone. I just tried to act like everybody else.
aroslav: Does that have anything to do with why you waited so long to...uh...be with your Triptych?
KATE: Especially Lissa. I didn’t know if there were any statutory laws about being with a minor and I didn’t want any of them to ever think they’d taken advantage of me because I wasn’t as old as they are. But then I turned eighteen.
aroslav: Wow! What a smile!
KATE: I’m happy.
aroslav: How did you get into college so young.
KATE: All kids in the commune are home schooled. When the Moms decide they can’t teach us any more, they send us to college or put us to work.
aroslav: The Moms?
KATE: Pretty much any girl over eighteen is considered a Mom, usually literally.
aroslav: So you are...
KATE: I’m not going back. I don’t want to be a Mom.
aroslav: Maybe we’ll come back to that. Let’s talk about art.
KATE: Okay. I love to draw. All I ever wanted to do was be an artist. From the first time the Moms put one of my pictures on the refrigerator, that’s all I wanted to do. I have a footlocker full of my drawings and six portfolios of paintings. I’ll draw anything. I’ll draw a picture of you right now if you want.
aroslav: That’s okay. I’m a little pencil shy. What is your favorite subject?
KATE: To draw? Anything. I like people, but I also like to draw buildings, landscapes, still life...anything. But what I really like is detail. Like, look at your desk.
aroslav: Okay. It’s pretty messy.
KATE: Describe it.
aroslav: It has a printer, my computer tower and monitor, keyboard, mouse, cable modem, router, scanner, piles of papers, a few books, a stack of poker chips and a couple decks of cards, a box full of business cards, some pencils and pens, a ruler, thumb drives, checks...
KATE: You know what I’d draw? I’d draw the stack of poker chips. See how they aren’t centered in a perfect stack? They’re crooked. And look. There’s one white one in the pile of red, three up from the bottom. You can see its reflection in the wood grain of your desk—on that little spot that’s clear. I’d make a picture this big of just that little stack and the reflection.
aroslav: Let the record show that you held your hands about eighteen inches apart. Wow. If you were drawing me, what would you draw?
KATE: Your mustache.
aroslav: Got it.
KATE: No. Just the left side with your upper lip and just the edge of your lower lip with the one unclipped hair that curls over it.
aroslav: Let’s get back to you, shall we? When did you realize you were bisexual?
KATE: ???
aroslav: Liked both boys and girls.
KATE: I know what it means. What makes you think that?
aroslav: Well, you are obviously attracted to Tony and to both Lissa and Melody.
KATE: That’s different. I’m not really attracted to boys. Or to girls.
aroslav: But...
KATE: I’m attracted to Tony, Lissa, and Melody. They’re wonderful. I’d do anything for them.
aroslav: Their sex is irrelevant?
KATE: I don’t know how to say this. It just isn’t important. I don’t mean sex isn’t important. I mean... Oh crap... Yesterday... Oh my god.
aroslav: There’s that smile again.
KATE: You know, there was a science fiction book years ago that I read when I was about twelve because I’d read everything in the commune by that time. It was probably my grandfather’s. So this human woman goes traveling in space as an anthropologist or something and is put among a people who have kind-of foxlike fur and tails. Nice people and she falls in love once or twice and interspecies relations don’t seem to be a problem. But at one point, she has to ask if the adolescent she’s been traveling with is a boy or a girl. Her guide says “It hasn’t decided yet.” It was like the kids had to decide if they were going to be male or female. So cool!
So I figured, that’s what I’d do. Someday, I’d just decide whether I was a boy or a girl and that would be that. Then these grew and shot that theory all to hell.
aroslav: For the record, you are holding your breasts.
KATE: Yeah. I got boobs. Doesn’t feel nearly as good as when... Oh. Okay. Boobs. That was fine. I started bleeding, too. So I was definitely female. But I grew up with all kinds of families. There were Dads that lived together, Moms and Dads that lived together, and Moms that lived together. And sometimes they switched around. So I figured someday I’d fall in love and that would be that. I didn’t know if it would be female or male or billy goat. Everything else would work out.
aroslav: So with Tony and Lissa and Melody it isn’t important what sex they are.
KATE: Why would it be?
aroslav: Well, then tell me about your first sexual experience.
KATE: You mean when Tony kissed me? Could we open a window? I’m awful hot.
aroslav: Yes. No. I mean, the first time you kissed a boy, or a girl.
KATE: That’s what I was talking about.
aroslav: Tony was your first kiss?
KATE: Mmm.
aroslav: How did you discover you liked Melody and Lissa then?
KATE: I kind of fell for Melody and Lissa first—or maybe at the same time. That day that Tony painted the mural? I couldn’t take my eyes off of what he was doing. You know—don’t tell him, but—he doesn’t paint detail all that well. There’s always little stuff that’s missing. Like there’s a little scar on Lissa’s right hand that he completely left out of the painting.
But...When he painted them...I was...It was...I was so overwhelmed with the love he had for them. Every stroke of his brush said he loved them. And I got caught in it. I watched him for hours and Doc Henredden never said a word to me. Sometimes he was standing beside me, just watching, too.
It dawned on me by the time he was finished that Lissa was looking at Tony with that same feeling. And when Tony turned around, I saw it in his eyes. I was...It was...I wished I knew who the other girl was...because I didn’t know it was Melody yet...because I was in love with her, too. There was never a time when I loved one more than the other two.
Oh, listen to me. I’m talking about love...as if I know anything about love. I just...I want to be connected to them...like I was with that painting. I wanted to be part of that picture. Like I was yesterday.
aroslav: Do you need a tissue?
KATE: Thanks.
[sigh]
I’m not a virgin any more. I wonder sometimes why I waited, but oh my...it was worth the wait. I was so overwhelmed I passed out. I want to make love to each of them individually because when we are all together it is so intense that I short-circuit. Poof! I blew a fuse and everything went dark. I think I’m going to kidnap Melody tonight and hold her hostage in my room.
[giggles]
Do you know how beautiful she is down there? I want to paint her pussy. I mean paint a picture of her pussy. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen! Are all girls that beautiful? I couldn’t really see Lissa when we...when I...you know. It was dark.
aroslav: Let’s take a breather from such an intense subject. How did you like your first year at college? What were some of the high points?
KATE: Besides kissing Tony, Melody, and Lissa? I felt grown up. I was scared out of my mind most of the time, but I was determined that I’d find a way out of the commune and I wasn’t going to end up a Mom. I went back for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was like I was visiting an alien world. Not like they are weird or anything. You know, until you are eighteen, there is a strict hands-off policy. No Mom or Dad will do more than give you a hug. But when I went back, I could see them looking at me. They were already trying to figure out who would be my husband. That’s why I’m not going back. Now that I’m eighteen, I might not ever leave.
I told Mom. Actually, she started it. That’s when I found out about how she was contracted for marriage at twelve. She said it was all right if that’s what I wanted in life, but she’d help me escape—just like she did—if I wanted. I wanted.
College showed me possibilities, but just living in the city showed me even more. There is so much to do in the world. I love the Moms and Dads and the brothers and sisters in the commune, but they are so wrapped up in their little world that they don’t think about the rest of the world. They live in paradise. I volunteer at the local food bank twice a month. I go to movies. I go to concerts. I have a job. I mean, I’m not rich. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life making candles and having babies and growing pot.
Ooops. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not like they grow pot on the commune...exactly. They’re really careful about the laws, you know?
aroslav: Let’s strike that from the record.
KATE: Thank you.
aroslav: So, would you say you have a social conscience?
KATE: I think I’m learning what that is. All I’ve figured out so far is that the world is bigger than me.
aroslav: That’s more than many of us have figured out. You seem to be very sensitive to what other people are feeling. Can you tell me a little about that?
KATE: Mom used to say I was too sensitive. But if I wasn’t that sensitive, my baby sister wouldn’t be alive. I begged Mom to take her to a doctor right away. Her appendix burst on the way. They got her to the hospital just in time. I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it.
aroslav: Is that like your mother?
KATE: Mom is Mom. No one is like her. She could have told that Sunday was sick if she’d been looking at her cards. But she couldn’t tell by looking at Sunday.
aroslav: Are you angry with her?
KATE: No! Mom is the most wonderful person in the world. She’s funny and talented and psychic. I had my cards read by a woman in Pike Place Market in the Underground last year. Oh my gosh, she was so bad. It was like going to a movie and seeing a fortune teller. She spouted off all this rubbish and used the one thing she got right to validate her opinion on everything else. Mom is not like that. She doesn’t read the cards, she reads people and just uses the cards to form the story. I love my mom and I’ll keep going to see her as long as I can get Tony and Melody and Lissa to go with me.
aroslav: Other than paint, what’s your favorite thing to do?
KATE: I love movies. And concerts. And the zoo. A concert and a movie at the zoo would be the perfect night. Especially if there was, like, sex afterward.
Oh, and I love the ferries. Almost every weekend, I go down and catch a ferry to Bainbridge or Kingston, or Bremerton. I tried Vashon Island once, but it’s hard to get anywhere there without a car. It’s miles to town. Oh, and I took the ferry to Victoria, BC once. They almost didn’t let me back in the country because I didn’t have a passport or a driver’s license yet. I had my student ID and they finally agreed that I could come back. That’s when I decided to get a driver’s license. And now that I’m eighteen, I’m applying for a passport. I hope I get to use it to go somewhere sometime.
aroslav: What about the Seattle addiction to coffee? You like Lattes?
KATE: Only in the morning...or when I haven’t slept and have to stay awake for class. That’s one of the things that I continue from the commune. I have about twenty different herbal teas in my room—one for every possible occasion. Got cramps? I got tea. Got a head cold? I got tea. Can’t sleep? I got tea. I’ve got tea to help me remember things, tea to cure a cold, tea to boost my immune system, tea for a sore throat...I don’t have time in the day for coffee!
aroslav: Anything else you want to add?
KATE: Just...I know I said I didn’t want to be a Mom, but...I only mean that I’m not ready to be wed, bedded, and pregnant. I like kids...really. Like Lissa’s boys. They are the best, most precious...I just don’t want to have babies right now. Not my own.
aroslav: I understand. Thank you for all the time and information you’ve given us, Kate.
KATE: You’re welcome. I guess you’re not so creepy after all.
aroslav: Thanks.
KATE: You’re still old, though.
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