My mother's supplementary remarks on Shulamith Firestone

I have a short piece on Shulamith Firestone in the current FEMSPEC.

My mother remembered some details l about her encounter with Firestone which lends a variant perspective to what I was able to say. Herewith her remarks:

The first time I met Shulamith Firestone, in the Xerox place, she was fussing about what she needed done to such an extent, that I was kept waiting longer than usual. As a result, I glanced at the work she was Xeroxing and realized that she was Shulamith Firestone. Shulamith Firestone had no idea who I was—I had bought one of her books many years ago in the seventies, and had read about her, so of course I knew who she was.   About a year later, I went to do my laundry at the laundromat across the street, and came across Shulamith again, who had evidently been in the laundromat some time before I arrived.  I was sitting on the bench in front of her, waiting for my my laundry to finish in the dryer.  She was standing in front of me. She evidently had found something on the bulletin board that interested her, and wanted to copy it down, but had no pencil.  She asked me if I had a pencil.  I did not.  She then proceeded to look in her entire backpack for a pencil, look in her wallet, look in her jacket, look in all the pockets of her jeans, look in her shirt pockets.  When she did not find a pencil in any of those places, she proceeded to search again in an increasingly anxious and apprehensive and agitated way, a way that was dead serious—in her backpack, in her wallet, in her jacket, in her jeans, in her shirt pockets.  She did this many, many, many times.  She was not kidding around. Backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack wallet, jacket, jeans shirt pockets, backpack wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets.  To the point that I felt like shouting, in utter desperation,  “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SHULAMITH GO HOME AND GET A  PENCIL!  But I did nothing.  Maybe I should have.  Backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack wallet, jacket, jeans shirt pockets, backpack wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets. 

       Although she had no pencil, she was pencil-thin, and possessed by an idee fixe about pencil she did not possess. Backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack, wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets, backpack wallet, jacket, jeans shirt pockets, backpack wallet, jacket, jeans, shirt pockets.  To her eternal credit, she was still obviously interested in something that struck her as important on the bulletin board; her need for a pencil was from her perspective dire.  This was true to the spirit of the Laundromat. Everyone was in a state of existential despair.   Nobody was really in their right mind, and I would include myself in that category. In that regard, Shulamith Firestone’s episode-with-the-pencil should be appreciated as part of the legend of what was once the East Village.  She was true to herself.  She may have been  in a tragic condition,  yes—but there was nothing about her that was a lie. 
--Margaret Boe Birns 

(Again my thanks to my mother for contributing her perspective)