What the hell?

Well, back from Vancouver, lovely trip. On the way to the airport, my taxi driver, a self-described musician, middle-aged, and a very pleasant fellow, recounted stories about his father-in-law, who had been the last surviving World War II veteran to receive Canada’s Victoria Cross, and so was flown to London to meet Prince Charles, etc. The driver described the colorful character of the old man and I was enjoying it, when he added, “He was never any good at business, but his wife was Jewish, so they made a good living.” Would you hear this in New York, I wonder? I immediately said, “Well, I’m Jewish, and I have no head for business at all.” After a minute he said uncomfortably, “Well, it’s a bit of a myth, I guess.” I couldn’t help adding, “A relative of mine by marriage married a black man [the driver was white, by the way], and there were members of the family who were amazed that he didn’t have any talent for singing or dancing, no rhythm whatsoever.” Silence. Nevertheless, I carried on a cheerful conversation afterward and gave him the usual tip. He really was a nice guy. And that just shows you — make of it what you will.

On a different note, you can’t help liking the very civilized and pretty city of Vancouver, but I can’t say I loved it the way I loved New Orleans or Charleston or San Francisco when I first saw them. What surprised me was how much I was attracted to those snow-capped wild mountains that rose up in some distant North across the bay. I’ve seen wonderful mountains before — the Rockies, of course, and the Alps, both the French and Italian sides. But there was something about the way these mountains kept going ever more north, getting wilder and wilder, that felt different to me. I kept returning to see them at odd moments during the conference, which took place in the dull law school building on campus, and when I looked at them, I wanted to put on hiking boots (which I don’t own) and just walk and walk through those sublime fir forests towards the snow.

Monkeys, Monkeys, and More Monkeys

One of the attractions of Ubud, in Bali, is the Sacred Monkey Forest, which happened to be only a 15-minute walk from our hotel. C had been to this forest on each of her previous visits, so she was eager for me to see it for myself.

The first day we went, it began to rain as soon as we paid our entrance fee (15,000 rupiahs, or approximately $1.64). Fortunately, we had our umbrellas as it had been overcast all morning. The monkeys were not so handily equipped. They huddled in the crook of tree limbs, under the shelter of leaves, or in the few structures with roofs. One small pavilion, about four feet square, that we came upon had four monkeys of varying ages tightly packed together near a corner post. The flash from a tourist’s camera angered one of them: it hissed and darted toward the tourist, who hastily backed up and then left. Watching these damp, forlorn creatures became too sad, so we left.

A few days later, C went to the forest herself. While sitting on a low wall, she felt a touch on her hand. It was a baby monkey-and when she removed her bag from her lap, the baby traipsed across her, followed soon after by its mother. But there was no one to photograph this moment of C’s lap as Monkey Pathway.

The next day we both went to the forest. Now the sun was shining, there were many monkeys about, and many tourists feeding them. One woman put some food on her chest, and a monkey jumped over to grab it. Again, C sat down on the wall. Soon a monkey approached and climbed across her lap. Another followed. A third puts its paw on her bag, looking like it might try the zipper. (It’s worth noting that C had just had a massage with cardamom-scented oil; did C smell like Baliness food?) Then a fourth clambered up her back and appeared to be searching through her hair-where is that food?

Then she was mugged. Another monkey rifled through her tote bag, found her water bottle, and ran off with it. Several feet away, it sat down, unscrewed the cap–yes, they’ve learned how to unscrew the lids–and tried to tilt the bottle. But there wasn’t much water left, and the monkey didn’t realize how much it would have to tilt the bottle. So it knocked the bottle over and lapped up what water spilled onto the pavement. Another monkey grabbed the bottle, ran a few feet, spilled some more water and licked it off the ground.

Meanwhile, many tourists had gathered and were shooting pictures of C and her new friends. Or perhaps the monkeys saw C as bait to attract more humans who might actually have food for them. More clicking, more monkeys. Finally, C had had enough. The monkeys weren’t going away, so she would have to get out from under. “That’s enough,” she said, and extricated herself very carefully; after all, as far as the monkeys were concerned, she was just another statue set among them.

C. had this literal monkey on her back; does it work as a scarf?

Confession: I am selfish…or is it human nature?

I haven’t written here on my assigned day of the week because I’ve been out of town (and will be more than not until the last week of August).

Today I was teaching my class at NYU in romantic love and its history and literature.  I posed a question to the students: is romantic love caring or selfish? We batted that around, and as usual, I heard that if you love someone, romantically or otherwise, you want them to be happy. So I followed that with a hypothetical: suppose you love A but A loves B (or leaves you for B), do you want A to be happy with B because you love him or her? Everyone replied yes — as with any other kind of love, including friendship, you want that person’s happiness more than your own. Some said they would be upset but could separate that from wanting the best for the hypothetical beloved. The talk then turned to friendship: if your friend got a job you wanted even though she is less qualified than you are, would you be happy for her? Again, everyone said yes, they could separate the feelings out. I usually keep my own feelings out of these discussions, but I had to admit my answer would not be the same. They were shocked. I told them it just means I’m not as nice as they are. But of course I wonder if they really would feel as they claim.

Another interesting topic that came up (after reading Stendhal, who claims in his On Love that women think about love and the details of affairs much more than men do) was whether media addressed to women still emphasize romance more than media addressed to men. I gave the example of movies, books and magazines that sell mainly to women and are centered around the question of how to get and keep a man. One student insisted that men’s and women’s magazines discuss love equally — he mentioned Men’s Health, a magazine I don’t read. Does anyone have an informed opinion about this last idea?

Death and Life in Bali

We have encountered both here, life in the form of food (cooking classes) and death in the Balinese fashion, which involves cremation.

Death, first.

Balinese Hinduism is a blend of Indian Hinduism, Buddhism, and animism. The dead must be cremated so that the soul can be freed from the material body and be reincarnated. But cremation is very expensive, because of all the offerings and accompanying features (to be explained). So when ordinary people die, they are buried until the villagers can make all the required elements, and then a mass cremation is held, usually every four to five years.

During our trip Ubud will have two cremations. One was a media event, because it was a royal cremation. You see, Ubud still has a royal family, and three members of that family have died recently. The town was packed with people and media, because this cremation was expected to be a great event. The royal family can afford to hold a cremation as soon as necessary, so since March they have been making all the required offerings as well as the sarcophagi, into which the bodies are placed to be burned, and enormous towers, which hold effigies (symbols) of the dead. The sarcophagi for the royals were enormous bulls, called lembu, and a four-legged winged creature, perhaps a Balinese dragon, maybe nine feet high and fifteen feet long. The bulls were black and decorated in red and gold, while the dragon was mostly gold. The tallest tower was 65 to 70 feet high, looking rather like a towering series of boxes, and elaborately decorated.

When we first arrived last week, the towers, lembu, and offerings were still being constructed in the courtyard of Ubud palace. On cremation day, last Tuesday, everything began with a procession, as the lembu and towers were carried to the cremation site. But there was more. First came two young people, a man and a woman, in ceremonial garb and carried in chairs by bearers. As young people, they carry the spirits of the ancestors; who they were specifically was not clear, though it was probably explained on Indonesian TV. Behind them came offerings, very elaborate containers carried on people’s heads or on small platforms, accompanied by gamelan, the Indonesian court music of drums and gongs. Then the lembu, the dragon, the towers.

This doesn’t sound like much, but it took nearly two hours for this procession to make its way past our viewing area inside a restaurant. It was hurry up and wait, as it moved several feet, then stopped. At one point, we were told that we were waiting for the king, who hadn’t finished his preparations, whatever they were. That was half an hour. After the last of the towers passed by, everyone crowded into the streets to follow, and C and I joined them as we walked the half-mile or so to the cremation site. Here, however, the crowd was even thicker and more tightly packed. From where the main road entered the site, we couldn’t see the actual site, and claustrophobia closed in. We turned back and missed seeing the body go down a high slide into the funeral pyre; we later learned from a woman who was there that she had feared being crushed against a wall at one point, so I’m glad we weren’t there

C’s friend M is married to a man from Ubud whose village is holding the other mass cremation the day that we leave. But we were able to see one of the preliminary ceremonies yesterday. Offerings that had been prepared by the women of the village over the past several months were carried to a temple opposite the graveyard where dead people had been buried as soon as they died. As it happens, this particular village’s graveyard and temples are in the Sacred Monkey Forest, a 15-minute walk from our hotel. The monkeys gathered around the graveyard, climbed up and down trees, chased each other and generally behaved like monkeys as more and more people gathered. C and I were wearing our sarongs, as we’d been told this was respectful. Again, we waited, waited, waited, went into the open-air temple to inspect the offerings, which included baskets of food, reed mats, and other objects to symbolize the dead person’s spirit to help separate it from the material body. At one point, a procession of men arrived carrying white or yellow parasols, which they carried into the area around the outer wall of the temple and inserted into parasol stands.

All the spectators were then told to leave the temple and the entrance to the temple. A small procession of people arrived carrying more offerings and knelt on the pathway in front of the temple. More waiting. Some women went among the kneelers sprinkling holy water by different methods: fingers, large leaf brushes, shorter leaf brushes. More waiting, then male priests did the same. After a while, all the kneelers and many others went to sit among the gravestones, with their family members. (I should add that a priest with a microphone gave instructions or spoke prayers from time to time.)

The ultimate purpose of this ceremony was to dig up the dead and begin the process by which the dead person can be separated into the five elements — fire, space, air, water, and earth — which will be returned to their source so the spirit can be recycled. By this point, we’d been at the site for three hours, and while shovels and hoes had been passed around, there was no sign that digging was about to begin. I went back to the hotel for a toilet break and to get more water, and when I returned it seemed that some digging had occurred, and the monkeys had gotten at some of the offerings. We watched the monkeys fight over and devour the food, and then we left to devour some food for ourselves. About four hours later, we saw M’s husband, K, who said he had just finished digging up his relatives, so it’s just as well we didn’t stick around.

Addendum: The New York Times had an article about the royal cremation, here.

Life (Food)

Our cooking lessons were taught by a woman who in her other life happens to be a silver jewelry designer. The classes were at a hotel/spa called Taman Rahasia, in a village just west of Ubud. We learned to make two basic sambal, or sauces, the red and the yellow, and several dishes that used the sambal, like satay, kebabs, a spicy shredded chicken, and vegetables with coconut, as well as ceremonial satay, corn fritters, fish grilled in banana leaves. We also learned two desserts, banana fritters and coconut-filled crepes. These dishes were cooked over two days, and we ate what we cooked — and I must admit the food was all delicious. Everyone was cooked in coconut oil, and our teacher assured us that fresh-pressed coconut, aka extra virgin coconut oil, is low in cholesterol and not at all unhealthy. Apparently, the nutritional analysis that shows coconut oil as high in cholesterol is based on oil pressed from dried coconut. I’ve bought a small bottle of the EVCO and will check nutritionists about this further.

Body, Mind and Soul

Lately it seems I spend ordinate amounts of time visiting various professionals who roam around my body, checking it, prodding and sticking it, and so on.  This is partly because I am over sixty years old, partly because I’ve had cancer and so now have to be regularly tested in all sorts of ways, and partly because it’s summer and I save all these appointments for what are supposed to be the relaxing months for teachers. In the last month or so I’ve gone to (in no particular order):

1. oncologist (check-up)

2. mammography (ditto)

3. urological surgeon (don’t ask)

4. gynecologist (another check-up)

5. pelvic ultrasound (ditto)

6. skin cancer check

7. opthamologist (check-up)

8. orthopedist (shoulder tendinitis)

9. physical therapy for tendinitis (4 weeks)

10. dentist (still another check-up)

11. pulmonologist (new medication for chronic though mild asthma)

I’m sure I’m leaving a few out. And some of these have to be repeated in the fall (the oncologist wants me to have yearly breast MRI’s in ADDITION to yearly mammograms — her idea is, why not?).

My point is that as my body is sagging, bagging and turning into old hagdom, becoming less and less a joy and the modest source of pride it used to be;  as I become more and more interested in and focused on the mind and the world, that same body is pulling at me like a small demanding, even spoiled child — look at me! Pay attention to me! And if you don’t, you’ll see – I’ll get even! Ouch.

It all seems so unfair. But as my friend KS, a Buddhist, remarked to me recently, “You say you don’t believe in anything, but you speak as if you’re angry at someone or something for the way things turn out. There’s no one to be angry at.“

Now there’s a thought my body couldn’t have come up with.

Louise Bourgeois; Local Raccoons

Two days ago I went to the Guggenheim to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibition. I also reupped my membership, which cost only $64, as I am now a senior. With membership comes a small canvas tote (je t’aime Louise Bourgois) and  the right to bring guest(s) for $10. So… if any of our original group would like to accompany me to the museum on any weekday, I’d be glad to go again. I missed one gallery by accident, and one was temporarily closed.

I have never really warmed up to her early work, but there are many pieces from the 1990s and 2000s that I had never seen before, and some of them were, to me, incredibly compelling. Some sample quotes from L.B.:

[referring to a sculpture's tortuous, yet ultimately balanced, quality]: That is the tension of being human–the fragility of people. We are always afraid of falling, so we balance ourselves.

It is not so much where my motivation comes from, but rather how it manages to survive.

I need memories. They are my documents. [Poster's note: So do we all need our memories, which is why Alzheimer's is such a horrific disease.]

[Stitched on a bed coverlet in a piece titled Cell 1] Art is the guarantee of sanity [not so, sez I]. Pain is the ransom of formalism. [If anyone out there knows or can guess what that last one means, please comment.]

Riding my bike this morning on the way to the Central Park tennis courts, I heard a man say to his companion, “There are two of them.” Two whats, I wondered, so I stopped my bike, intending to ask them. Just then I saw what was obviously a young raccoon scuttling through the  bushes–then another. According to the couple who had spotted them first, there has been more than one raccoon family in that location [100th Street entrance, large tree about 60 feet from Central Park West]. Warmed the cockles.

The Day of False Starts

Bali is beautiful. The weather is warm but not too hot, and cool in the evening so I don’t even need the ceiling fan. We’ve arrived in Ubud in the middle of preparations for two mass cremations, events of high social and religious significance. And my daughter C’s friend M, who lives here, is married to a man whose family is involved with one of these cremations. People are busy creating offerings and statues of bulls that will be used in the cremations — this evening women walked up our street carrying on their heads elaborate containers embellished with gold foil. Next week the actual ceremonies take place, and we’ll be able to see one of them next Tuesday.

So why is today a day of false starts? Let us count the ways.

(1) We’ve been having minor technological problems; the charger for my phone may have burned out because I forgot to plug it into the converter before plugging it into the adapter. So I’ve been looking for a new converter. Meanwhile, Christie’s looking for a new battery for her camera because the converter has been erratic in recharging her camera’s current battery. No luck on either front.

(2) We called the cooking school where we’re taking lessons tomorrow and Saturday. They want payment in rupiahs, so at first we thought we wanted a bank to cash our traveler’s checks. But on the way up Jl. (Street) Hanoman, we decided it might be easier just to take cash from the nearest ATM. That turned out to be on the main road through Ubud. The first ATM we entered only “spoke” to us in Balinese, which should have alerted us that it wasn’t an international ATM. But no. We kept trying, until a security guard came over to tell us it wasn’t international. He directed us across the street, where we got our rupiah

(3) We had originally thought we’d go to a museum today. But by now it was 12:30, and we thought that by the time we got to the museum, which we’d have to take a taxi to, it would be time for lunch, so let’s have lunch now. We walked a couple of blocks to Nomad, recommended by Lonely Planet as having Balinese dishes in tapas-size portions. Nomad is like most (all?) Balinese restaurants, open air on three sides. We ordered a platter of all the tapas and a green papaya salad. And waited, and waited, and waited. It was more than half an hour before our food arrived, and it was way too much food. However, we made the most of it, and it was quite good.

(4) By now, I was thinking a museum was not in the cards, and perhaps we should just go to the Monkey Forest. We’ve been here for three days, and I still haven’t been to the Monkey Forest, which is walking distance from our hotel. So we set off down Monkey Forest Road. C stopped in several shops, trying on a dress (too short), a feathery sweater (bought two), and Crocs (bought a pair). My innards, however, were beginning to set up a protest, so I looked around for a likely bathroom. Across the street was a medical clinic — they should let me in. Indeed they did, and it was a Balinese toilet, a porcelain hole in the ground, which a barrel of water and scoop for flushing. And I had diarrhea. Not pretty. However, I felt better afterwards, and we continued on toward the Monkey Forest. This time, though, C needed to get back to the hotel, so we passed the Monkey Forest, stopping only to take pictures of the monkeys cavorting over the roof of a nearby shop.

(5) Back at the hotel, I was hot, sweaty, and tired. All I wanted to do was take a nap. Which I did, until it was time to go up to C’s friend M’s café, conveniently named Kafe, to try out the Internet and recharge C’s laptop. Neither of these efforts was successful either, at first. But we’re going out to dinner soon and should be recharging out own batteries. And tomorrow is another day.

On Writing and Reading and Loneliness

Rather a lofty title for what will probably not amount to much, but…

My starting point is the posting by Amaryllis, Sunday, Sunday. A. accomplished everything she set out to do,  which gave her a feeling close to bliss, a sort of power. I have, alas, rarely accomplished all that I set out to do, at least in the writer’s world. (I believe I was supposed to contribute a post either yesterday or the day before. Late, as usual.) In college, I did write two things I was proud of, a paper on Matthew Arnold (which my brother plagiarized a year later in a freshman English class at a different college, and for which he received a $250 prize) and a long satirical poem on the New Criticism “after” The Rape of the Lock. Both were done at the last possible moment, on no sleep + amphetamines, and so the process was rather horrendous.

Since then, I have written some OK poems and one mediocre short story. [Note on those: a therapist I was seeing in 1975, in Washington, D.C., wanted to see my writing, so I gave her everything I had done. Not long after, I quit, owing her $100,  and she refused to give me back my writing until I paid up. I didn't pay. I didn't have copies. All lost. Typical of my irresponsible self. But also, I think, fucked up on her part.] Currently, I am working on a long poem, “Running on Riverside” but that project has stalled because I decided that at least two lines of each four-line metered verse should rhyme and the result, sad to say, too often resembles doggerel. I am also writing a sort of expose piece on de-tox centers I have known and loathed. The latter is more likely to see the light of day than the former, but one never knows. And I know with certainty that if I DO finish either of these, I will feel ???–not bliss surely, but a sort of power, power over a life-long habit of procrastinating.

Years ago, I read (some piece on life’s “stages”) that as one grows older, one comes to depend more on “the life of the mind” than the life of the body. I took that to mean that I would stop exerting myself physically to the point of exhaustion and, often, injury, and read a lot more. Maybe learn a new language? Audit a courses or courses at Columbia? Learn to play the guitar? (No kidding, I did try to learn how to play the guitar. Didn’t try hard enough.) But the fact is, I get as much satisfaction from playing a good tennis match as I do from reading. The way Amaryllis describes her feelings sounds to me the way I feel after strenuous physical exertion, which causes those lovely endorphins to kick in and do their thing. And the closest I have come to what I might call bliss (other than good sex with a person I love) was when I finished the NYC Marathon in close to 8-minute miles.

Reading is harder than playing tennis or running or riding a bicycle or swimming because it requires that you think about what you are reading. I read a lot. Reading is a lonely activity, unless you are in a study or reading  group. So is writing. Which brings me to Tennessee, Williams, who was both a voracious reader and a prolific writer. I am reading his plays in chronological order (I’m up to Night of the Iguana) and his notebooks (edited by Margaret Thornton), and will eventually get to his short stories. [Note on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Kazan got Williams to make changes to the last act, changes which, in my mind, ruined the play. If you've seen only the Broadway version and/or the film with Paul Newman and Liz Taylor,  check out the original text.] Last year I read Williams’ Letters to Donald Windham as well as Windham’s Lost Friendships: A Memoir of Truman Capote Williams and Others. Both worth reading.

In Battle of Angels (1941), a character says, “We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins.” In the rewrite of that play, Orpheus Descending (1947), the same character speaks the same line, but adds, after “skins,” “for life.” Williams was a tortured, lonely soul beset by demons, but instead of killing himself or letting drugs and alcohol completely ruin his mind and body (the substance abuse didn’t gain ascendancy until the last two years of his life), he WROTE–some good plays, some bad plays, and some absolutely wonderful plays, plays that will be read as long as people read. He also swam a lot, his swimming venue of choice being Key West. And swimming, like reading and running, is a loner’s activity.

If you conclude from this posting that I am alone much of the time, you are right. I guess that’s the way I want it. I talk to my sister via telephone almost every day, and most days spend some time–though rarely a lot of time–with my boyfriend. I also see my son at least once a week, sometimes for dinner. I seem to have lost focus. Full stop.

Sunday, Sunday

This holiday weekend I passed up an opportunity to spend a day or two at our own DK’s country house in order to work at my writing, which has been pressing on me lately, since the deadline is looming. Now here it is Sunday night, and I accomplished everything I set out to do. I’m here to say that this gives me a feeling close to bliss, a different kind than family or romance or even aesthetic pleasure (which it’s close to). It’s the sensation of power, in a way, of pushing myself in a direction I’m reluctant to go and having something to show for it to the world (not that “the world” will be reading it, exactly).  Not power as in presidential power, or telling people what to do kind of power. Work, when it goes well, gives me the sensation of competence (and sometimes compensation, though not enough), of mastery, of connection to the world.

When I have something to write, I need to rev up the mental engines by reading, then writing down my thoughts about what I’ve read in a notebook. Little themes and ideas and lines come to me when I wake up, or when I’m walking or showering or cooking. Then I procrastinate and feel guilty and anxious, until I see it must be done. In order to start the serious business of putting it together, I need certain conditions: I must not be at home; I must not be anywhere there is noise or distraction of any sort (see “not being at home”); I must be physically near other people but not able to interact with them. The Columbia library is perfect, especially now that you can plug in your computer anywhere. I have a special desk in a particular room that feels like my own place — it’s tough when someone else has gotten there first. The ideal condition is that the room has a few strangers also hard at work, but no one talks. Once when I had a really hard task to do, I went away for the weekend to a bed and breakfast in a town where I know no one, and stayed in the room writing all day, leaving for meals and walks. It wasn’t at all lonely, because I was there for work, my own work.

I’m writing a paper on loneliness in life and literature for a conference in Vancouver at the end of July. An odd thing happened last week: I went to the library to do a bit of research on the subject, looking for books in literary criticism, psychology and sociology. I looked at some books, most unhelpful, and came across an anthology on loneliness by various psychologists. One article looked interesting and I copied a particularly good sentence: “Loneliness is a feeling of deprivation that painfully, but hopefully, turns outward for fulfillment.” Then I noticed that one of the two authors was my own brother, a psychologist: he had written this decades ago. It was a strange feeling to come upon his work in these circumstances, like meeting him in an unexpected place.

Elizabeth Bentley

I’ve been reading a biography of Elizabeth Bentley (Red Spy Queen, by Kathryn Olmsted). I don’t know how many people nowadays have even heard of her if they’re not specialists on American communism. She was a Communist in the 1930s and 1940s, and collected information from Communists and sympathizers in the government which she then passed on Soviet agents. Then she became a notorious informer to the FBI and tried to make a living as a professional anti-Communist. According to her biographer, Bentley became a Communist because she was lonely and wanted a group to belong to, and because she had a rebellious nature; she became a spy go-between because that’s what her lover (Jacob Golos) did, and when he came under the surveillance of the FBI, he handed over much of his work to her.

One of the interesting thing about her story is the media coverage when her role as a spy was first publicized. The early news stories called her a “blonde spy queen,” even though she wasn’t blonde. But the idea that she was glamorous and blonde fit gender stereotypes of the late 1940s, and the press continued to describe her that way even when photographs showed she was neither.

The very idea of a “lady spy” was hard to accept, since spying was thought to be a man’s profession, but easier if one considered her to be a temptress. Newspapers portrayed her either as a sex-starved, man-eating seductress or a sexually repressed, man-hating spinster.

It was also important, at the beginning of the cold war, to make it clear that “our” (American) women were very different from “their” (Communist) women. Americans believed that Communist women were promiscuous and dominated their men, whereas real American women would defer to their men and remain virginal until marriage. Their women took male jobs, while our women stayed home and took care of their children.

Bentley fit the stereotypes uneasily. She was an assertive woman, but she wasn’t the dominant one in her relationship with Golos. She certainly wasn’t beautiful, in fact, she looked rather maternal, with a round, pudgy face. She did sleep with a lot of men, and didn’t show good judgment in her choices, but she did her best to control her life as she was used, first by Communists and then by anti-Communists.

** addendum on July 4: I just finished the biography and have something to add about gender stereotypes of the time. Among all her problems, Bentley was an alcoholic, prone to nervousness (fear that the NKGB was going to kill her for betraying them) and also making demands on the FBI that sometimes amounted to blackmail (if they didn’t give her money to live on, she would find it difficult to cooperate with them as a witness). According to her FBI file, the agents attributed every problem they had with Bentley to “she must be going through menopause” — this over the course of more than 15 years!