Jenny’s Feedback and Graceful Truth

Can well intentioned people show ableist behavior? Is it possible to give hard truth gracefully? Do we get better with age? Can we change an ending? According to a former model named Jenny, the answer is yes.

Jenny is a Fem Friday we have written about twice. The first one was our Brooke Shields piece and the second one was Patti Smith. From 1988 through today Jenny and I have had a friendship. There have been years without contact but we always managed to find each other.

Our friendship began when she needed some help with a modeling portfolio. In that time we had to find a better way for her to be comfortable in a studio session and find her identity as opposed to living under her mother’s oppressive shadow. Along the way of that early foundation Jenny challenged my views and showed me deeper beauty in music and how others experience it.

Jenny is also profoundly deaf. It is her experience as someone in the Deaf Community that led her to reach out to me for today’s interview.

She came across an online discussion I was having with another deaf friend and a blind friend about trying to find respectful ways to write about dialogue that happens in ASL. Instead of joining that thread she sent me a private message.

I received a text message that said: Hi asshole! Wanna Zoom? 🙂

I had not heard from Jenny in a long time. Of course I agreed. I needed her help and I missed her. Conversations with her are anything but boring.

She texted again. How’s your sign these days? I don’t want to use a VRS for this. (VRS is a Video Relay Service-an interpreter service during video calls)

I assured her I would be able to keep up as long as she took it slow. We set up a time and dove right in.

This interview/conversation was messy. Most of it was in sign, but there was a point I was emotional and she gave me space to read my lips and a few times she wanted to ensure that she was not misunderstood we filled in with the written word. There were other times where I was too out of practice to keep up so we had to switch up our communication. To keep things consistent I am using a script form. I gave her my transcription and with a few edits from her we had something we both felt accurately represented the conversation.

I give her credit, gratitude, and appreciation for being willing to be flexible with my shortcomings in staying current on my ASL. That is my ableist privilege to learn an important language and not practice it. She should not have had to accommodate me, but that is the reality of most people who have disabilities. They accommodate to us and to “our world.”

Re-Introduction

The cameras were on. My background featured all my 80’s nick knacks from my studio . Hers featured sophisticated royal blue walls with white chair rail accents and Edison bulb lighting with a candle lit in the background. Most of our communication has been text based over the years and other than photos I had not seen her live since a brief meeting in 2015 when she was in Chicago. She gave a broad grin and signed hello. I did the same.

Jenny: Oh my god! Pat in the flesh. How are you? You look great!

Pat: So do you! I’m great! How are you?

Jenny: Going through an ugly divorce from asshole. Teenager is angry and hurt. Medical administration is hard right now. Another merger.

Pat: I’m sorry.

Jenny: It’s good to see you. I needed a distraction. Saw your conversation. I’m really going to be in the book?

Pat: Yes. You were an important part of the story of our lives. In this fiction a girl like you needs to be in it.

Jenny: Wonderful! I can’t wait to read it. If it gets made into a movie can we get Sadie Sink to play me?

*Jenny made a cheesy comical grin and used grandiose large gestures at this line. *

Pat: I will see what I can do. How old is your daughter now?

Jenny: They them pronouns now. They are sixteen going on 40. Midlife crisis.

Pat: Fast car or career change?

Jenny: Screaming into the void and a sadistic dungeon master with their gamer friends.

Pat: I love that. The divorce? What happened?

Jenny: Long story. Another day. I have opinions about writing sign .

On Writing Respectfully and Imperfect Solutions

Jenny explained to me that no matter what I do I am going to piss someone off. The Deaf Community is not a singular community with one philosophy. There are different ideas about not only how the Deaf Community should be referred to, but best practices in deaf culture. There is also a lot of anger at the marginalization they face and that affects different people differently. Additionally, there are different levels of hearing impairment that creates different perspectives , experiences, and ideas on identity.

End of the day. There is not going to be a perfect solution as a hearing writer with a deaf character and ASL being used. But she gave me some things to avoid.

Jenny: Don’t fetishize deaf or make it exotic. Don’t make the character sympathetic or weak. Avoid reducing and simplifying the character as just a deaf person. I’ll give you a link to a blog post by a deaf romance writer that might help on the style. I’m not a writer. But I can tell you what I like and don’t like. Understand?

Pat: Yes.

Jenny: Have you or your child ever read bad books with transgender characters written by cisgender people?

Pat: Oh my god yes!

Jenny: Same with books about us. You know ASL. You had a deaf sister, know a few deaf people, and messed around with a smoking hot deaf girl a few times. But you are not deaf. You don’t know our experiences and our life. So when you have another me in your book, remember there is a line and don’t cross it. I don’t know how some of this garbage gets published. These writers didn’t do any research and their publishers just let ableist trash get printed. Hearing people accept those characters because they’ve never googled deaf or hard of hearing. It’s not responsible.

Pat: I understand.

Jenny: Do you mean you understand what I am signing or you understand what I mean?

Pat: Both.

Jenny: Still pretty AND smart.

*Jenny gave a flutter to her sign of the word ‘and’ and also stretched it out with exaggerated motion along with her face. This is emphatic stressing of a word, syllable, or phrase, hence the all caps*

Pat: Still pretty AND smart ass.

Jenny: ME? *she added a mock look of innocence*

I nodded, smiling.

Jenny: I’m glad you said that. I wanted to talk about why my smart ass was what made you a special friend.

Correction and Confessions on Her Terms

Jenny’s physical signing changed. It was more serious and intimate. For those who hear, think of the cadence of someone’s voice changing to something more intimate or vulnerable. The cue is the conversation is more important.

Jenny: Your articles about me got something right. I am glad you remembered those things, but you don’t know why I did those things.

Pat: What did I get right?

Jenny: The way I dealt with people different. You got my anger with the jerks in Denny’s and my mom . You got my sarcasm when you were wrong about deaf people and me. Like when you asked if I liked music . You were shocked I liked music so I was sarcastic. I did not say anything to Norah when she was getting hard to talk to. I treat different hearing people different and you were one of the few that tried so I gave you what I gave you.

Pat: I’m not sure I understand.

Jenny started typing the next part into her keyboard.

Jenny: When you’re deaf most hearing people are ignorant or ableist. Being a polite ambassador to the hearing isn’t my job. There are people that need to be told to fuck off. Then there’s people you just don’t talk to because they take too much time. It’s exhausting. Then there’s people like you who will pay attention. They’re worth it. The ignorance isn’t malice. I felt safe to roll my eyes at you. Because I knew you would listen. You were worth my time because I got something out of it. You would change and I was a human to you. I was a woman. Understand now?

Pat: Yes (I signed) Thank you.

Jenny resumed signing intimately.

Jenny: I used to be in love with you (I started to sign back at her and she shook her head and continued). It was pretty easy to fall in love with you. When I saw her (Cassie) at the runway show I knew. The way she looked at you and you at her, there was something there that no one could touch. I liked her and I hated that. I wasn’t going to tell you any of this. Schoolgirl crushes are not important at middle age.

Pat: Jenny. I didn’t pick up on it.

Jenny: I was afraid of rejection so I kept it friends with bennies after she left. Did you want more?

Pat: Yes. But I was afraid of rejection.

Jenny: Youth and insecurity is dumb.

Pat: Yes. Why are you telling me?

Jenny: Because of what you wrote in the second story. It was beautiful. But when I read it I wondered, how did he write that and not know I was falling for him? Not pretty and smart. But how you wrote about me. I was the teacher. I was alluring. It’s been a long time since I saw myself that way. It felt good. I showed it to my teenager.

Pat: What did they think?

Jenny: Damn mom! (Jenny signed laughter) For the first time they were interested in my modeling years. I showed them my scrapbook.

Pat: Do you still have the portfolio?

Jenny: I still have the comp card.

Pat: Could you scan it and email me a copy? I lost everything in a fire at my grandparent’s house.

Jenny: Yes! Anyway. If that’s how you saw me and you are going to write about a girl like me, I want to help. If a girl who’s hard of hearing reads this I want her to see her as sexy, sassy, smart. I want hearing people to see her that way too. And I need you to know something about her (Cassie). Something I should have told you a long time ago.

Pat: What?

Jenny: Do you remember the night at the bar you saved me?

Pat: The bar?

Jenny signed help and raised her eyebrows. I immediately understood! When Cassie and I were dating we would sometimes go to Ruby Tuesday’s at the mall if we were both closing. One night we were there together and I saw Jenny by the bar with two guys. I looked at her and nodded and she signed the word help as she stared at me. The sign for help is a thumbs up placed on the open palm. If the palm and thumb move forward you are offering help. If it is toward yourself, you need help.

I walked over there and assumed these two guys were not safe. I got her away from them and brought her to our booth. She was shaken. The two men did not know how lip reading worked and she saw their entire conversation. They spiked her drink. She was in danger.

She was shaken and upset. I know that Jenny and Cassie went to the bathroom for a long time. I assumed it was fixing make up, hugs, and encouragement. There was more. They had a conversation.

Cassie and Jenny exchanged stories of things that had happened to them by men that had sexually assaulted them. It was the first time, and one of the few times, Jenny had had compassion while in crisis from a hearing woman. They became friends and were equals. She had told me that when our work schedules conflicted, Cassie and Jenny would hang out and they got to be dear friends. It was one of the most significant girlfriends she had not only in youth, but adult life.

As a deaf woman she has never been included in feminism and in her adult life. Social encounters with other women in her neighborhood did not exist either. Moms in school, women in church, women in her cozy suburban neighborhood. She was not invited into their spaces for one reason and one reason only.

She told me that one time her ability to parent was questioned by other moms when her child was in middle school. The kid was going through normal middle school stuff and other moms assumed a deaf woman could not properly raise a hearing child. The school listened to the moms and involved school counselors. She had to hire a lawyer and an interpreter to prove she could mother her child. Despite laws that protect her and resources for the school readily available to understand, she had to defend her right to parent her child because of her neighbors.

Jenny explained to me that there are over 11 million deaf people in the US. Almost half of them are women. And hearing women keep them at arm’s length and you do not always have access to another deaf woman to have tea or wine with and share this pain while the parties and gatherings go on in your suburban subdivision without your family invited.

Being a deaf woman is not only about being robbed of opportunities in the workplace and lack of resources, they are also more than twice as likely to be victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. This is a lonely, unsafe, and disadvantaged existence.

Jenny went into a career in sonography. Why? At the time it was a career path that was open to deaf people where most others were not. It was never a matter of what she wanted to become, but what could she get a job in. What industry would actually make accommodations and give her a fair shot at an interview instead of finding an excuse not to hire her. Modeling helped pay for college but it was hard for her to get gigs even with the backing of a great agency in it’s day.

She worked her ass crashing through glass ceiling after glass ceiling to get into management of a medical group related to sonography. And all the while there was never a good enough. Not good enough for hearing women in her cozy upper middle class white suburb, not good enough for her husband, her mother who did not want a deaf child, and a fractured deaf community where certain personal decisions you kept quiet to avoid the shitstorm of some toxic men in her community.

I need to stress something about the loneliness of the cozy suburb. We think of ableism as people like Trump who make fun of people with disabilities. Many of us send memes about how we need to normalize ramps smugly passing the buck of change to others. But while we do that, do we have neighbor silently suffering, accommodating us, and not invited to our bbq or social gathering? Ableism and privilege is ingrained to us. Even in this conversation she had to accommodate me. That is a little fucked up.

There was a beautiful period in her life when she felt like she belonged somewhere and that was in the late 80s and early 90s. She had a tribe, girlfriends, and value and purpose and could enjoy normal teen shit. She ended this part of the conversation with this statement.

Jenny: Norah introduced me to you and my life changed. At my portfolio shoot you made sure other girls were there to support me and we became friends. But it was because you nudged them. You didn’t do it out of pity and they didn’t do it out of pity. And when you were hot for me, it was for normal reasons. I had a life most disabled people don’t get. It helped me fight for my life. My best friend was the girlfriend of the man I was in love with. She reached out when I was in a bad place and said me too before there was me too. You can’t know what those years meant to me. I need to tell you something you don’t know.

Graceful Truth

Jenny told me she needed me to be ready. She said she needed some courage. She took a few hits off a pen. Then she signed the news.

Jenny: She took her life 4 years ago. Sorry sorry. I’m sorry.

I stared at her through the camera. Her look was empathetic and tears welled up in her eyes. I could feel rage and sadness and nausea hit me all at once and I started saying things aloud fast and she held space and just looked at me as I ranted. I was angry at the pastor who told me she was a jezebel and seductress. Angry at Cassie’s aunt. Rage at her rapist and her abusive ex boyfriend I had met. None of them ever faced any justice or consequences and she paid the final price. And I also admitted to Jenny that I was mad that no one ever fucking told me.

Jenny: I’m sorry. Sorry. Help? (she signed help toward me)

Pat: I need a moment. Please stay.

I cried. This was a relationship that ended 35 years ago but any readers who know about the Fem Fridays, Cassie, and this book will have an idea of the impact this has. She just sat there and watched. I composed myself and signed to her.

Pat: Did you two reconnect?

Jenny: Online. But it was never the same. She was never the same. She had a horrible life and never had a chance. Bad husband hurt her. She kept losing jobs. Alcohol. Drugs. Her aunt fucked up and it fucked her up.

Pat: Did she mention me?

Jenny: (now with tears in her eyes) Yes. (laughing) We both did. (she smiled softly) You were her first love. The only. She wanted to reach out to you but she was afraid. She knew she was different and she didn’t think she could be helped. Too many bad meds. She never stayed in therapy long. I lost contact before she died. Her daughter put a message online.

Pat: Her daughter.

Jenny: Yes.

When Cassie was nine, she found her mom’s body after her mom killed herself. Jenny and I both felt the same in the context of this conversation. Generational trauma and chains.

Jenny: We can’t fix everyone. Love isn’t enough. You give light in darkness. It’s what you do best. I see it in your writing. I also see darkness. That cloud scares me. The cloud was always there but it is darker now. Can you do something for me?

Pat: What?

Jenny: Give her a better ending in the books. She deserves one.

It would mean a lot.

There are three ways you can do this:

1. Share this story with a friend and leave a comment.

2. Tip me! I need your support!

3. Become a Members Only Patreon!

Thank you for your support and taking the time to read this.

Stay Totally Awesome! Stay true to you.