Kate

Monday, September 19 (After Chapter 15 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.