All I Know About Gertrude Stein

How can I trust myself like that? To see through the screens that shield me from love and not be so afraid of what I see that I break up, break off, or settle for the diluted version?

I have done all those things before.

And when I am not doing those things I am telling myself that I am an independent woman who should not be limited by/to love.

But love has no limits. Love seems to be a continuous condition like the universe. But the universe is remote except for this planet we call home, and love means nothing unless it is real and in our hands.

Give me your hand.

There’s a school party at the museum. They are not looking at Picasso; they are giggling over an iPhone. Poor kids, they’re all on Facebook posting themselves at a party. They are all having sex all the time because fucking is the new frigid. Look at their Facebook faces, defiant, unhappy. The F-words. Facebook, fucking, frigid, faking it.

Gertrude Stein called the generation between the wars ‘the lost generation’. We are the upgrade generation. Get a new model; phone girlfriend car. Gertrude Stein hated commas. You can see why when car phone girlfriend are the same and interchangeable. Why would I work with love when I can replace the object of love?

Men still trade in their women – nothing feminism can do about that. Now women trade in themselves – new breasts, new face, new body. What will happen to these girls giggling over their iPhones?

They are the upload generation. Neophytes in the service of the savage god of the social network.

Fear. F is for fear.

In this bleak and broken world, what chance is there for love? Love is dating sites and bytes of love. Love is a stream of body parts. But if we part, I want to know that love had time enough. It takes a long time to be close to you.

Gertrude Stein could not be rushed, although she did not like to be kept waiting. Her time was her own. She had a big white poodle called Basket and she walked herself and her poodle round Paris.

Sometimes Basket went in the car with Gertrude and Alice and Alice went into the shops – and she liked that – and Gertrude stayed in the car – and she liked that. She wrote things in her notebook. She wrote every day but only for half an hour.

‘It takes a lot of time to write for half an hour,’ said Gertrude.

She wrote unpublished for thirty years. And then, in 1934, written in six weeks, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein became a huge best-seller. Gertrude and Alice boarded the SS Champion and sailed for New York. Alice got a fur coat. Gertrude got a leopard-skin cap. Their travelling suits were made by Pierre Balmain. He was just a boy in those days.

When they and their outfits arrived in New York City, the ticker tape in Times Square tweeted:

GERTRUDE STEIN HAS LANDED IN NEW YORK.

‘As if we did not know it . . .’ said Alice.

The pressmen surrounded the Algonquin Hotel. The vendors selling frankfurters and pretzels watched from across the street.

VENDOR 1: The fat one built like a boulder, that’s Gertrude Stein.

VENDOR 2: The thin one cut like a chisel . . .

VENDOR 1: That’s Alice B. Toklas.

The press bulbs flashed like they were movie stars.

PRESSMAN: Hey, Miss Stein, why don’t you write the way you talk? (Laughter.)

GERTRUDE: Why don’t you read the way I write?

Everyone is laughing. Gertrude loves fame. Fame loves Gertrude.

VENDOR 2: Where’s the husbands?

VENDOR 1: They got no husbands. (He passes a frankfurter through a pretzel and nods significantly.)

VENDOR 2: (low whistle) No kidding? But ain’t they American gals?

VENDOR 1: Sure, but they been living in Paris.