Helen Zuman - Mating in Captivity - A Memoir

I didn’t realize till Gregg arrived, shortly before the show started, that he’d seated me next to him. For ninety minutes my eyes tracked the lead skater, swooping and leaping through a sleeping cityscape in his awful Christmas sweater—while every other sensor patrolled the few inches of armrest between Gregg and me. My skin tingled each time he leaned in to whisper a quip or a question.

Ten days later, we met for our first date—on a Friday night, in Times Square, at the close of the evening rush. When Gregg pulled up on his pedicab, I guessed from the shine in his eyes that riding gave him the same high I’d felt while selling. Getting fares took vigorous pitching; getting “on” meant wads of cash. Midtown seethed like Bourbon Street—with less piss and more plate glass.

We’d agreed to dine at an organic vegan restaurant on the Lower East Side. Gregg was sweating. I was fresh and rested.

“Get in,” I said. “I’ll drive.”

After dinner, we cut over to the Hudson River Greenway and up to 125th Street, taking turns in the saddle. Driving, I savored the strength I’d gained making deliveries; resting, I relished Gregg’s exuberance—and ogled his firm butt. A waxing moon dappled the river silver as the West Side Highway roared beside us.

Back at RR, after midnight, we parked the pedicab and moved toward the gate. Steps from the sidewalk, Gregg stopped. “How do you feel about kissing?” he asked.

“I like it,” I said.

He grabbed my waist and pulled me into a lusty smooch. A motorist waiting for a green signal whooped his approval.

With that, we were off.

Shortly after New Year’s, I traded my mother’s two-bedroom for Gregg’s Hell’s Kitchen studio. The following October, Leah, now settled in San Francisco, paid a second visit to New York—this time with her boyfriend. She’d moved in with him before I’d met Gregg. Sharing a tiny table at a candlelit bistro, our mates at our sides, she and I raised our glasses to toast the two of them—and living in an apartment .

We stood at the front of the Great Room of the Old Stone House in Park Slope, about to take our vows. Sixty grown friends and family members, plus a number of their children, had gathered to witness our wedding. Among the guests were seven ex-Zendiks. Zeta, who’d explained how Zendik dating worked, who I’d sworn would never laugh again, was quickening the ritual with her violin.

It was October 8, 2011. Late afternoon. Gregg had proposed twenty months earlier, on Valentine’s Day, saying, “Would you marry me?” I’d asked him to ask again, switching “will” for “would”; a wholehearted commitment didn’t belong in the conditional mood. Now we faced each other, sharing the rug marking our “altar” with Gregg’s best man, my sisters, and a British friend serving as “vicar.”

Gregg spoke first, eyes moist with the risk of great trust— I open to you; I drop my husk .

Then it was my turn.

“I vow to tell the whole truth with love.”

Writing life stories, I’d learned to see each feeling, each fact, as one node in a web of context. The more of my web I revealed, the more of his web I explored, the closer we’d come to communion.

“To nourish your good with all my heart.”

In the front row sat my mother, beside her beau of two years. She’d walked me down the aisle. As I’d promised in my poem to her, I had found another way to be with men—modeled in part on her constancy. She had been there, tending my well-being, when Arol had not.

“To be with you and grow with you always.”

That was it. Our vows were complete.

The vicar nodded to Gregg. “You may now lift the bride.”

Gregg picked me up, spun me around, and set me down, to clapping and laughter.

Then—to gasps, and more clapping— I lifted him and spun him the other way.

Embraced by our tribe, we looped each other through an infinity sign.

IN SEPTEMBER 2007, SWAN married the man who’d fathered her third child. Soon after, Arol suffered a nervous breakdown. With Swan at the Farm’s helm, monogamy became the norm. More Zendiks got married. Years after shying away from the sexy painter at Woodstock, Karma met her future husband while selling a Phish concert. Cayta married Taridon. Zar married a young woman who’d moved to the Farm in 2003, at seventeen.

In 2011, Arol’s cancer recurred. She died, at seventy-three, on June 6, 2012.

By the time Arol died, Zendik comprised a dozen adults and a half-dozen children. After her death, hopes rose for a power shift. When Swan and her spouse dashed those hopes, half the adults left with their kids. Before long, the other four adults departed, and Swan put the Farm up for sale.

I count a number of ex-Zendiks among my dearest friends.

Vining through the ruins, human ties remain.

TO GERTRUDE GUNSET FOR “The Poison Tree,” tears and silence, and the chance to apprentice to the craft of building sentences.

To Rebecca Faery for casting writing as a process of discovery.

To Nina Kang for writing exquisitely, showing me “The Summer Day,” and being there for over twenty years.

To the Dudley Co-op for a taste of belonging.

To Nancy Mitchnick for urging me toward the Gardner.

To the Gardner family for funds to launch my quest.

To my mother for succor, constancy, and always saying yes when I called collect.

To my sisters for keeping vigil and setting bold examples.

To my brother for holding the thread and smoothing my return.

To Gabriel and Celena Zacchai for reaching out and piercing my doom-cloud.

To Kyra Gordon for speeding my release.

To Steven Hassan for revealing the cult pattern.

To my early readers for turning the pages and telling me about them.

To my ex-Zendik comrades for turning the pile.

To Gary Bruder for the Vaio.

To Nancy Rawlinson for throwing me to the revision monster with the tools to take it on.

To Heather Sellers for Chapter After Chapter .

To Margaret Hollenbach for Lost and Found: My Life in a Group Marriage Commune .

To Katherine Burger, the Woodstock Guild, and my fellow residents, for four generative stays at Byrdcliffe.

To Dan Gilmore for preserving parts of my Zendik self.

To Verdant Nolan for lending me his archive.

To Jeanne Nolan for sharing her Zendik books and memories.

To Charles Eisenstein for thoughts on the nature of miracles and the power of stories.

To Louise DeSalvo for teaching me well and blessing my exit.

To Allison Hunter for asking, what’s your book about ?

To Lauren Frankel for buddying up with me and letting me peek behind the scenes.

To Medicine Wheel and Earthaven for abundant social nourishment.

To my 138 Kickstarter backers for helping provide my book-being with a body and a home.

To Michael Bluejay, Thomas McGuire, David Zukowski, Jerry Zukowski, Linda Zukowski, Edith P. Newman, and Gregg Zuman for Kickstarter superstardom.

To Brooke Warner, Cait Levin, Julie Metz, Annie Tucker, and the rest of the team at She Writes Press for partnering with me to produce a book I’m proud of.

To Gregg, my love, for our journey together and a nook of my own.

HELEN ZUMAN is a tree-hugging dirt worshipper devoted to turning waste into food and the stinky guck of experience into fertile, fragrant prose. She holds a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and a Half-FA in memoir from Hunter College. Raised in Brooklyn, she lives with her husband in Beacon, NY and Black Mountain, NC. For more on life at and after Zendik, visit www.helenzuman.com.