Human Blues

by Elisa Albert

Genres: Family Life

Synopsis

“Crackling and bighearted...A powerhouse [that] echoes with the truth that we find harmony when we listen first to ourselves.” —Oprah Daily * “Takes off with magnificent speed and never lets up.” —The New York Times * “Revolutionary.” —NPR’s Morning Edition * A Los Angeles Times and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

A provocative and “darkly funny” (Cosmopolitan) novel about a woman who desperately wants a child but struggles to accept the use of assisted reproductive technology—a “riotous, visceral” (Vanity Fair) send-up of feminism, fame, art, commerce, and autonomy.

On the eve of her fourth album, singer-songwriter Aviva Rosner is plagued by infertility. The twist: as much as Aviva wants a child, she is wary of technological conception, and has poured her ambivalence into her music. As the album makes its way in the world, the shock of the response from fans and critics is at first exciting—and then invasive and strange. Aviva never wanted to be famous, or did she? Meanwhile, her evolving obsession with another iconic musician, gone too soon, might just help her make sense of things.

Told over the course of nine menstrual cycles, this utterly original novel is a “fast, fiery, and often funny” (The Boston Globe) interrogation of our cultural obsession with childbearing. It’s also the story of one fearless woman at the crossroads, ruthlessly questioning what she wants and what she’s willing—or not willing—to do to get it.

Release date: July 5, 2022

Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Print pages: 448

Sample

Chapter 1: Voice

1. VOICE
She was soon to bleed. Goddamn it. Another pregnancy test was negative.

You Are Entering the Real World, read the sign posted on the back fence of the property. It was New Year’s Day. Trash was nestled in the weeds along the side of the road. Soda cans, fast-food wrappers, plastic bags, and a Handi Wipe square, still intact, upon which someone had scrawled, This is not a condom.

Negative. Again.

She had been so patient. So fucking patient! How many negatives by now? More than a year. Fuck. Almost two years of negatives. Almost into year three. And again, again, again, still: nothing. Goddamn it. Negative. Again. Again! Again. Again.

She’d been easygoing about the whole thing for a long time: Whatever happened, happened. It would happen! Of course it would. It would happen. No need to stress. No need to freak out. The important thing was not to freak out—everyone knew that. She was (relatively) happy, she was (relatively) healthy, she was in the green half of her thirties, she was in a lovely relationship, and tiiiii-i-i-iiiime, was on her side, yes, it was. But at some point—a year of negatives? Two? Going on three—she’d gotten real quiet. Confused. Scared. Mad. Sad. She’d gritted her teeth, dug in her heels, and tried to find a way to inhabit the situation with a modicum of dignity. She read all the books, listened to all the podcasts. She changed her diet, her perspective, her expectations. She “made space.” She “summoned the spirits.” She “gathered the bones.”

And still: nothing. Nothing. Nothing! Negative pee stick upon negative pee stick upon negative pee stick. Cycle after cycle after cycle. And by now she was straight-up furious. Incensed. What the actual fuck. Now she was outright begging. Come the fuck on. Please! Seriously. There was no dignity in it now. Now she was foaming at the mouth. Now she was gnashing her teeth and muttering to herself. Now she was half-insane with the injustice of it. Now any pregnancy anywhere near her orbit felt like a low branch to the eye.

Last summer the tarot queen of the Berkshires had informed this tearful, barren supplicant that there were cherubs absolutely everywhere, all around. “Great news, hon: you are positively surrounded by angels, which means that maternity is imminent.”

Yay! Wow! Okay! But… nope. And nope. And nope. Every godforsaken period, every cycle, every fractal season: awakening, hope, decay, death, awakening, hope, decay, death, around and around, again and again, to death, death, death.

Still, how many times had she recommitted herself to not worry?! This wasn’t one of those things that could be accomplished with the mind. The crucial thing was to put it out of your mind—everyone knew that. You stopped worrying about it, you “gave up,” and BAM. You said fuck it and spent your life savings on a trip around the world, and BAM. You had a one-night stand with a plumber from Australia, and BAM. You adopted, and BAM. This was not one of those things that responded well to thinking. This was not one of those things you could tell what to do.

So Aviva had officially relaxed. She had recurrently let go. She had surrendered, over and over again. She had been so fucking resolutely chill. For a year. For two! For going on three. And still: negative. Again. Again. Another. Again.

Fuck.

It was unbearable. (Ha!) It was inconceivable. (Oh yes.)

She’d walked a hard, uphill mile by now, on the dirt road out behind the property, and stopped to catch her breath, after which she let out a guttural scream into the indifferent, desolate hillside, the chilly blue sky, the smattering of cotton-ball clouds. Then she turned around and headed back, picking up as much trash as she could carry along the way—the soda cans, the fast-food wrappers, the plastic bags, the Handi Wipe square—all of which she dumped into her studio trash can, on top of the umpteenth negative motherfucking pee stick, from where, no doubt, it would all eventually be transported to a dump by the side of some other country road.

The property was an artists’ colony, a hybrid rehab/camp/meditation center for creatives, no counselors or authority figures, no mandatory anything. Three dozen writers and musicians and poets and painters and sculptors and composers got a small stipend to live/work here for a few weeks or months at a time, rehearsing inevitable little reenactments of family amidst good old-fashioned no-excuses creative practice and the occasional fuck-fest. You had to feed yourself lunch, but there was a breakfast buffet and a starch/vegetable/protein for dinner. You got your own studio space in the woods and if you wanted to make friends you made friends and if you didn’t want to make friends you kept your distance, which aroused the suspicion and curiosity of all the people who very much wanted to make friends. Aviva changed her mind every few days about whether or not she wanted to make friends, which made her very popular indeed.

She was here to mess around and make room for whatever might come next. It had been Jerry’s idea. Her manager. Aviva’s fourth album was dropping in a matter of weeks, and there was a looming tour, biggest of her career thus far.

“You’re on the cusp of huge things,” Jerry said. “This album is the turning point.”

“Keep your pants on, Jer; it’s just some recorded songs for sale.”

“Whatever, you little twat, you better get your head on for what’s coming. Relax. Lie low. Write some new songs. You gotta be a step beyond whatever you’re touring with. Lou Reed used to say that.”

“Art and commerce being inarguably oppositional and all, right, Jer?”

Her first album had been a punky little DIY effort recorded at an independent studio (aka the Culver City guesthouse of a washed-up producer) when Aviva was barely out of her teens, bouncing between states, apartments, beds, office jobs. Busking on Venice Beach Boardwalk for tips on the weekend. Limited run of a thousand CDs, but it became a tiny cult hit, with surprisingly friendly press, acquired and reissued by a small but respectable indie label. Who doesn’t love a young weird plaintive hippie folk-punk freak with big tits?

The second album had been produced by some slick asshole-for-hire. Said asshole had pushed her into the wrong look/narrative/sound. Heavy on the drums, some ironic synth. She had known it was wrong. An uncomfortable costume. But what had she known about the business back then? She had wanted to get along, be agreeable, and was marketed as a more or less crazy bitch nevertheless. The single off that album was a paean to dating amongst the terminally ill, inspired by her brother Rob’s doomed romance whilst dying of a brain tumor. Dumb disaster-girl anthem, every breakup an existential crisis, tear-streaked-fuck-me-face video, same old shit. But it had wound up getting licensed to play over the closing credits of a popular TV high school dramedy’s series finale, which had led to a mild flurry of cash and indie radio play.

For the third album, she’d switched to a bigger indie and fought to call more of her own shots. She was about to hit thirty then, getting heavy into yoga and medicinal mushrooms and empowered monogamy and hard-core boundaries. Lyrically it was probably her angriest, most political album, but couched in a woodsy, floral motif. Goth-witch lite, good ol’ Trojan horse. She was into linen dresses, worn in absurd layers, her hair grown out down to her ass. Turned out you could get away with a lot of radical shit if you came off as sexually demure.

Now, album number four, whole new ball game. Goodbye, indie label; hello, massive multinational conglomerate. There was real money involved now. She’d been naïve enough to think that moving on up in the industry would engender more creative control, but it just turned out to mean more executives, fretting. Aviva was too in-your-face, they worried. Too on-the-nose. Too confrontational. Not confrontational enough. Kind of a turnoff. And why did she insist on wearing so many layers? Would it kill her to show off her creamy décolletage? Put on some tight pants? Could the stylist maybe bring round some suggestions? Maybe a more au courant cut of denim, and some heels? And how about a makeup artist, needless to say.

Poor Jerry: he’d been Aviva’s manager back when she was lucky to be playing Jewish singles events. “Babe, listen. They won’t put any marketing behind it if they’re not happy with your look, and you know if they don’t put marketing behind it, you got no chance whatsoever with the streaming.”

“Like you know shit about streaming, Jer. How fucking old are you? Do you even know what streaming is?”

He’d been around forever, worked with a million downtown club legends in the eighties and nineties, but had some sort of opposite Midas touch: no one he bet on ever amounted to shit.

“V, you’re not in a position—”

“To have a say in how I look?! No, Jer. Fuck them. So don’t put any marketing behind it, what do I care? It’s their problem if they don’t market an album they paid for. Why is that my fucking problem? They already paid me, Jer. And I you.”

“Honey. Sweetie. Don’t make enemies of friends. We all have the same goal here. We want you to be huge.”

“I don’t want to be huge, Jer. I want to be good. You get the diff, right? Respect for celebrity is a fucking frontal-lobe-development disorder.”

Her fourth album, though: it was pretty cool. One album, any asshole could put out one album. Two albums, you could still be a flash in the pan. Three albums, not bad. But four! Four albums! Well, that began to be a real body of work. No one could argue with four albums.

Did Aviva want to be huge? No! And yes. And no. It was what her shrink, the Rabbi, called “an internal conflict.” I love you, go away, come back, do you like me, fuck you, I love you, fuck me, I hate you, go away, come back. Round and round, again, again.

What would you say this album is about? a marketing exec had emailed that very morning.

It’s about… an hour and fifteen minutes long, Aviva replied.

Silly marketing twat, why don’t you listen to the album and decide for yourself what it’s about! Isn’t that your job? Does independent thinking physically hurt you?

“Honey,” Jer kept saying. “Sweetie. Baby. Help them help us. Please.”

Fine, fine: What was her fourth album “about”? It was about getting to know her body, welcoming the age of embodied womanhood in its prime, leaving the past behind once and for all, ceasing to be a destructive twat hell-bent on wrecking everything. It was about wanting a fucking baby. There was no valor in destruction, she’d come to understand; valor resided in creation, nurturance, stability, balance. That was what the new album was about. It was about readying herself for motherhood, though she’d sooner die than articulate that for marketing. She yearned for motherhood, obviously (obviously), but if you couldn’t hear that between the bars, well, then go fuck yourself: it wasn’t for you to hear.

It was about the menstrual cycle, suffice it to say—source of epic power and torment. It was about resigning herself to a constructive, drama-free relationship with Sammy-Sam, her beloved manny-man. It was about making a home. Homemaker: Shocking aspiration for a constitutional and historical shit-thrower, but what more powerful, meaningful work could there possibly be? The album was about saying no thanks to all the ruinous crap they wanted you to take and do and be and buy, no thank you to assholes and nonsense, no thank you to exhaustion, bullshit, living life online. (This last bit was pure posturing, though, because Aviva was still living life online.)

In the end, a compromise had been reached: the suits had agreed to let her title the album Womb Service, and Aviva had agreed to let the stylist “send over a few things.”

And lo! The early buzz was solid. Industry people were into it. A few, of course, said it was offensive tripe and Aviva’s voice was annoying and she should shut the fuck up because screw that metaphysical human biology nonsense right up its bigoted butthole, but you can’t please everybody.

Regardless: according to Jer and the tarot queen of the Berkshires and the Rabbi, Womb Service was about to take her to a whole new level.

“You’d better buckle your seat belt,” said the tarot queen.

“We’ll get through this,” said the Rabbi.

“I’m gonna retire on you, honey,” said Jer. “I’m gonna get me a boat and a forwarding address in the Caribbean.”

Hanalei, her yoga teacher, had led her through a guided meditation in which Aviva recalled having her tits cut off before being burned at the stake in a previous life.

But it didn’t ultimately matter what happened with this fourth album; it was time to get situated in preparation for and relation to whatever was coming next. And if that wasn’t going to be the fucking baby she desperately wanted, it would have to be some new songs. Let the chips fall where they may with regard to the old stuff. Any old bitch could force a baby; any ambitious climber could put out an album.

She lit a fat beeswax candle, popped the weed gummy she’d tucked away “just in case” she turned out not to be pregnant (YET AGAIN), and got down on the floor. Aviva was “process oriented,” which meant a lot of floor time, a lot of candles, a lot of tunes on shuffle, and regular cannabis edibles.

The “official” cause of her barrenness was maybe polycystic ovarian syndrome, about which some said eat only vegetables and animal protein, others said take an off-label diabetes drug indefinitely, others said chemically force ovulation and inseminate, and still others said go straight to the nearest fertility clinic with a blank check. No one had the faintest idea how or why this syndrome developed, or why up to a quarter of all women were thought to suffer from it, or how it was connected to endocrine disruption or metabolic disorder or post-Pill syndrome or insulin resistance or estrogen dominance or progesterone deficiency or microplastics or liver toxicity or coronary health or cancer, but if it comes as any surprise that medical science knows next to nothing about biologically female bodies in particular, please head to the library and find yourself a real comfy seat.

Over the course of the past few years (One? Two? Whee! Going on three!), Aviva had seen several endocrinologists, a midwife, a naturopath, an herbalist, four different acupuncturists, a Maya Abdominal therapist, and a Reiki master, and she’d laid out her pitiful story for each in turn: menses commenced at thirteen, with long, wonky cycles, acne, and a tragic facial hair problem. Some lazy prick doctor had put her on the Pill at fifteen to deal with all of the above, and cue years of weight gain and suicidality and antidepressants, until she finally woke up at twenty, trashed all the pills, and started to pay attention. (What had woken her? Who can say.) She learned to eat decent food, live in alliance with her body, blah blah blah. Most everyone now agreed that PCOS was maybe caused by or at the very least exacerbated by the Pill, and that teen girls should be given “time” to work through their “irregularity,” which usually resolved itself just fine, but did you know it takes, on average, seventeen years for scientific knowledge to be incorporated into standard medical practice?

Everyone Aviva saw had a grand plan to get her ovaries blooming. The first endocrinologist urged her to take the off-label diabetes drug and also a particularly neurotoxic male hormone suppressant, for shits and giggles. The Maya Abdominal therapist said Aviva’s uterus was tilted, and offered to fix it in a package deal of six sessions. The herbalist prescribed a tincture and told Aviva to get direct sunlight for at least ten minutes a day and avoid caffeine at all costs. “Do you eat meat? You should definitely eat meat,” said the naturopath. “Preferably organ meat.” Aviva hadn’t eaten meat in years, not since a boyfriend had turned her on to Animal Liberation. But fine: now she ate monthly cheeseburgers and once-in-a-blue-moon oysters. The first acupuncturist prescribed herbal powders. The second acupuncturist said no dairy. The third acupuncturist said no wheat. Everybody said no sugar. The Reiki master was a hundred percent certain that Aviva was fertile: whilst not touching her, he’d envisioned a white cat wandering a desert. The second endocrinologist had said Aviva’s uterus was in fact not tilted, and that she should definitely take the off-label drugs and/or maybe this new drug everybody was all excited about, which was a combo forced ovulation and antipsychotic, and then get artificially inseminated.

“I’m not taking jack shit,” Aviva told the midwife. “I want to understand what’s going on. Why is it not happening? If I can address it myself, great, but if it turns out to be some sort of big impossible deal, then I guess I’m out of luck.”

“Fair enough,” the midwife said. “Anything else you want to share with me?”

“What do you think about fertility and… cannabis?”

The midwife raised an eyebrow. “There aren’t any studies, but I can’t imagine it would help.”

Something about adrenal fatigue and something about liver detoxification and something about the outstandingly complex relationship between hormones and the endocannabinoid system and something about common sense and something about enough was enough: Did Aviva want a baby or didn’t she? The implication being God, girl, grow up.

Coffee she could live without, alcohol she could live without, veganism she could live without, soy she could live without, sunscreen could certainly go fuck itself. White flour and sugar she could kind of maybe try to live without. All-nighters she could certainly live without, rock-star mythologies be damned. Synthetic fragrances she could absolutely live without. Preservatives she could definitely live without. But weed? That hurt. All her urbane, high-achieving acquaintances mainlined their coffee and psychiatric meds and synthetic hormones and wine and air fresheners and liquor; Aviva wanted only organic dank herb. She had been stoned here, she had been stoned there, she had been stoned everywhere. She did like weed in a car and on a plane and in the rain and she did like it on a boat and in a moat and on a float and with a goat. In South America they called it “little sister” for the way it would gamely go anywhere alongside you, an agreeable sweetheart. The song “Little Sister,” off her third album, had become a bit of a stoner-babe anthem.

Anyway, Aviva had practiced the primary series, kept her blood sugar stable, gone to bed before ten. She’d eaten salad, miso, butter, lentils, eggs, kale, anchovies, avocado, flax. She’d done seed cycling. She’d tried that thing where you sleep with the lights on during ovulation. She’d done literal headstands. She’d made an honest effort at keeping a temperature chart until the app malfunctioned and sixteen months of data vanished. She’d watched the clock for her lucky numbers and visualized her swollen belly, the ecstatic birth, the slick screaming newborn, ripe with the power of primordial mystery, naked at her breast. (“Visualize” being the currently culturally acceptable way to say “pray.”) And she had waited patiently, so patiently, to be rewarded with a baby, delicious flesh of her flesh. The universe worked in mysterious ways, did it not? (“The universe” being the currently culturally acceptable way of saying “God.”)

But here we were, (YET) another pregnancy test negative (AGAIN), and so Mx. Aviva Shira Rosner was going to enjoy her stupid weed edible.

She needed the perspective it afforded her, the sense of humor. The feeling that her benevolent dead brother, Rob, was there with her. And all her grandparents, too. She could feel them: ancestors galore. She’d been missing the awareness of her good breath infiltrating the far reaches of her good body. No worries about her hair, her face, her clothes. She’d missed this. Easy-breezy forgiveness for everyone, including herself. Dancing, alone, midday, shaking out her sorrows. Communicating with the trees. Not caring about the kinds of people who would mock that sentiment, or the sentiment before that, or all the sentiments yet to come. Shit, it was nice to have a break from the relentless tenor of normative consciousness.

But the tunes on shuffle weren’t cutting it. She had to skip a live Lucinda growler, then some weird R. Crumb bluegrass, then a mellow, live Ani circa ’94, then a Dylan bootleg, then Rickie Lee, PJ, Nina Simone, Throwing Muses. Skip, skip, skip: nothing was right. Why was nothing right? All this shit, all her usual shit: no. What was she in the mood for? She skipped a jumpy, overproduced Police and then she skipped an early Janis, and then she even skipped Nirvana Unplugged, which was odd, because it was never not the right time for Nirvana Unplugged.

Here it came, though, the edible hitting full force, the familiar settling. Exhale, thank you. Man, she had been clenching her shoulders. A long, slow, live Bonnie Raitt in exactly Aviva’s key. Okay. This she could tolerate. Blues. Yes. Not bad. It would be good even slower. She reached for her guitar and she played along. Nah. Old Tori Amos: no. Plaintive Neko Case: nah. Some downcast Gillian Welch: no!

Nothing was deep enough, slow enough, long enough, loose enough, real enough. And then a rip in the fabric of time. Jackpot. Here it was. The singular voice. Just what the doctor ordered. Delivered by algorithm into Aviva’s sonic embrace. Thank you, algorithm!

The patron saint of insatiable, implacable Jewish girls. Short-lived, one and only. Demolished angel, dead at twenty-seven, join the club. Rest in peace, baby. Fallen fuckup. A lightning flash. Superstar, caricature, cartoon. Darling! Precious baby girl, floating downriver in a basket. Take the tunes off shuffle. Hold this voice to the breast, safe and sound.

It wasn’t just that she had a killer voice, and it wasn’t just that she had a killer ear, and it wasn’t just that she didn’t give a fuck, and it wasn’t just about her lyricism or originality. It was this otherworldly all-knowingness. This girl was the all-seeing eye. It was everywhere: in her phrasing, her inhabitation of her songs, in the look on her face when she sang (even when she was blotto). How did she speak with such authority? Her connection to herself was undiluted, which, for most of us, isn’t true past the age of, say, six. One of the rare few who don’t need to be told how things are. She can see very well for herself how things are, and she isn’t afraid to speak the truth. No asking permission. The real thing doesn’t knock.

When she was alive, taking the airwaves by storm, Aviva had ignored her, because anything on the radio was, by definition, bullshit. Amy was some kind of throwback pop phenom or… something? Anorexic costumed punk bitch? Grammys, tabloids, who fucking cared. Aviva was a sophisticated musician. She liked depressive, dissonant shit you could think deep thoughts to, songs on which bass and drums did most of the work and the rhythm was the whole story. Clever shit, for intellectuals. She had no use for some British chick in whore drag, that ridiculous wig, aping bygone girl groups, all over the magazines with the lowlife barfly boyfriend. So what if she had that excellent voice? There was too much shtick in the way. Walking disaster playacting—what, gangster’s moll? Really? Keen to get all aproned up, stilettoed and pregnant in the kitchen, stirring a pot with a big wooden spoon, waiting for her big man to come home? Ready with her ass cocked for big man to plow her? Sit tight with her mascara and her curlers waiting for big man to return from work so she could suck his big dick? The whole sex-object/little-missus shtick! Such retrogressive crap. No thanks.

Aviva had missed the point. She hadn’t understood. But here, now, coming to terms with a(nother) failed cycle and an(other) impending bleed, she understood perfectly. BAM.

Second child born to a Jewish family in North London in the fall of 1983. Daddy the charming philandering life of the party; Mum the rock. Families are like puzzles; each piece laser cut to fit. Take the pieces apart, hold one up by itself, examine its strange shape, try to make sense of it alone: impossible. Amy dressed up for Purim, had Shabbos dinners with her nan. Daddy sold double-glazed windows and later drove a taxi. An aspiring jazz singer, himself. The karaoke Sinatra. His mother, the indomitable Nan, had dated a legendary jazz club owner who’d wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t sleep with him, the story went, so he’d dumped her. Nan’s brothers were both jazz musicians, too. Amy was born singing. She sang Gloria Gaynor in the bath. Joyful child. Mischievous, mouthy girl. Mum played Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald. Daddy played Tony Bennett, leaving out lines for the wee babe to fill in. Daddy’s exuberant girl! Hurricane of a girl. Dark, luscious swirl of a girl, forever singing. Wild savant, force of nature, corrective, sent to earth to remind us what a human being who hasn’t been programmed all to shit can do. Heard her big bro playing Ray Charles in his room one day and barged in, demanding, Who is that? Messed around on big bro’s guitar, figured out a few things. Got her own guitar. Began to write her own songs. Earnest, funny, unapologetic little songs, and when she opened her big mouth to sing, there was that voice.

Bit of a problem with sex and power, but hey: Who doesn’t have a bit of a problem with sex and power, one way or another?

Late in her life she asked big bro to get her a Jewish cookbook so she could learn to make chicken soup. Chicken soup, of all things: to cure what ails. Her efforts failed; the soup was inedible. Anyway, she was past cure by then. Nothing for what ailed her.

Her voice is her life, boiled down. Tough girl. Knows who she is, what she wants. Sees everything. Not afraid of her body or its desires. Can keep up with anyone, lock in with anyone. She is unafraid. Look into the eyes of almost anyone you meet and see the fear there. The calculation and the hiding and the lies! Lies the human currency in trade.

Once everyone realized what a massive commodity she was they took away her guitar, and she became a “performer,” and folks paid good money to see the fake tits, the burlesque hair, the itty-bitty skirts, the hand on hip for a rote shimmy—pause for a swig of whatever. Rockabilly fuck-doll from hell.

But put destruction on hold for a sec: How artfully could one lick one’s wounds? How wittily could one transform one’s pain? The goal was never to deny the wounds, nor to gloss them; that never worked, anyway.

There were two albums in total, not counting the collected oddities and remixes and outtakes and demos. And each of the two albums was inhabited by a totally distinct Amy: the first, strumming her own guitar and telling everyone how it was, almost too shy to make eye contact; the other stumbling around the stage sneering, hollow-eyed, having self-administered the equivalent of a lobotomy, waiting for it to be over.

Painter Anne and Sculptor Sue were at the communal table in the barn kitchen, freaking out because apparently the resident horses were gone and the pasture was dead. The colony was struggling financially, and the powers that be at the small liberal arts college across the highway had struck a deal to find the horses new homes, spray the fields with Roundup, and plant a crop