Monday, September 27, 2004

The Scarlet Letter

February 4, 1649


Dear Hester,

So, let me get this straight: you had an adulterous affair with a local preacher, got knocked up, went to prison, and were approved for parole on the condition you indefinitely wear an elaborate iron-on across your dress. Now, I know the cool kids in the MBC were all about the ironic bodices for a while, whether vintage (old sports’ bodices embroidered with team numbers) or custom made (the now ubiquitous “Squantotaled” and “Plymouth Rocks!”). But that was almost seven years ago, and I imagine it must be a real drag to wear the same thing every day. And accessorizing must be a bitch. I mean, what goes with a scarlet “A,” right?

But seriously. To your point, I’m pretty sure that the Puritans are part of the problem, not the solution. Over here, we’ve definitely seen the darker side of Calvin. Things got pretty ugly. Oliver Cromwell. What an ass hat. If those theocratic twats don’t reopen the nightlife soon, I’m moving to France and throwing in with the Stuarts. I mean, what’s the worst thing that could happen if they were restored to the throne? Plagues and Fires? I don’t think so.

I’m thinking: why not just move? You’re a confident, self-employed, independent woman. I respect your rock-hard commitment to staying the course, and I know just how much you love exposing hypocrisy, but have you thought about taking Pearl and heading southward? I hear Connecticut is friendly to controversial women, and Virginia, once you get past the malaria and Indian massacres, is a proverbial man-trap.

Look, I know how attached are to this guy. And I’m sure he’s just as attractive and intelligent and god-fearing as you say he is. But I know you, Hester. I know how you get around men. Just like I know you have softness for assholes. I mean, remember Jack? The Miller’s son? Remember how he promised to pledge his troth to you, and then hooked up with Anne, the printer’s daughter on Palm Sunday? (She left him incidentally for this utopian fruitcake from Scotland, and last I heard Jack had second mortgaged the mill after his oxen died. Then the whole thing was burned by royalists back in ’47. Had it coming, I’d say) Or how about, while we’re on the subject, your husband? He was a real winner. Old, ugly, into mind fucking, and lest we forget, a big fat liar. And now we have Arthur What’s-his-name. Who won’t marry you, who won’t talk to you, and whose ass you’ve covered now for seven years. What has he done for you? I get the impression you’re not even getting sex anymore, and that’s just wrong.

Even if he were just as great as you say he is, I can’t imagine the unlikely possibility of a real relationship being worth you wasting seven years of your young life living among close-minded, power-tripping, self-righteous, bible-beating bigots in a shitty climate.

Get out, Hester. You have the money, the skills, and the confidence. You owe it to yourself and to your daughter. I’m begging you. And I’m not alone. Mom and Dad feel the same way. Hell, even Uncle Steve got so riled up over your last letter he is, as we speak, threatening to send some of his privateer friends over to kidnap you and take you down to the West Indies. Good old Uncle Steve.

Chuck and I are expecting our second in March. Luke, our first, has learned the alphabet, but won’t stop eating bugs. After being knocked unconscious by a turf-wielding peasant at a tavern in Ireland, Isaac is home from the Wars, recuperating at Mom and Dad’s. We worried he might suffer some mental infirmity following his, ahem, “battle wound,” but mostly it appeared to have knocked some sense into him. Or maybe the New Model Army isn’t as hip as it used to be. Hard to say, but Isaac has let his hair grow out, and he’s been working on a play, which promises to be very complex and bloody. I’ll send you a copy when (and if) he finishes it. Dad delivered the keynote address at the Merchant’s Guild. Mom lost fifteen pounds on the gruel diet, and wants you to know she can fit into her old corset again. Both send their love.

Write soon. My very best to Pearl.

And seriously, Hester, think about it. Really think about it. There’s a whole New World out there.

I love you.

Your sister,

Sarah

P.S.—Just got word they executed the king. Not sure how I feel about that. Feelings? Thoughts?

Friday, September 24, 2004

Sex, Lies, and Videotape


My parents never owned a video camera.

As a child in the eighties, I thought this was an embarrassing deficiency. Other people’s parents had video cameras. They also had minivans and trampolines and family ski trips and parents who signed up to be chaperones on school trips and cunning, microwave-friendly bite sized snacks and Dads that weren’t weird. Our lack of household video camera reflected poorly on us as a family.

In those days, an A grade on a class project nearly required use of video camera. A fact I tried to make clear to my mother on numerous occasions.

“In order to do well on this book report, I’ll have to do a skit,” I’d say. “You’ll need to pick up four or five of my closest friends, drive us to a scenic location, and costume us in period appropriate costumes.”

My mother looked at me as if I were delusional. She had to work, and sit at a city council meeting, and follow that up with a visiting urban planner, and follow that up with a nightcap at a charity cocktail.

“Okay, you don’t have to make the costumes. But you’ll have to videotape it for us.”

At which point, she would invariably ask what video tape had to do with a book report. Which, to my mind, was a dumb question. You couldn’t do a clever skit about “To Kill a Mockingbird” without recording it on film and you couldn’t record it on film without a video camera. It was no use for her to try and belabor the point by suggesting I do something so outré as WRITE a book report. For the love of God, I was in the Gifted Classes for Chrissake, and a simple written book report would never pass muster, not when Teresa and Dylan were actually creating a clone of Boo Radley with a chemistry set, some Sea Monkey eggs, and a shortwave kit from Radio Shack. Or something like that. My mother was just hedging, trying to avoid pointing our cringe-inducing lack of a video camera. ANY video camera. Even one that only took Betamax tapes like the Lewis’s had.

Usually I couldn’t get her to move on the subject. I’d find myself procrastinating until the night before the due date, write out some shoddy report, carping endlessly as I dotted my “i’s” with hearts and bubbles, and express no surprise when it was returned with a mediocre grade.

“If I’d done the skit I would have made an ‘A’,” I’d say.

My mother, lips pursed, would hand my paper back to me. “If you hadn’t written this the night before it was due, you probably would have made an ‘A’. I mean, you didn’t even finish the concluding paragraph.”

I’d sigh theatrically and flounce up to my bedroom, escaping to Sassy Magazine and the marzipan candies I had stashed in my bookshelf, to the closet door papered with photos of sensitive beautiful men—River Phoenix, Johnny Depp, Christian Slater. John Cusack would bolster my crushed spirit; he would sooth my aching soul against the inequities of the seventh grade. He would buy me a video camera if he could.

Sometimes, after much mewling on my part, my mother would succumb and drive up to Videoland USA to rent a video camera for an evening. My complex skit would be rendered functionally useless by my inability to produce actors, and the project would devolve into a kind of awkward, rambling monologue, with multiple costume changes and improvised accents. Deep down, I knew these would barely pass muster, especially when shown after my classmates presented filmed re-enactions of a climactic scene from “All Quiet on the Western Front” with pyrotechnics. When my video played, the class set in a sort of bored haze, laughing, but at the wrong parts, eyeing me, uncomfortably, wondering, perhaps, why I chose to deliver a lecture on Einstein in the style of Shakespearean tragedy, wearing a nightgown, with a pillow underneath to simulate pregnancy.

I was making some brave choices for the seventh grade. And my teachers, perhaps out of regard for my skills as thespian, but more likely out of pity, rewarded me with a good grade; even though it was obvious I neither knew nor gave a damn about Einstein.

A videotaped skit guaranteed a better than average grade. As long as you came bearing the VHS, it wouldn’t matter if you’d actually finished the book. That was common knowledge.

I had my own reasons for wanting the camera, which all boiled down to imminent celebrity. I was sure my plucky persona, precocious wit, and prodigious talent would make for quality cinema. And so what if I didn’t screen-test well, I could be a wellspring of script ideas and directorial prowess. I envisioned collecting legions of neighborhood children to round out the cast of my productions.

And of course, there was always my sister, the Boop.

The Boop was seven years old at the time, and cursed with an appetite for performance nearly as insatiable as mine. We’d been putting on low budget theatrical presentations for years, seating my parents on the den sofa for lengthy song and dance numbers. As older and (I believed) wiser child, I fashioned myself the writer/director/choreographer/star of such entertainments. The Boop was a hired hand, occasionally the starry eyed ingénue, and mostly deaf to all of my instruction.

In our earliest performances, the Boop (age three) would waddle round behind me, wearing a ubiquitous pink tutu over a floral sundress, and muck up all my choreography. She was cute and small and wearing a pink tutu, which tended to deflect attention from my poetic soliloquies.

By the time I was eleven, and the Boop was six, we’d more or less reached a compromise. She’d participate for a limited period of time; I’d bow out gracefully. Such was the case the night Mom brought a video camera home from work, and taped our “Dirty Dancing” revue. I’d seen the movie about seven times, and fully familiarized myself with the soundtrack. The Boop knew most of the words to the songs. I imagined myself capable of jaw-dropping dance moves, ala “Fame” and “Flashdance.” The Boop had recently discovered Mom’s make-up drawer, and developed a deep-seated love of mini-skirts, sheer knee-high stockings, and plastic bangle bracelets.

As farce, the “Dirty Dancing” revue was an unqualified success. What my careful choreography lacked in technique and physical prowess, it more than made up for in extensive, mishandled props and accidental shots of my underwear. The Boop occasionally participated on my end, but for most of the time, positioned herself about two feet away from my mother. She swayed and gyrated and slunk about living room like an alcoholic stripper, occasionally thwacking herself in the head with her own hand in the heat of passion. Between my panties and the Boop’s sexy dance, we’re sort of like a b-list road show for pedophiles. Caddy Compson meets Dolores Haze meets Dance Fever with dance moves cribbed from “Jane Fonda’s New Workout.”

At the time, however, I thought it was a miserable failure, spoiled by the Boop’s uncooperativeness and relentless camera hogging. We didn’t rewatch it often, at the time, and for years the “Dirty Dancing” revue languished in a drawer full of movies videotaped off of HBO. Movies we would, in all likelihood, never watch again (“White Nights?”).

I rediscovered the videotape a couple of years ago, after the Boop revealed that it had become a popular favorite in her dorm room. She’d secreted it away in her early adolescence, fearing it would disappear into a junk drawer and subsequently become junk. And it remains, to my knowledge, the only video footage of my childhood in my family’s possession.

It’s an odd choice for a family movie, as my father never appears, and my mother provides only the slightest of voice-over. I speak with a noticeable southern accent—one I don’t remember having, just as I don’t remember when it went away.

What’s particularly funny is that it’s not even our favorite home video. That would be the backside of my Einstein book report, filmed two years later, when the Boop, at eight, made a faux commercial advertising the supposed pregnancy of her pet rabbit, when my father talked to the dog from behind the camera, when my mother shot an entire walk to the lake. The Boop is particularly fond of a moment, when she ran through the meadows on the edge of Beaver Lake, and then, breathless, reported to the camera: “I’m Sara, and I love to run.” I like the nausea inducing camera work on the walk back, while my mother and I discuss such quotidian details as lunch money and what’s for dinner.

That video was shot about a month before my parents announced their divorce, about two months before my father moved out of the house, about three months before my grandfather died, the uncanny triumvirate of domestic crisis which set in motion a series of events I couldn’t have possible predicted as I walked back from Beaver Lake and turned up my nose at the suggestion of spaghetti.

So maybe the “Dirty Dancing” revue is the better candidate for posterity. A silly, unsullied slice of life. It can be watched without analysis, without the knowledge that you are watching a family flitting about the chasm’s edge. I don’t have to look for signs and slips of the tongue, the signals I missed when I was thirteen.

My family acted well in front of a camera because it was rare for us to have one. The irony is that if my parents had succumbed and bought the camcorder I craved as a child, most of it would have been pretty awful. Lots of bickering and passive-aggression. The curtain would have fallen, and all that was real and unpleasant would be glaringly obvious. That said, I guess I’m still out of sorts over lack of a family video camera, but for different reasons. Other people can reminisce with sound and pictures. They can sit back and pine for missing summer days of hyperactive holiday mornings. They can point out their grade school friends and their senile grandmothers. My friends can’t imagine my parents being married, or our house on Westwood Road, and I still lack the language to give them a solid picture of what it was like on the good nights, with the four of us together, when my parents still seemed to be purely and deeply in love.

It was only ever an illusion, and I know that. But it was a really good one.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Betsy

At fifteen, I emulated the dress of those ten years older than myself, and lusted after a lifestyle twenty years past—the hippies of old, life magazine stills of longhaired boys with flowers and tattered sweaters, closed eye sway girls with breezy skirts and skinny arms. I appropriated the floral, barely within dress code, gauzy skirts that ripped easily and oriental Mary Janes. On my pear shaped body, I looked more like a middle aged frump than a flower child—I suppose I could have aimed for Earth Mother—but due to an unpleasant attempt at teenage escapism the preceding summer with accompanying drastic haircut—I lacked the necessary bountiful hair. (I also lacked the attitude, but that’s a whole other story.)

Betsy was a senior. I thought she bore a scant resemblance to a character from Twin Peaks (of which, the season before, I had been a huge fan)—I think Laura Flynn Boyle—but in retrospect, her behavior was considerably more David Lynch than her looks. I tended to watch her. She was a smartass, clever, nonchalant. I don’t know if she smoked cigarettes—I was not cool enough to be accepted by older students, let alone be allowed in their company while they indulged in forbidden activity—but I like to think she did. Cigarettes would have fit my image of her. Cigarettes and a fifth of vodka well hidden.

Like most female Asheville School students in the early 90’s, Betsy dressed like an office temp for a trucking company. But on weekends, I’d spy her in black leather and fishnet stockings—wearing red velvet and combat boots to haul crates of music from the radio station to otherwise ordinary school dances.

Betsy was from DC. I think we spoke three times. The most memorable of these conversations occurred during break one morning, as I stood beside the scarred wooden table beside the mailboxes in the basement of Anderson. She flipped through a copy of Spin Magazine with Perry Farrell on the cover.

A silly recollection, significant only in that, at that time, Spin Magazine seemed radical and avant-garde to me, and certainly subscriptions were reserved for the loftiest of the (angel-headed?) hipsters. She spoke offhand of some stranger, met on the street in Georgetown, who offered her a discounted subscription—“So, I took it. It’s okay to read. Pretty cheesy, you know?”

I did not know. Excepting REM and The Smiths, my music collection at the time was so thoroughly unhip that my parents used to complain of me putting them to sleep. “If you’re going to listen to old stuff, at least buy the Rolling Stones or something,” my mother’s boyfriend (and future stepfather told me). Consequently, my knowledge of popular culture was so embarrassingly scant.

I had no remark at all. All I knew was that Spin Magazine seemed edgy and way cooler than me, and if Betsy was too cool for Spin, then it seemed fair to assume that I could never be her friend.

Fifteen year old logic . . .

As means of ducking the indignity of required athletics, I served as manager for the softball team. A choice position as I merely kept books and sat on the grassy hill overlooking the hockey field for the spring semester. I watched Betsy’s hair—a curious auburn, Clairol Black Cherry—while I muddled over math homework, and spun stories of unrequited love (a popular theme even then, especially then, but once again, that’s a whole other story—one in which Betsy does not play a part.)

She graduated. I obsessed over other members of her class for the remainder of the summer and the bulk of my remaining years at Asheville School. I did not think about Betsy again for a long time. Occasionally bits and pieces of her life filtered down my direction—I heard she sat up with Mr Bonner and talked music or that she had a passion for English history. When I was called upon to cite scenes of past Asheville School greatness, Betsy always surfaced, and sometimes, nostalgic, as I thumbed through my yearbook, I’d land on her picture and invent fictions. She was a sardonic wit with a streak of romantic nihilism, an amateur dominatrix, a DC scenester with spotless credentials, an elegant revolutionary, a another self-conscious loner who used Asheville School to reinvent herself, or just an eighteen year old girl at a mediocre prep school who never saw me staring.

Friendly Advice: Tip 3

You are not original. All the post-modernism classes you’ve had have probably taught you that. Well, okay, how’s this? All those people you scorn for being sheep—for shopping at the mall, for eating a chain resturaunts, for watching hit shows, buying Top 40 music, and reading bestsellers. How do you honestly believe they are any different than you? I mean, you didn’t invent the idea of shopping at the co-op instead of the supermarket. You aren’t the only person who wears that particular variety of black framed eyeglasses . And to be honest, if you can put yourself in the rubber soled shoes of the masses for a moment and see yourself—you’d think you looked the same as all your friends too. An old friend of mine once subverted the Emerson quotation about conformity to read something rather like: “To be a non-conformist is to conform to being a non-conformist.” That’s the bitch about reactive behavior. Living a life based on obsessively avoiding what you dislike inevitable gets in the way of doing what you like And if nothing else, you are spending your life trying to be one thing in order to NOT be something else, you’re probably not having any fun.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

The Origin of the Vapid Hipster


A couple years back, I took a creative non-fiction class at a local state university.


I needed credit hours to finally finish the B.A. I’d spent the better part of eight years trying to obtain, and couldn’t justify taking another fiction workshop.


Also, I was curious. I thought it might be sort of funny, ha-ha funny, and provide ample opportunity for “This American Life” style essays on such topics as high school politics and cult television and why I like Power Pop. I was writing record reviews at the time, and I thought I could infuse anecdotes with a little uptempo ranting,ala Lester Bangs.


Unfortunately, the creative non-fiction class was subtitled “By Women,” a designation I hadn’t noticed on first blush. And it became clear on Day One, that we were expected to churn out pieces of memoir, not stories about negotiating for the religious art at thrift stores. I was disappointed, but not devastated. I mean, sure, it’s a little premature to write memoir, considering I haven’t climbed Everest, or become an international celebrity or entered rehab or started a revolution or, you know, done anything, but whatever. I can give it a shot. I’m sure my classmates want to read amusing stories about how I used to shoplift bodice rippers and try to smoke rose petals and Opium flavored incense when I was thirteen because I was too nervous to go out and ACTUALLY get high. I’m sure my professor will love my enthusiastic retelling of the night my father got so irritated my mother at a local pizza place, he stood and dumped a Greek Salad on her head. The key would be funny, right? I mean, adolescence in retrospect just gets funnier and funnier with each passing year.


My professor, a mewling, self-important, socially awkward lesbian (we’ll call her Professor H), clearly did not feel that way. Nor did my classmates. Instead, I endured a semester's worth of victim stories from middle class white girls. There were a sexual abuse stories (and I empathize, I really do), there were a few coming-out stories, but mostly these women had been victimized in smaller ways. Dumped by their boyfriend. Cursed with aging grandparents who occasionally made politically incorrect jokes. Oppressed by society. Oppressed by an eating disorder. Oppressed by ballet class. Oppressed by parents. Oppressed by culture. Oppressed by low-level malaise. Oppressed by the existence of penises. Oppressed by the lack of penises. It goes on.


When I suggested that undying devotion to the idea that all women are victims by fact of their sex might perpetuate a fundamental problem, I was labeled a misogynist by my classmates and professor.


I learned early on that neither Professor H nor my fellow classmates felt that humor was at all appropriate. And whenever I turned a story in, I was told that I wasn’t “feeling things fully,” or “conveying the way I felt victimized by society.”


“But I don’t feel victimized by society,” I said. “Not particularly.”


“You’re making light of your truest and realest emotions,” said Professor H. “I want you to dig deep into your soul and come back to me with the harsh disillusionment you felt at thirteen. The way the world privileges the other gender. The ways you felt abused. Troll your conscience and find the visceral sadness that was your adolescence.”


I sat open-mouthed. I mean, sure, being thirteen sucked, but it wasn’t tragic. I was a weirdo. My parents were divorced. I read a lot of Anne Rice and JD Salinger and “The Lives of John Lennon.” I wrote awful poetry and took myself very, very seriously. I liked the word “cacophony” and could use it in a sentence. I talked a lot about the craft of theater. I pretended to be British. I acted in weird local productions. I watched a lot of MTV. I beat “Super Mario Brothers.” I connived my way into A-list pool parties at the country club. I neither started my period, nor lost my virginity, nor found any pot, nor increased in bra-size. I desperately wanted to date skateboarders. I loved the Cure.


Maybe a more imaginative person, a deeper, more emotional woman with a wellspring of melancholy qualifiers could find some way to render my thirteen year old experience as something akin to Sylvia Plath. To be honest, my thirteen year old self would have LOVED that—and that’s what’s funny about it. It’s funny to read my journal from the eighth grade and find passages that read “I’m totally oppressed by my mother and the JV cheerleading squad.” When I was thirteen, I thought my reasonably charming dysfunctional family and kooky suburban life WAS a tale of unmitigated woe, much like a Russian Novel. And I did try to tell it as straight faced as I possibly could. And it was STILL funny. I mean sure, I could try to put some poignant, deeply moving spin on how my grandmother honestly believed the Waffle House was prostitution ring, but let’s face it: This is not the stuff of tragedy.


So, when called upon to present my final essay for the semester I turned in the following, which was neither about my physical adolescence, nor, technically speaking, non-fiction. Sure, some of it's true--the business of my college career, the basic details of the Sara story, the portrayal of my mental health circa 1999. the rest is complete bullshit. Fiction. Therefore, any similarity of any character to real life . . . well, you know the rest. I didn't sleep with anyone in 1999, and if you knew me then, it wouldn't have been hard to figure out why.


I thought this was, at best, black comedy.


Professor H, ignorant of its invention, thought it was a little better than my previous attempts, but, she said, “You’re still not being emotionally honest. And it is not necessary for you to be such a vapid hipster.”


Which was, I believe, the first time I was ever called a vapid hipster to my face.


Since then, my status as vapid hipster has become something of a running joke, and maybe I am, and maybe that’s my problem. I spent a decade and some change more concerned with being cool than being popular or successful or happy. This story is, if nothing else, sort of about how that started to change.


And for the record, the veracity of this tale lies mostly in its “emotional honesty.” This is how I felt when I was twenty-three. And it is, in its fucked up sort of way, pretty damn funny. So read on, if you dare

Night in the Life--4/6/99

How I got here is something of a mystery. Here being prone across my bed, head uncomfortably tucked between mattress and headboard, hungry, tired, lonely, bored, and, though sober, incapable of operating either simple or heavy machinery.

I can barely remember the cause. Only the effect.

K arrives at my apartment unannounced. At one point, we were close friends. He moved to the coast. I never returned his phone calls. I am surprised when he appears and finds me on the bed illuminated by the blue computer screen. I have done little for days. No work. No class. No justification for the expense. No money to pay the bills.

K leans against the doorframe, and smokes one of my cigarettes.

“I hear you’re getting married,” I say. “To the heiress.”

He shrugs. “She has plenty of money.”

“You’re a gigolo,” I say.

I remember turning to face him, and the challenge of shifting my body to face him. I remember the high-pitched whine of the electronics, and sound of the freeway breathing in the distance.

“So,” he said. “Rumor has it you’re having a lesbian affair with Sara.”

“I’m heterosexual,” I said. “And even if I weren’t, I’d never sleep with her. She’s desperate and needy and crazy and pathetic.”

“She says she loves you.”

I shudder.

Barely a month ago, I spent the Ides of March in Baltimore, standing with my face against the airtight windows on the 33rd story of a hotel tower, peering out over flickering alleyways and empty streets to a great black void on the horizon, which was the bay I assumed, though we arrived too late for me to orient myself by daylight.

The next figure reflected beside me was Sara, who jiggled and jumped in my clothes and a purple fright wig in some bizarre attempt to seduce me.

The mating habits of the certifiably insane.

If I were any more indifferent, I'd be stone.

"Why aren't you dancing?" she asked breathless, breasts bouncing, ass audibly slapping against the top of her thighs under my black miniskirt. She wore pink cotton panties printed with caricatures of William Shakespeare. She wanted me to notice, and perhaps if I were a reasonable facsimile of her--the embodiment of desperation, the tricked out circus sideshow attraction with advanced degrees and a twelve drug cocktail of anti-psychotic drugs fueling her lust for life-I would have cared.

And when I turned to face her, I was two steps closer to the door and my car and the cold rainy drive back to DC seize where I could have drunk too much and conjured up some combination of bitterness and condescension to remove me from the taint of THIS SHIT.

"Why aren't you dancing?" She nuzzled my neck as I walked past her.

I pushed her away.

"I don't understand your personal space issues," she said.

"Save the clinical terminology," I said. "Just because I don't want you touching me doesn't mean I have issues."

She sniffled. "But we're having fun?"

We were having a manic episode. The week prior, Sara's shrink told me to keep an eye on her. We changed her medication again. Trying to prevent those unfortunate attacks.

"Sure, sure," I said. "We're having big fun."

As we speak, Sara is checked into the hospital up the street for the third time this month for an obscure and likely invented malady. The doctor called me today to tell me they would have to release her because they couldn’t find anything wrong with her. And I told the doctor whatever, she has parents and a boyfriend, why are you calling me? I shake my head to remove the thought of her. She has become some measure of how pathetic my life has become.

That I associate with these people.

I hate her insanity, because it makes me feel like I’m insane.

I am insane.

“She’s insane,” I say.

“She’s a very talented poet,” says K.

“That’s what they said about Sylvia Plath.”

“And you look like a junkie,” says K. “Are you on drugs?”

Drugs would be rational. A reason for this behavior. “I wish I were a heroin addict,” I say.

“Would you tell me where you’ve been for the past two weeks?”

Richmond,” I say.

“Why?”

I shrug. No reason. Nothing in particular. Took off driving north on 85 and landed on 95 and turned off before I got to DC. Called on an old friend and spent ten days wandering through circles of shallow lamplight on the cracked sidewalks. The resurrected historical streetlights are only good for ambiance, that kind of old world incandescence that strains your eyes and if anything casts shadows even more forbidding. Sort of a Jack the Ripper set—overcast December night, the sky bleeding red at the city lights. My hosts had a flashlight on their spare keychain—a two-dollar, check out line job, and I strobed the switch. I have anxious fingers, and pointed the bulb at the shedding Christmas tinsel still wrapped around the columns of the house to the right, even though I was April. My friend and I walked past the mansions around the traffic circles on Monument Avenue. He bemoaned the state of things—the crumbled facades, rusted grillwork, and leporsied friezes—Richmond’s unique brand of architectural degeneration—while I composed odes to urban decay, the way we let things become such magnificent rot. I’d been craving that kind of decay—it was almost pornographic. Made me feel better by comparison.

Richmond is a slum,” I say. “Did you know you can get free coffee and cookies in the courtyard of the Poe house?”

“I hate Poe,” he says.

“You’re a snob.” I turn to face the wall, but I can still hear K. wheezing. “I’m thinking about killing myself tonight, did I mention that?”

K. taps his foot on more floor and I think—he’s just trying to show off his rhythm.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asks.

I sigh, and shift in the bed so I can see the reflection of my shadow in the mirror across the room.

In the bathroom of the bar two blocks down the street from my house, I sit on the toilet and stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I wonder how it is I have had so little to eat and look so fat and ugly. I have not showered in a week. My hair hangs lank to my chin. The dark roots have spread across my scalp, and the bleached parts—blondes have more fun—appear almost green in the fluorescent light.

I cannot piss and find this hilarious.

K sits at the bar. I slump into the chair and ignore the mirror.

He slides a shotglass into my fingers.

“I ordered you a drink.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t like the brown stuff.”

He raises his eyebrows when he looks at me. There was a time I felt self-conscious about this sort of scrutiny. I would have been sure he noticed the fat rolls of my stomach and the thickness of my neck and the crust of pus around the zit on my shoulder. And I would have tugged at my shirt to hide the gaps between the button holes and faked a confident smile to make him believe I was not the owner of the single hair on my overlarge breasts and yellow crooked teeth and a ripe, though undersexed cunt concealed beneath faded cotton panties and secondhand men’s pants. But, tonight I slouch with abandon, enjoying the scent of my unwashed self as totem of my suffering.

“If you’re going to perpetuate this wretched, chronically depressed, impoverished, alcoholic writer bullshit, you ought to step up to the plate and develop a preference for whiskey. It’s much more literary.”

“I want to go home,” I say. But I drink it anyway, and relish the burning in my throat.

“Atta girl,” he says.

I do not call him a patronizing son of a bitch; he seems disappointed.

K plays Hank Williams on the jukebox. I scowl at the bartender when he asks to see my ID.

“I am so old,” I say.

The bartender scratches his head and reads my birthdate with the assistance of his sliding index finger. “You’re twenty-three,” he says.

I might as well be fifty. I wish I could disassociate from my body.

“I’ve fucked up the last five years,” I say. “I have no excuse. I have nothing but regret.”

“I’m thirty,” says K. “I’ve fucked up the last ten.”

“This is not a contest,” I say, though secretly I suspect I’m winning. At least K is attractive. That must count for something.

K orders me a double.

I light the wrong end of two cigarettes and stare dumbly at a yuppie couple at the booth in the far corner. The woman is drinking a martini. She looks like my mother. The man notices me staring and glares.

“Ha,” I say. “That man thinks I’m trying to pick up his stupid wife.”

“Were you?”

“No. I told you before I’m not a lesbian.”

K nods to the bartender. “Methinks the lady protests too much.”

K snorts.

I walk to the jukebox, play David Bowie “Five Years,” and sniffle.

Two hours later, K and I are asked to leave the bar following an unfortunate incident involving our respective forearms and a substantial quantity of lit cigarettes

I’m enjoying the polka dot blister effect, and walk back to my house, thankful that the warm weather enables me to wear short sleeves.

“These will show off your track marks,” says K. “Provided you’re still planning on becoming a heroin addict.”

I stop and pull him to the side of the park. “If you find someone who deals heroin, do you promise you’ll let me know?”

“No,” he says.

“You’re not a good friend,” I say.

“You’re ridiculous, and self pitying, and dangerously romantic about that shit,” he says. “I’ve been to rehab.”

“Show off,” I say.

“I’m not fucking around,” he says. “What’s wrong with you anyway?”

We’re quiet. I start walking at his pace, figuring he shouldn’t be privy to my plight.

I stop.

“Maybe I already am,” I say.

“What?” he asks.

“A drug addict,” I say. “You haven’t seen me in a couple months.”

I imagine the stories I could tell. The created squalor of my invented life as destitute whore, skulking around in the midnight hour in flophouse hotels, and begging to support my habit.

He yanks my wrist. “It’s not cute. Stop it.”

I pout, and take off running.

At my apartment, I knock paper trash off of my sofa and huddle at the far end.

When K comes in, I hate myself for showing him the trick on the back door.

“Why don’t you go home?” I ask.

He turns on the kitchen light and I hear him open the cabinets. “Do you have any food?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

I find the TV remote. On. Off. On. Off. On.

“You have some crackers,” he says.

Off.

K rounds the corner into the living room. “And an amazing mold collection in your sink. Do you clean?”

On.

“Turn it off,” he says. “Put on some music.”

I can maneuver the arm on the turntable without rising off the sofa. I have learned this special skill. I punch the on button. David Bowie. “Five Years.” I sniff.

“For Christ sake.” K tosses the box of crackers on the floor, and stomps to the stereo.

“Don’t scratch the record,” I say.

“I’d like to burn the record,” he says. “You’ve played it six times already.”

I didn’t realize. I close my eyes and try to recall by counting on my fingers.

“I only remember four,” I say.

He sits, crosslegged on the floor. “Are these alphabetized?”

“By genre,” I say. “How many girls have you slept with?”

The speakers crackle when the needle hits the groove. K tosses a sleeve in my lap. “This can’t possibly depress you.”

“I hate this song,” I say. “I hate this record.”

“You own it.”

I stand. “That doesn’t mean anything. I stole it from the radio station after they wouldn’t let me DJ because I wasn’t cute enough.”

K leans back on his hands, and crosses his ankles. “We wouldn’t let you DJ because you stole a crate of records.”

“You were with me,” I say. “You stole them too.”

He shrugs. “I was program director. Life isn’t always fair.”

I play a Gang of Four record because it is hard edged and angular and that is the way I’d like to reinvent myself. Tough, hardedged, and angular. Invulnerable. No regrets.

“If you’re not going to answer my question, you should go home,” I say.

K sighs and lights a cigarette. “Fifty five.”

I am appalled.

“Shut your mouth,” he says. “Remember I’m thirty.”

I sink back against the pillows. “In order for me to catch up with you, I’d have to sleep with fifty two more people in the next seven years.”

“This is not a contest.” My line, repeated back. But I know it is, and he’s winning.

Fifty two in seven years. That’s 84 months. And I’d have to average 1.6 fucks per month. “I haven’t had sex in two years,” I say.

“Tragic,” he says.

“Why have you never slept with me?” I ask. “You’ve slept with everyone else we know.”

“I’m a gigolo,” he says. “You said so yourself.”

All of my friends here are boys, except for Sara. I consider the possibility that their influence has unhinged me. When the men I know break up with their vapid pretty things with perfect bodies and perfect hair, they call me up for solace and I go with them to drink beer, while they wax poetic on their collective inability to find the attributes in a girl that really count at the end of the day. You know, things like sense of humor—funny, I’m funny when I’m depressed, even funnier when I’m pissed off-- and intelligence—Mensa candidate, right here-- and overall low maintenance—did I mention it only takes me five minutes for hair and make-up. They say they want girls to know what the hell they're talking about. Girls who don't mind drinking cheap beer and hanging out with they guys. Girls who don't come out of the gate into an emotional trainwreck.

I am an emotional trainwreck, but I can fake it.

Usually.

A relationship could make the rest easier to swallow.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m not in love. I thought you might talk me out of marrying.”

“Don’t marry her,” I say. “Anything else?”

“I dunno, whatever’s wrong with you, I thought I might be able to help.”

“Help?”

“Sure,” he says.

“I’m out of cigarettes,” I say. “If you want to help, go buy some more.”

K walks down the block to the Quickie Mart for cigarettes. I don’t care what brand. No Menthols. No lights. I want to feel the lung damage. I watch his back from the second story and note that he takes my shortcut through the park.

I stare at defeat on the bookshelves, the dusty volumes of five years of higher education, which undid me. I hated college from my first day, because I was never allowed to matriculate at the right school—too much money; your father and I both lost our jobs; recession. Because I was compromised in never being able to show off my supposed great intelligence to past and future Nobel Laureates—and I was supposed to be the smart one; when I was ten, they always talked about how I’d go to Harvard. Because I’d fucked off and fucked around out of anger and fear of quitting. I hated myself and sabotaged myself and stopped going to classes months ago—they should have fucking kicked me out; evidence of what a shitty school this is that they didn’t kick me out—and I lied and stole and alienated my two best friends in the whole world and still persisted in telling everyone I was graduating—I even with through the rigmarole of filling out grad school applications, denial. Justification being—if I’m not pretty and not particularly nice and hardly interesting, I’m nothing without smart. Smart is the only thing I have.

I’m too good for this place, too smart for these people, and certainly too sophisticated for this sad town. It’s no wonder I’m depressed. You would be too if you had to spend your days being condescended to by self-important inferiors. Like that miserable twat in the English Department who told me citing Derrida was too advanced for an undergraduate. Like the effeminate redneck in Academic Advising who told me—me—they would put me on Academic Probation if I skipped another class. Like my half-wit peers who have the nerve to give me snooty sidelong glances in the hallways. I clearly deserve respect,

And yet.

I am inferior to all of them. I am the bottom of the barrel. A retrograde somnambulist, a chronic underachiever, a spoiled fat white girl with a country club pedigree, a bad lay, a social drunk, a fashion mistake, a poser (both with and without the “u”), a liar, a thief, a laughable writer, a stuttering idiot, a (by ancestral extension) perpetrator of crimes against humanity. I deserve nothing at all. Even punishment is too good for me.

I wish I were poor. I wish I were a poor orphan prostitute drug addict. I hate that I fucked up my own life for no good reasons and my only way out is to feign insanity. I hate insane people. I hate being weak and pitied and predictable. I hate not having a legitimate reason for feeling as awful as I do. I hate that it’s my fault. And I hate myself for hating it.

I observe the red eye on the portable phone, wondering if I should call my mother—it’s twelve-thirty, she’s probably awake—but I’m struck by what I should say. After all my lies—she has no idea. I have a scene replaying in my head. The bench outside the headmaster’s office at high school where the troublemakers sat waiting for their punishment, the decisions of the conduct counsel, the choice of appropriate disciplinary action.

I wish I were Catholic.

I fall to my knees in the hallway and recite a Hail Mary. I only know it in Latin. I hope the comparative archaism will charm the divine.

In the bathroom, I finger the edge of the aspirin bottle, figuring upon the appropriate overdose to knock me unconscious, yet revivable upon K’s return. Barely surviving a suicide attempt might curb the projected wrath of my parents, and more importantly, clear my head a bit.

I feel guilty for thinking this and hastily make my way into the living room when I rub cigarette ash across my forehead as mark of my penitence.

I return to the bathroom and sink to the floor.

By the time I hear K’s footsteps on the fire escape, I have peeled the labels off all the toiletry bottles and cunningly reapplied them to the side of the tub, where they spell “I Hate Myself.”

“Nice art.” K drops the cigarettes on the table in the hallway, and looks down his nose at me. He is breathless from his walk—in as bad a shape as I am.

“Is there a tattoo parlor open?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

“Are you sure?”

“In the state you’re in, I’m not inclined to call and find out,” he says. “Ashes. If you’d told me, I could have picked up a hair shirt while I was out.”

“I’m into symbolic gestures.” I point to the nosering to remind him of my favorite story of self-mutilation, wherein my former best friend and I, reaching a point of seemingly insurmountable boredom and anxiety four years ago, retreated to our respective bedrooms to mull over possible solutions. After about fifteen minutes, she appeared in my doorway with a safety pin through her lip.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why not?” she asked.

Not to be outdone, within five, I’d followed suit with my right nostril.

“And it never even got infected,” I tell K.

He busies himself with the receiver. “Do you want me to call and order a pizza or something? Maybe you should call your mother.”

“You know,” I say. “She thinks it’s my last semester of college. Everybody thinks it’s my last semester of college. Two professors wrote me recommendations for graduate school.”

“When was the last time you went to class?”

I hang my head. “January.”

“It’s April,” he says.

“I know.”

“Did you drop the classes?”

I shake my head.

“But you registered.”

I nod.

“Jesus,” he says. “And you’re just now upset about this.”

I shrug. “I’m a procrastinator.”

K hands me the phone.

“Not tonight,” I say. “Not in the middle of the night.”

He replaces the receiver and I stare at the sink. My eyes catch on the silver handles on the scissors behind the cold water tap.

“K,” I say, “would you light me a cigarette?”

I stand, slowly, and peer at myself in the mirror.

K’s arm snakes over my shoulder with a lit cigarette just as my fingers find the blades.

I pick them up, stretch the piece of hair at closest proximity to my face at its full length and sever it.

“Give those to me,” he says.

I deliver my best shrill, attic-worthy cackle. “Don’t threaten me or I’ll shave my head.”

“You wouldn’t,” he says.

I say something lame, like, “try and stop me.” K backs away and walks off toward the living room.

I hear him flipping through the records.

I cut off another hank of hair and try to visualize myself bald.

He returns to the bathroom at the first drumbeat on the record. “I’m playing this because it’s sappy and juvenile, because you’re acting sappy and juvenile.”

I tell him to fuck off, drop the scissors in the sink, and cry at my preposterous reflection.

“Jesus,” he says.

“I really don’t want to shave my head. I have this giant mole.” I gesture at a point about a third of the way up the back of my head.

K rolls his eyes. “You’re worse than Sara. Give me the scissors.”

I surrender my grip and sit under the pressure of his arm on my shoulder.

Under normal circumstances, this situation would appeal to me. I can imagine this seeming sweet and sort of sexy and risky.

As opposed to the current adjectives—psychotic and humiliating.

And the worst part is I have done this to myself.

I laugh.

“What?” asks K.

“I complicate everything,” I say. “Unnecessarily.”

K tugs at pieces of hair. “Your hair will grow out. It wasn’t that long to begin with.”

“You know the only other time I ever cut my hair this short was when I was fifteen, when I ran away from my dad’s house.”

“Why did you run away?”

“I was pissed off because my father was capricious and weird and refused to pay my high school tuition. So I cut off all my hair, dyed it brilliant red, stole Dad’s wallet, and took off for San Francisco.”

It was a simple plan, really, and might have worked in retrospect. Could work now.

He stops to light a cigarette. The ashes spill into the porcelain sink and mingle with the strands of my hair clogging the drain.

“How far did you get?” he asks.

“The bus station. Three miles from Dad’s house.” I grab his cigarette and take a drag. “And the worst part is: Things were much more complicated and awful and embarrassing after I got back. I had to see this awful therapist. My mother thought I was certifiable.”

“Were you?”

“No,” I say. “I think I was just bored and lonely.”

I close my eyes and breathe deeply, and hear him drop the scissors in the sink.

He runs his fingers through the hair on the back of my neck so that I feel its absence.

“Do you want to lie down for a moment?” he asks.

My stomach tightens. I blush.

I am number fifty-six.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” he says. “I’m engaged.”

I blow my nose into a wasted tissue and stare at my feet beneath the blanket. I am sure he felt sorry for me. I am sure he regrets it. I am sure my name in conjunction with his will be an embarrassment.

“And I’m the lowest of the low,” I say. “The dregs. Bottom of the barrel. I’m not even rich enough to be interesting to you.”

“You wouldn’t give it to me if you had it,” he says. “And even then I might not let you.”

I stand slowly and thump across the floor to the bedroom mirror. My hair is too short, uneven, unflattering, and its natural mousy brown. I hate it.

“I think you gave me your haircut,” I say.

K shrugs and lights a cigarette. “Consider it a Bon Voyage. All of it.”

“Better you than Sara, I guess.” My clothes have collected on the floor for so long I cannot remember when I wore them. I suddenly fear spiders and flee to the bed. “I didn’t know I was leaving.”

He smiles. “You’ll be going home, I imagine.”

“Is it weak to admit I want to go home?” Home is enduring my mother’s nagging. Home is admitting defeat. “I feel like Dorothy. “ But what I wouldn’t give for Dorothy’s sepia toned Kansas in lieu of pastel suburban sprawl and tract mansions and guilt.

“Do you know where I grew up?” asks K.

In a shack on the side of a mountain in rural Kentucky with no indoor plumbing. In a central Florida trailer park with an abusive father and an alcoholic mother. In the projects. On the wrong side of the tracks. In a Dickensian workhouse. I shake my head, and imagine the callouses on the inside of K’s hands came from years of hard labor.

“Do you promise you won’t tell?” he asks.

I nod.

“I grew up in a very pretty historic home in a little town about forty-five miles east of here. You’ve been there before.” He mutters the name of a prestigious university. “When I was a kid, my mother was an attourney and my father was chair of the doctoral commission.”

“I thought you told me you were the first person in your family to ever receive an education.”

“I lied,” he says. “I did, however, fail out of three different universities, much to the consternation of my parents, and spent five years working construction and trying to make myself more real.”

“Why do you lie?”

“I dunno, Alison,” he says. “I guess for the same reason you want to be a heroin addict.”

“It’s one of the reasons girls like you, you know,” I say. “Girls like you because they think you’re this self-taught blue collar autodidact who could smash through all of their illusions and call them on their shit.”

“Is that why you liked me?”

I liked K because he never minded my complaining, and because he always played the right songs on the jukebox, and because he knew more about Faulkner than I did, and because he was handsome and made me look better by association, sort of.

“No,” I say.

We sit silently, staring at the streetlamps through the windows. I count seconds. On thirty-two, K stirs and searches the floor for his blue jeans.

“I promise I won’t tell,” I say.

“Good,” he says. “M. would call off the wedding, and I’d lose my benefactor. Do you promise you won’t kill yourself?”

I light a cigarette and stare at the water stains on the ceiling. “I’m not suicidal. Just bored and lonely.”

He fastens his belt and buttons his shirt.

I don’t begrudge his silence; I want him to leave.

“Take care,” he says.

I mutter a farewell.

He slams the door behind him.

I do not rise to lock the door.


Friendly Advice: Tip 2

2.) It’s hard to identify as a socialist when you think everyone else is stupid and lazy. That may seem obvious, but if I encounter one more vapid hipster who derides everyone who does not have access to a vast array of media sources, a coop full of organic food, a functional public transportation system, and well-paying non-corporate jobs, my head might seriously explode. People who do not know what Marx had to say about the capitalist system are not lazy. People who work at Wal-Mart are not retarded. People who live in rural areas are not inherently ugly, fat, inbred, and racist. The proletarian revolution IS NOT going to alight in the inner city because you—skinny, white, upper-middle-class scholar—soapbox to other skinny, white, upper-middle class scholars about the inevitable collapse of the global economy. You want universal health care and free, quality public education? Terrific, but try not to turn up your nose in disgust every time you see a working mother drive her kids through the Wendy’s. You have to share this world with everyone else who lives in it, therefore castigating others for being unlike yourself only leads to snobbery, small-mindedness and bigotry. And for the record, whenever you make a statement about ___ people getting what they deserve, try substituting the word “poor” for ____and see what you sound like.

Friday, September 17, 2004

Friendly Advice

I live in a college town, populated by legions of the best, the brightest, the worthless and the hopelessly mediocre. I walk into work through throngs of khaki-shorted fraternity boys and tube-topped sorority girls. I buy coffee from linguistics majors and beer from would-be social workers. Every other business in town is prefixed with a “University.” My life is awash in students.

I am not a student—haven’t been for several years now, and never at the University about a mile down the street from my house. I live here for the fringe benefits—good, cheap nightlife, a surplus of college radio stations, high quality of life, low stress, regular opportunities for interesting conversations whilst standing in line at the bank—and so I’m willing to endure the ubiquity of student life. It’s an equal exchange, and at twenty-eight years old I’m a comparative dinosaur. I lack the enthusiasm to attend Early 90’s dance parties and listen as slack-jawed twenty year olds try to recreate the clothes I wore to high school. I don’t go to undergrad parties; I know which bars are shunned by the Greek Community. I’d say, on a whole at least 90% of the university population is either inoffensive or forgettable. And the remaining 10%--the most intolerable of twenty-two year old hipsters can be ignored with some effort.

Unfortunately, sheer proximity often trumps any attempt I make at distance. Working at a record store and keeping friendly relations with the younger generation, I find myself eavesdropping, even engaging with the latter. And I’m sure they’re all—deep down—really nice people. I’m sure they love their grandmothers, and adore puppies and probably spend Sunday afternoons reading short stories to old people. I’m sure they treat their friends with love and respect, and I’m sure deep down, they’re all vulnerable and self-sacrificing and endlessly generous and forgiving.

Maybe miles down, but there nonetheless.

I say that because upfront a fair amount of them seem like the most vapid, self-serving, superficial, petty, critical, jealous, spiteful bitches (gender neutral) I’ve ever seen. Fortunately, they’re young. Many of them away from home for the first time, many of them amply provided for by generous, oblivious parents, most of them stubbornly unclear, if not flat out delusional about their future. A few years out of school, a few dead end jobs, and a few thousand dollars of yet-unpaid debt later, most of them will drop the pretense and start acting like they have a soul. But for the time being, they have license to behave like utter jackasses and we’ll keep our traps shut. Our livelihoods depend on them, and we like living here.

That said. As a former student and recovering jackass, I offer the following as suggestions. It might not be worth much—not now, maybe not even in the long run. If all goes well, you’ll figure this out on your own. But in anticipating what’s coming, these little tips might help you in making the transition from utter vapidity to human being.

TIP #1

Talking about how much work you have to do in your chosen field of study, particularly if that chosen field happens to be in the humanities, is bullshit, and you know it. The column of well-regarded, trade paperback editions of cutting edge theoretical texts and obscure novels you have stacked beside your bed, and frequently flout as evidence of how much work you have to do is not interesting conversation when you’re out at a bar. If you like the class (and you probably do—those classes are ALWAYS electives), then don’t bitch about it. You chose to be a Post-Marxist, Post-Structuralist, and Comparative Lit Major with emphasis on Scandinavian Electronic Music, remember? And chances are you chose that major for one of the following three reasons 1) It was easy 2) It was cool or 3) You actually like the topic. So shut the hell up.

Your regular recitation of academic texts at the supper table sounds a lot like snobbery. And no one believes you are any smarter because you have twice as much work to do. On the contrary, if it’s that tough for you, then drop the class on S&M in Italian Cinema and take something easy, like you know, Molecular Biology or Quantum Mechanics

Speaking as a former lit major (who never, incidentally, did homework), I know your dramatic catalogue of novels you have to read in a semester is a sort of coping mechanism to trick yourself into believing that what your doing is harder and more IMPORTANT than it actually is. But I got a little secret for you: It’s pretty easy, and it’s not all that important, except maybe to you, the handful of people that find your thesis a good read, and a couple of anonymous undergrads in the future who will find your paper in a forgotten corner of the library and turn it in for a final. College professors at elite universities don’t change the world—the good ones may produce more college professors, but that’s about it. You want to do something IMPORTANT? Go be a nurse in a cancer ward, or a social worker, or a public defender, or an infectious disease specialist, or a fireman. And yes teaching is important. So why not go get a job teaching inner city kids, or illiterate adults, or migrant workers or prisoners? Hell, why not pick up some litter, or talk to the cashier at Wal-Mart like she’s a real person, and not a statistic. Oh yeah, and while we’re on the subject, odds are Artforum is not going to hire you and Harvard is not going to let you in. So you’d best acquaint yourself with the following phrase: “You know, ma’am, a grande soy latte is only fifty cents more.”

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Tropical Depression

From this vantage inside the house, view of the street obscured height of the study windows, I watch massive tree limbs paw at the air. Rain appears in bursts. Heavy wet drops, opaque from here. I pretend it is snow and get cold.

I think I look sort of militant today castoff fatigue-hued chinos, despite platform sandals and earhoops. In my radical chic fantasies, I can run the underground press in Capri pants and rhinestones and only my laissez faire attitude toward hairstyles will cue the secret police.

The power flashes; it will go out soon, any minute now, you can sense the tree limbs bouncing on the power lines the way the lights flicker fade and resolve into an uncomfortable alliance with ON. Every time it happens I count backward from ten and double-check the scrolling red severe weather warning on the computer screen.

We’re disaster snobs around her. Visionaries of gravity. We like to see things fall and fall hard—worst possible scenarios, monsoon rains, tornado winds, and the sort of capricious climactic conditions favorable to personal unaccountability and shivering timbers. Once a year, during hurricane season, even those inland in North Carolina carry out a mass delusion that we live in the tropics and don’t want to be foiled by a banal storm. As it stands, I’ve received three phone calls in the last twenty minutes, each warning about the possibility of severe weather, then comparing conditions unfavorably to prior storms—this is nothing, you should have been around eight years ago—now that was a storm.

No one else comments on the oddity of hurricane names. Francis—a round, fey, adolescent boy, who whines over lack of candy. Last year it was Isabel—a precocious eight year old daughter of arty parents or a lesser known, chaste Victorian poet with high button collars and pre-Raphaelite hair confined by whalebone combs and tidy snoods until moments of passions lead her to the crags over the moor to meet Richard or Nigel or whatever Heathcliff happens to be available for a fast fuck in the heather before teatime.

I’m inclined to believe all hurricanes are inherently female. All tears and bluster and grave demands and no consideration for the aftermath. As such, I tend to underestimate the Hugos, Andrews, and Floyds. Who would believe a Floyd capable of such wanton destruction? I’m holding out for Hurricane Medea (a storm that will, if it ever appears, either annihilate the population of New Orleans or some other auspicious low lying metropolis or defy expectation and fizzle out in a fit of self-pity in the wide expanse of ocean southeast of Bermuda.)

A few nights ago at work, I fought off customer complaints and retired to the front of the store to watch the sunset—all blood and fire backlighting the oaks on West Franklin Street. A head shop boy offered me a cigarette and discussed nature’s inability to conform to the promises of nautical aphorism. “Red skies at night . . .” and yet, it’s rained buckets this week. Like the rest of the summer. All gray skies and thick blanket of humidity and puddles that never dry.

I grew up in the mountains and so I spent summers at sailing camp just across the sound from Atlantic Beach, where I burned then browned on the barnacled pier, watching blue lit barges float out to the sea in the company of WASPy blonde field hockey players and their clean cut Lacrosse captain boyfriends. I developed a crush on a childhood friend, Michael, for the softness of his summer hair and the way he sat so silent beside me and we rode around on Catamarans on windy days and held our hands over the sides on the off chance that we would touch the dolphins. I also learned to smoke cigarettes without getting caught (an invaluable tool for surviving prep school) and sing along to the Violent Femmes.

The rationale for sending us to sailing camp likely revolved around some collective parental fantasy of us as young adults sipping on gin and tonics while watching regattas. Sailing, like horseback riding, is no longer much of a utility unless you have the money and leisure to pursue it. And some of the kids at camp with me liked the idea of white polos and deck shoes. Becoming one of those assholes with sun-bleached blonde hair with and eighties girl and a house on the Vineyard. The antagonist in an old John Cusack film. And some of us—like me--just liked the water, the sea air, the weather-beaten cottages tucked snugly between pines and dunes.

My mother always told me my attachment to H2O was borderline unnatural, and worried continually about the fact that I refused to heed the lessons of riptides and swim closer to shore. I respected the water, but didn’t fear it. My nightmares were dry, still, and fiery—utterly lacking in water and wind.

I also had a pirate fetish, a secret. I never knew if my mother found a battered paperback full of stories about buccaneers and plundering blackguards in my bookshelf. I remember reading it in secret—as if I expected some sort of reprisal. Pirates represented the exact opposite of what I—as self-described prissy little girl—was supposed to like, which of course, made them all the more intriguing. At eight or nine years old, I felt a flush of something akin to sexual excitement reading about swarthy buccaneers and their dissolute ways. And I tried imagining myself the helpless captive—the busty governor’s daughter in the dresses I’d always coveted, captive to the whim of a cunning captain—but that never held quite the same allure as its parallel story. The one in which the busty governor’s daughter casts off her silken gowns in favor of a sword and bests the men at their own game, sailing off under the black flag with the captain her willing captive.

That the sailing camp was located sixty miles from the site of Blackbeard’s defeat did not escape my attention. Ghost stories were duly darkened by the specter of Edward Teach. We attempted séances on the pier, hoping our Ouija board follies would cause the Queen Anne’s Revenge to rise as a phantom out the foggy sound. I wasn’t young enough to expect it to work, but I remember my shackles rising when we heard the moaning planks of the pier beneath our feet.

(I did, after all, have extra leverage, a colonial governor of Virginia as ancestor, a man, who, among other things, commissioned the men that would kill Blackbeard. Only appropriate that I should be haunted.)

I pretended my father was a pirate king—he would sail up late one night and find me and I would be blown about the bow in briny gowns, climbing the rope to the lookout under the Jolly Roger and to spy on ships to rob, and wily privateers and all the kings’ horses and all the king’s men. I would never sicken during storms; I would straddle a cut rate cannon and laugh at the unearthly electrical fireworks.

My father would have made a lousy pirate king, and I a worse pirate.

But the image compelled me nonetheless.

Still does.

Answer to Question: "So, what do you write?"

I write fiction. This includes both the plot and character driven narratives we’ve come to define generally as “fiction” as well as a host of less refined, more prosaic “fictions” I casually refer to as bullshit. These have included: various forms of advertising, press releases, ghostwritten book revisions, political propaganda, and that veritable holy grail of petty bullshit, record reviews.

Suffice to say, my short stories are stymied, my longer projects have mostly repelled publishers, and some combination of lite writing +odd jobs pays my bills. I live in a world of so-called secret geniuses; each individually convinced their celebrity is imminent, and, in the meantime, justifying all manner of self-importance (and self-destruction) by citing such lofty ambitions. I’m not immune to this by any stretch, but at least I’m not a musician.

My Lit degree has long since disappeared into the vortex of some parental keepsake drawer, far enough away that I don’t have to see its parchment smirk whenever I ring up another Outkast CD, but close enough to transmit the occasional three-am “You should really consider graduate school” tweak.

Monday, September 06, 2004


Possibly Candidate For Bathmat Posted by Hello

Sunday, September 05, 2004

Pop Psychology


Lurking in my father’s extensive collection of brightly bound, annals of self-help was a slim primary hued volume entitled, “How To Talk So Your Kids Will Listen.” I picked it up one day, while thumbing through the shelves, looking for an apocryphal, I-promise-I have-it-you-don’t-need-to-buy-it copy of Homer’s Iliad, because it was the only book about parenting he owned.

Though it would be several years before I began literally putting down the phone during one of my father’s lengthy monologues and coming back five, ten, fifteen minutes later to uh-huh in the affirmative and feign interest in the current manifestation of his existential crisis, I was already aware, at age sixteen, that “making the kids listen” was not one of dad’s strong points.

I remember a fleeting sense of wonder--Perhaps the optimistic professional was at fault—and dad’s idiosyncratic modes of discourse were prescribed by so and so PHD.

For example:

· Never call your child by his or her name, refer to them only as “buddy

· Initiate conversations with earnest confessions of your emotional state—I’m feeling pretty vulnerable right now, buddy.

· Describe possible medical impediments, however remote, in gross and graphic detailYou know, my sinuses are way out of whack. According to the research I’ve done here at the house, the only explanation for the amount of phlegm I’m producing is either Cancer or Ebola. Suffice to say, buddy, the end is nigh.

· Ask really uncomfortable questions of your childrenPerhaps I’d feel better if I masturbated more often. What are your thoughts?

<>· Evade future requests for financial assistance with enigmatic responses—Being wealthy as a child really fucked me up, you know, so this is sort of a gift to you, this poverty or Have you ever considered, with the way you spend money, that you might be addicted to an illegal drug? Or I think, maybe, instead of paying your tuition, I should spend twice as much to send you to Outward Bound, because in the long run, knowing how to cook macrobiotic fare over an open fire alone in the wilderness will really give you an edge on life that high school will not or simply Gee, that Miles Davis, he can blow the hell out of a horn, right buddy?

Sadly, How To Talk So Your Kids Will Listen offered little in the way of explanation. The advice given was clearly geared toward more conventional father figures—who would, say, notice if their teenage daughters stole their wallets and ran away-- with more conventionally rebellious offspring—who would, say run away to avoid matriculation at a highly-structured, conservative boarding school (as opposed to deliberately running away to ensure being sent to said institution).

What I did find were pages of interactive comic-book style exercises, where line drawings of teenaged offspring were shown asking typical questions or making disrespectful comments. The reader of the book was encouraged to fill in the parental balloons with his or her well studied responses.

In Diagram 2.1, a cartoon daughter asks her father: “Can I have five dollars for lunch?”

Dad’s scribbled response: “You hurt my soul”

Diagram 2.2, cartoon son, pouts and says: “I don’t care what you say. I’m going to do it anyway.”

Dad’s scribbled response: “Well, fuck you too.”

Diagram 2.3, cartoon daughter: “Dad, I’m pregnant.”

Dad’s response: “Why are you so fucking mean to me?”

<> Diagram 2.4, cartoon son: “I need some help with this assignment.”

Dad’s response: “You selfish bastard. Can’t you see I need my space?.”

“I think Dad has some issues,” I said.

My then eleven year old sister rolled her eyes without losing her place in “Cosmopolitan.”

“Duh,” she said.

Thursday, September 02, 2004


Phillip in South Carolina Posted by Hello

Real Resume

OBJECTIVE


To find a meaningful, engaging way to make enough money to pay bills, allow me all the cds, vintage clothes, gourmet groceries and gin and tonics I want without compromising my identity, aesthetic, or self-respect (ie make me feel like a sell-out). Ideally said job would require a lot of first hand narrative writing about culture and/or about me. Criticism is not a turn-off. Moreover, job would boast a fun staff of weird coworkers (possibly cute, male, heterosexual, and single), intellectual challenges, hard deadlines, and plenty of opportunities for me to be as irreverent as I want to be. Travel, even roadtrip travel to strange small towns, would be a plus.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Freelance Writer/Editor—February 2001-Present.

· Concepted, researched, wrote, and edited advertising/public relations materials for wide variety of local and regional clients. These materials have included brochures, print ads, newsletters, annual reports, case statements, television and radio ads, and museum kiosks.

· Spent copious hours revising a novel I’ve been writing for six years and should probably toss out, but I’m reluctant to do so.

· Created lots of memoirish snippets about my life, aborted several short stories after the first paragraph, developed complex database system for library of CDs and Records.

· Read about two hundred books—Fiction to Nonfiction Ratio: 60/40

· Wrote plenty of email, drank a lot of coffee, smoked cigarettes, and watched “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

· Sent out several hundred resumes and cover letters.

· Entertained self with fashion shows.

· Befriended owners of local vintage stores, prepared elaborate dinners, went to see bands play, drank heavily with friends, and did not get laid.

· Tried going back to college (didn’t take).

· Considered all sorts of get rich schemes and possible business ventures (“Hey, it would be sort of cool to own a bar!”

Cashier—November 2002-Present.
Record Store,
Chapel Hill, NC

· Sold countless lps, eps, cds, dvds, and pretty much any combination to self-conscious record snobs in overcrowded, elitist record store.

· Handled money, closed out till, occasionally totaled up money correctly.

· Provided numerous recommendations to a 90% male client base, eg “If you really want to get your mind off of the fact that your girlfriend is, as you say, a cheating whore, you might want to consider the Rolling Stones.”

· Comforted bitter boss when wife temporarily separated.

· Selected music for in store play, alphabetized, killed time with the employees of the communist bookstore next door, tried to appear sexy while stocking cds. Did not get laid.

· Endured the obvious envy of college radio djs and local drug addled bandmembers who clearly do not understand how I got this job when they’ve been after it for years.

Reader/Scorer—March-April 2003

Large Scale Testing Service

· Read and scored thousands of student essays via network for high school testing program.

· Sat at desk at home, talking to my scoring leader who happened to be my roommate.

· Drank coffee; smoked cigarettes.

· Watched DVDs on my computer while on the clock.

Staff Writer—October 2001-September 2002

Large, Well-Regarded Music Webzine

· Wrote and edited two weekly record reviews for web-based music magazine.

· Researched, composed, and conducted feature length essays and interviews.

· Argued with editor in chief over the necessity of covering such tripe.

· Accused my fellow writers of sexism.

· Pussyfooted around criticizing bands from DC as friends knew all of them.

· Used critic status to get free shit from record labels, and guest list status at concerts.

· Acted like a vapid hipster. And got accused of such behavior by friends, enemies, and a couple of college professors.

· Penned hilarious, longwinded rants to my detractors.

· Frequently looked my name up on Google as evidence that I existed.

· Flirted with interview subjects. Did not get laid.

Copywriter—May 1999-February 2001

Advertising Agency

· Wrote, researched, and edited advertising and press media for local, regional and national clients.

· Worked with clients and creative team in conception and production of full advertising campaigns.

· Performed various administrative tasks on an as-need basis, including database creation and maintenance, filing, faxing, and associated office tasks.

· Assisted in event production.

· Pissed off then vice-president/media buyer who thought I was a slacker and a spoiled brat.

· Argued with boss. Argued with mother (same thing).

· Used work computer to download MP3s on weekends, surfed the web, joined internet mailing lists, tried to make fun collages out of discarded paper sample books, received presents from printers, got tanked with graphic designers down the hall.

· Flirted with graphic designers down the hall. Did not get laid.

Editorial Intern—October 1996-May 1998

Unnamed, National, University Affiliated Literary Magazine

· Read and edited submitted fiction manuscripts.

· Drafted letters to prospective writers.

· Assisted in pre-production proofing and preparation.

· Completed various office tasks as needed.

· Had hours of fun at the expense of submitted stories and their writers.

· Learned exactly how much alcohol it takes to make me really shitty.

· Hung out with charming, attractive, intelligent men. Did not get laid.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Arts Literature/ Creative Writing

Completed in May of 2002, after eight years and three schools, a couple veiled suicide threats, near bankruptcy, three or four emotional breakdowns, a lot of tears, piss, and vinegar, several lost friends, a few good professors, one published play, a reasonable amount of liquor, marijuana, caffeine, and a couple months of antidepressants, a final semester of complete bullshit classes and a lot of hanging out with independently wealthy downtown hipster who were not my classmates. Almost failed French. Publicly feuded with at least one self-important bitch of a professor (female); privately bad-mouthed one megalomaniacal fussy bitch of a professor (male). Went into debt. Have yet to see why this degree was worth all I put into it, physically, emotionally, intellectually, or financially.

QUALIFICATIONS

· Excellent writing, proofreading, and editing skills.

· Creative, imaginative, conceptual/ problem solving abilities.

· Exceptional customer/client communication skills.

· Competent on both Windows and Macintosh operating systems.

· Proficient in Microsoft Word and Excel.

· Adherence to deadlines.

· Teamwork motivated.

· Encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll with emphasis on rock snobbery sort of acts.

· Makes really excellent, genre-crossing, schizophrenic mix tapes/ cds.

· Knows a lot about European history from the Roman Empire through the French Revolution with special emphasis on England.

· Enjoys cheesy teen movies, and can make an elegant argument for the problem of morality using the tv show, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

· Good team worker. Enjoys reading Shakespeare aloud.

· Has excellent eye in thrift stores, and lifelong fascination with costume.

· Enjoys ranting. Can be funny when ranting.

· Likes to write long pieces of prose, whether fiction or non-fiction. Although, research has unearthed the fact that said prose usually appeals more to men than to women. What does this mean?

· Good editor of anyone's stuff except my own.

· Lusty.

· Defiant. Quick temper, but apologizes easily.

· Endearingly klutzy, irregardless of footwear.

· Can use various four-letter words in all sorts of creative ways.

· A little bit kinky.

· Can walk miles in high heeled boots without complaining

· Will appear blasé and standoffish. Acts tough like a pro. Good in a big crisis. Sucks with the details.

· Great taste. Poor money management.

· Classically trained pianist.

· Charmingly untrained guitarist.

· Likes furry animals, but has an unexplained hatred for squirrels.

· Hates brooding men, republicans, SUVs, the religious right, intolerance, close-mindedness, Biblical morality, most authority figures, girls with victim complexes, senses of entitlement, business suits, nude pantyhose, the word “tidy” and any of its applications, overly kempt looking hair, people who eat fat free cheese, and raisins.

· Can sail a small boat. Secretly wants to be a pirate.

INTERESTS

Faulkner, Nabokov, biblical epics, archetypal criticism, the amusing futility of local politics, urban decay, rhinestones, kitsch, irony, history, cuisine from hot places, funny, somewhat fey boys, Scottish/Irish men, collecting music, pretending I’m a rock star, bad art, the word “fuck,” mascara, smoking, travel, boats with masts, clutter, rapidly, radically changing hairstyles, talking about pretty much anything to pretty much anyone, moderate socialism, vintage evening gowns, musicians, making people laugh, jukebox coups, long drives to nowhere in particular, weird, small towns, Delta blues, renaissance motets, Classical music pre-Brahms; post Wagner, Jazz, Be-Bop, Salsa, Country and Western, Bluegrass, Electronica, R&B pre 1970, Old Soul, Punk Rock, Indie Rock, Lo-Fi, Low Rent, New Wave, 60’s psychedelia, Glam Rock, Calypso, Reggae, Dub, National Public Radio, The New Yorker, Mojo, The Believer, McSweene's Lists, folk, amusing pathological liars, Oscar Wilde, well written satire, post modern theory, underdogs, paper dolls, Fuentes, Joyce, good new fiction, Delillo, Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, Didion, et al, adopting surrogate little brothers, art history, water, cities, loudness, gin, tequila, rum, vodka, Jameson’s, neon, 19th century prostitutes, pirates, cowboy boots, outlaws, and the East Coast.

REFERENCES AND PORTFOLIO AVAILABLE ON REQUEST