I was talking to Growler today, relaying some lascivious
detail of some antic or another, when she paused.
"My god, you are ballsy!"
she laughed.
Why, yes. Yes, I am.
But I wasn't always.
I've talked many, many (manymanymany) times about how my fears held me
back. Or rather, how I let my fears hold me back. But even in my seclusiveness, I had moments
of letting that all out—especially if I was comfortable with my
surroundings. Hanging out with my
friends, I could always be loud and bawdy and brash. It just wasn't always apparent to the general
public.
The biggest apprehension, for me, about being so open and
sometimes brazen is that what I do will be bad.
Take my writing for example. It's
easy for me to hide behind my words. I
can use them like a big, decorative shield—to either protect myself or to
distract the other person from the underlying emotion. I can spin the words lovingly into some
never-before-read combination, but that doesn't mean it's good.
I admitted online a couple of days ago that I'm afraid it's
really bad and that no one's had the heart to tell me.
"I would find a way to very gently tell you, if I thought it was terrible," Tiff assured me. "It's not. It's good."
She's pretty exacting and finicky, though she's also been my
BFF for a really long time. She's not
afraid to tell me when something I'm wearing is bad ("That dress is doing you
no favors. Toss it."); why would I
think she would let me spend a year working on something so difficult and
personally poignant, just because she didn't have the heart to tell me it
sucked?
Some of the inner circle readers have been only
gushing. (I totally love the ego boost from that, by the way.) Some have been more politely critical about
specific aspects and issues that really did need
to be addressed. And my editor has been
incomparably patient and honest in her critiques.
But there's still this chance that it gets out there and everyone
thinks it's bad.
There will be people who don't like it because it's not
their style of story. There will be
people who don't like because they don't like me. (Suck
it.) There will be people who don't
like it because they don't like anything. (You have
met the internet, right?)
My hope is that there will be people who like it so much
that they recommend it to their friends.
Or they go on Amazon (when it's available) and leave a nice review. Or they just send me a message to say they
loved it.
But what I hope, more than anything, is that someone who
doesn't know me says it's good.
For a long time, I could write what was in my heart and head
but not actually say the words. My spoken voice didn't usually flow as easily
as my typed voice. That's not so much
the case now.
"I can always tell when you're writing," Mo said
one afternoon on the telephone.
"Your vocabulary gets huge."
Indeed.
Something about the process of spinning the big words make
me even more willing to say exactly
what I'm thinking and feeling and to ask for what I want. I'm more likely to be that direct, loud,
ballsy girl, knowing full well that there are some people who just won't like
it. It's just part of my muchness.
But I also know that the real good is in having learned how to do that, how not to let my fear
stop me from stepping out from behind that golden, glittery shield. When those words are spoken in confident
candor, I have the victory, regardless of what anyone else thinks.
I've talked before about the idea of the Truthiness of Me and of my drive to
honor my truths—good and bad—regardless of what the vast majority of people
think. Muchness and Light is, in some ways, a public exploration of
that. I talk very openly about a lot of
things—from my fears and failures to my triumphs, my body image and weight loss
issues and the subsequent surgeries.
Early in my process of reawakening, I determined that is was viscerally
important to me to be as honest with my readers as I could stand. I am very often this way in my offline, day-to-day
life, as well.
Turns out, apparently I'm not so much like other
people.
"You're willing to embrace your scars and show them," Mandypants said. "You're willing to embrace the scars of other people, of the people you
love. And that is brave and beautiful,
but it is not like 98% of people."
My therapist nodded emphatically in agreement when I told
her.
When I saw Tiff for Pretty, Pretty Princess Night a couple
of weeks ago, she saw the edges of the brachioplasty scars peeking from the
backs of my arms. "Those scars are
kind-of cool," she remarked.
"They're really pretty badass."
Most of my female friends feel the same way. Interestingly, most men ask if and when the
scars will fade, or if they can be hidden.
Tiff and I went on to talk about this idea of baring my
scars proudly, like a badge of honor.
"I get why that's important to you," she said,
"but I am a very private
person. I would be mortified to bare
everything so openly."
Wharrrrrgarrrbbbble?!?
I don't understand.
Really. I mean, I get it in my head that not everyone is so tolerant of such self-examination,
even when the forum isn't so public. That
is, ultimately, the own to each. But in
my heart, I have some ingrained block against comprehending why it would
be bad to point out your own journey
via the roadmap of your scars. It seems
ludicrous not to be embracing of the good and the bad, to see and accept the
awful as equally powerful and enlightening as the splendid.
Scars, whether literal or figurative, are simply reference points, like landmarks of a
person's journey. They're invariably the
product of wounding. Usually that
wounding is unintentional and painful. More
often than not, it is from injury that was inflicted, whether by someone else
or by ourselves.
I have a small scar in my eyebrow from running into a
television stand twice when I was very young.
I have faded silvery lines that came from exploded fireworks and bicycle
accidents and stretch marks from growth.
There's a small indentation of missing bone in my right ankle, where it
was chipped away by the angry, pointed toe of an abusive ex-boyfriend's cowboy
boot.
Scars may also be the unintentional consequences of good things. Nearly every mother I know has either an
abdominal C-section scar, or a scar from where her natural vaginal tear (or
perhaps her episiotomy) healed after birthing her precious baby. I have the new, lengthy scars from my own series
of surgeries, trading in the old emotional baggage for something more (and
less) physical.
And, as Mo roundaboutedly reminded me last night, tattoos
are a great example of almost-always
chosen scars. "The truth is like a
tattoo. It accurately represents who you
are at the exact moment it is revealed."
Maybe all scars are like that. Maybe they pinpoint not only where you were when you got them, but
also how and why you were—all of which make up the Who of You.
So what should be so wrong in talking about that? What is the problem in discussing and showing
how and when and why you came into being Who?
The problem, as I understand it, is two-fold:
1) Talking
about your trauma and damage and all of your little anecdotes of agony can make
other people uncomfortable. Apparently men are especially likely to feel
off-put by such honesty, based on anecdotal evidence. According to my therapist, the greatest or
most common fear of men, generally, is shame. There's something there are about
self-respect and identity, of reputation and persona. (For women, the prevalent fear is being killed. It has to do with safety and feeling
unprotected and vulnerable.)
2) Injury
is so often inflicted by another person.
To tell your own story is fine.
To discuss the parts of your story that intersect with others may open
their wounds, or cause them inadvertent discomfort.
It doesn't seem that talking about the damage that's
already been done should be inflicting. There's not necessarily onus to your action; discussion isn't malicious, by default. It's bleeding edge versus cutting edge. At most, it's a matter of pointing out the
wound and addressing it in an effort to help it heal. Debriding might hurt like hell, but it's
ultimately a much better alternative than leaving the wound to fester, never to
have the opportunity to scar in healing—or worse.
So what to do, when your life is words, and you're all
about this Verisimilitude of Self?
It's a fine line, really.
There's a right to publicity and right to privacy that overlap. Am I talking about someone else's immoral or
illegal behavior? Is what I'm saying
true? Is it potentially embarrassing but
cogently honest?
And it's hard sometimes, to know when to share and when
to hold back. I have to tap into that
place inside me, the Wellspring of Verity,
where I find what is unequivocally right,
regardless of whether or not is right for me or anyone else, specifically. At the very least, it is what is right right now. If I find that Point Me shifts to another place and time, what is right today
might very well turn out to be wrong tomorrow.
But tomorrow isn't guaranteed, and all I can be sure of is this moment
and the ones from which I came.
Just because something hurts, that doesn't mean it's
bad. Growth can be painful. Sadness and anger can hurt like fucking hell,
but they usually bring us closer to some new understanding of ourselves. That is what is so sublime about the raw
power of self-cultivation and transcendence.
So here are my scars.
Here is the proof from whence I came.
Some of you came from there with me, though some of you can't admit
that. Somehow, in your own arrogance or
sadness or anger, you have valued me as worth less than your own shame. That
is on you.
I do have worth and value, for who I am and the things I
have endured. The web of scars, both apparent
and unseeable, is the Substrate of
Stephanie. It is the topography of
my life, at least to this point.
For all that I have done and seen and felt and lived, in
ways that may have been profound only to me, I am defensible. And I will defend my self and my worth at all
costs, because it is always more
precious than shame.
The first thing you should know is that I don't care about
turning forty. I'm not scared of it. So please don't bother to lament my youth or
future aging.
When I turned thirty, everyone called me, encouraging me to
freak out about it. What was there to
freak out about? It's natural. Everyone who lives past that certain point
passes the milestone as they move toward the next one.
Thirty was the age I didn't have to pretend to care what
other people thought anymore.
Forty is the age I can afford
not to pretend to care what other people think.
I am who I am, and so much of that is because of the crazy
and amazing experiences I've had since the hot summer day when I launched out
of my mom, all six pounds and six ounces of me determined to get going, a month
early.
Good, bad, crazy, and boring—there have been a lot of laughs
and tears and breathless giggles and blank stares of utter, incomprehensible
disdain. More of that than not has been
spent with my BFFs, with the girlies who turned into women, right along with
me. This weekend I was blessed with the
ability to go to my hometown of Birmingham and see these women, to spend the
weekend with them while we ate and drank and cackled boisterously at each
other, causing a raucous public scene.
(Turns out people are very
forgiving of your obnoxious laughter when you're wearing a pink glittery hat
and carrying a glowstick wand.)
There were moments when we were all sixteen again, giggling
about some boy or some twenty-year-old memory.
But now we are wives and mothers and teachers and friends in ways we
could never have imagined in our brash youth.
We are grown, and we are women who can own our lives, whether or not anyone else likes it.
But being a grown-up doesn't mean we have to stop being who
we are deep down. There's no reason to
suppress the essence of Me, just
because society thinks we should act our age.
And that's just it—I will act my age,
as I think it applies to me and regardless of what that means to anyone
else.
As we said all night for Pretty Pretty Princess Night, "Fuck 40!"
Thank you to everyone who has helped me to get here. Thank you to everyone I've ever met or known,
who took a moment to impact my life and my path, even if I didn't know or like
how it was happening. I wouldn't be in
this place, in this Me, without your
having touched me in some way.
Now go find yourself a yummy delicious cupcake and make a
wish—for you, for me, for world peace.
Whatever you choose, wish for it in your heart like you were a little
kid again, and never, ever let go of how that feels.
Tiff and I had a chat this morning about my assertion that I am, at heart, a wallflower.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," she said.
No, really, I am. Okay, maybe not so much now, but historically? Yes.
At least, I always thought so.
As a child, I was shy. Not in a painful way, not so much so that I couldn't say my name in public or actually answer a direct question. But I was slow to engage other people and tended to stand back. In peer groups, I was almost always the last chosen for games—though it didn't help that I was a fat, out-of-district transplant, moved to a school with a gifted program. I wasn't like my classmates, and I was generally happy that way. I didn't socialize with them away from school, I didn't dress like they did, and I didn't think like they did.
In junior high, I had a few good friends, but I tended to stay on the outskirts. Sometimes it was, again, because of my history of being generally unpopular. Blending into a crowded hallway let me stay anonymously out of the line of middle-school-fire.
When I got to high school, though, some of that changed. It was a small magnet school with about 150 students across four grades. We were all gifted outcasts who were encouraged to flaunt our eccentricities, and we did it with abandon. RLC was a revelatory experience for virtually everyone who went there. Most students found their identities within the walls of that old, mustard-colored building. Some found they didn't really fit the amoebic mold of gifted eccentric and chose to return to their regularly scheduled programming, leaving RLC for a big, normal high school.
Even then, though, I had an amazing talent for being able to go unnoticed. I could wedge my way through a situation quietly and garner as little attention as I wanted. Usually. I really did learn at an early age when to keep my mouth shut—though I know some of you who read this will argue that point until the cows come home. (You're all a bunch of contrarians anyway, so shush it.) I can be sociable with almost anyone, but I can also be non-existent when it suits me.
At least, I always thought so.
I'm an Amazon. I'm 5'11 with broad shoulders and a loud, stomping step and a louder, projecting voice. (Thank you, choir.) I am often brash and bold and demanding, though usually with the sweetest of intentions and persuasions.
If I'm in a very crowded situation—a store or a show, for instance—I can maneuver quickly and quietly through that sea of people and get to where I need to be, with very little flourish. I don't have to be pushing and demanding to navigate the crowd. Hence, my wallflower super power.
It occurred to me as I was talking to Tiff that maybe I'm a little more foreboding than I thought. Maybe my general size and aspect make people just get the fuck out of my way. When I'm in that situation, I tend to stand very tall, shoulders back, tits forward like a shield. Maybe that countenance is enough to make people want to step aside. I can smile and say please and excuse me, but I sometimes don't. I'm incredibly adept at giving the get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way look, and people usually do. I often don't have to say anything at all. They just move.
I'm much, much more extroverted now than I used to be. It's taken me years to grow into that. But I still have times when I like to skirt the edges, to slide my way along the wall and go unnoticed. Whether people really aren't noticing or they're looking away for some other reason, I have no idea. It doesn't really matter, either. I'll still use that ability, as needed, to maneuver along my path. Sometimes it's better than bulldozing my way through.
What I don't want to do is find myself paralyzed, stock still, waiting for someone or something else to come along and make me move. It happens every so often, the fear of my life and my surroundings freezing me into submission. That's when I have to feel my way carefully, inching along slowly, extending my vines blindly until I can find the sun.
Yet again, I've come across a greeting card that triggered a blog post. This time, I wasn't looking at the cards; I just happened past it, walking through the grocery store. I have another copy of it somewhere, buried in a box, but I'd completely forgotten about it until this fateful trip.
No, it's not a younger me, though God knows I had that haircut (and color) forever—thanks to my mom for standing me on the front porch with the Fiskars and whacking some bangs to frame my face. That doesn't look like my dad, and I don't have a younger sister. And I'm betting the Buffy-Davis-looking sibling didn't make that bubble-lettered sign. (Did no one teach the maker {possibly Stephanie herself} to plan her layout, so the compound word wouldn't have to be broken up?)
I like Stephanie and her sign. I mean, it doesn't have the colorful burst of salutation of the others, but she obviously digs corn on the cob. She took the time to scrawl her love across the page—again, note the lack of planned layout—and share it with the world. I'm betting she was rushed ("Hurry up, so we can take the damn picture, Steph!") and didn't have time to illuminate her proclamation of maizean love. But she seems more joyous about sharing her thoughts than the other two.
So the whole Please disregard Stephanie thing really irks me.
This Stephanie hates the feeling of being disregarded. I don't care if you don't like me. I can deal with people being angry or upset with me, as long as there's the promise of communication regarding the problem. But to feel like I've been dismissed, as though my feelings and I suddenly aren't worth the time and effort... well, that's just infuriating.
I can look back at my life and pinpoint very specific moments when I've felt dismissed by others. Many, but not all, surround traumatic events. The sting of having had my feelings pushed to the side is still strong sometimes, even when it seems the drama was a lifetime ago. Usually it involved being on the receiving end of acts that were completely outside my control, acts that made me feel worthless as a person. Memories of those real and imagined transgressions can still catapult me into questioning my inherent value.
But there have been times when I've been the cause (or the catalyst) for people withdrawing from my life, deciding that I was a liability to their own worth. It's like I've suddenly been told that I can't do something—talk to you, see you, tell you what I'm thinking. I can guarantee that the worst possible way to get me to stop doing something is to tell me, through actions or words, that I can't do it. It makes me petulant and bratty, and I tend to lash back in ways that are likely to hurt me the most.
Regardless of the mode of dismissal, I need to find resolution, some kind of emotional detente, to be able to move forward. I have a tendency to get stuck in the mire of overanalysis, picking apart the woulda-coulda-shoulda of the whole situation. Again, I'm okay as long as there's the promise of communication, the possibility of potential closure. It's when that's withheld from me that I get annoyed and angry and vindictive.
So I hope that Stephanie doesn't feel bitter that's she's effectively being told, "No one cares about you or your damn corn, girlie!" I hope she revels in the fact that she's not like the others, that she's unabashed in sharing her eccentricities and uniquely profound view of her inner world. I hope she reaches over and pulls her sister's pigtails, right before draws sardonic stick figures of her dad and a cob of corn on the back of his picture.
DH (Dear Hubby, for anyone who doesn't know) told me a few nights ago that my mother-in-law had really enjoyed my most-recent blog post, the Cycle of Life moment one.
"Wow," I said. "I hope she didn't read the one before it." You know, the superhero power one.
"I'm sure she did," he replied.
Uh-oh. But really more for her than for me. By that same token, uh-oh for my mom, or even my dad, if they read something that might surprise them.
In fact, I recently sent my mom a message to not read something I'd written. I wasn't embarrassed by it or ashamed of it. Most of the things I talked about, she already knew, though I certainly addressed them in very frank terms. Mostly I was concerned that it would make her uncomfortable. Same for my MIL, my dad, my brother, or anyone else who may be less forthcoming about personal issues than I am.
This is the same problem I had (and a lot of my friends have had) when I got the dreaded Friend Request on Facebook from the parental units. Egad! Do I really want them to see all of that?
My parents aren't clueless about what a wild child I was. I had a very colorful youth, mostly during a ten-year span from the ages of fourteen to twenty-four. Generally, my friends and I were very careful to 1) not get caught, and 2) not get into trouble. It didn't always work out that way, but we survived a lot of craziness with hardly a scratch. The parents know some of what transpired, and perhaps more than I think they do, but I know damn well they would be mortified if they knew the whole truth--the kinds of things that would make my grandmothers die just so they could roll over in their graves.
Recently my dad became privy to a few details, unexpectedly, when my friend Mo and I were having a grown-up sleepover. Good friends, Jack Daniels, and a chat with your dad are probably not the best combination, even after you've grown as fully into adulthood as you'll ever get. There was perhaps a little too much honesty, but it's nothing I was ashamed to have him know.
But what to do when you're writing publicly about your journey from Point A to Point Me?
I thought long and hard about this when I started the blog, and even before that when I started the book. There are a lot of things that would have to come to the forefront, would have to be openly discussed, if I were to really step out on this path. The Truthiness of Me couldn't be full of half-truths and slant rhymes; it had to be exactingly veracious.
And if the elder adults in my life read these confessions, would it change how they thought of me? Ultimately I decided that it didn't matter. My life is no more about pleasing others now than it was when I was fifteen and petulant and dressed defiantly all in black. (Says the girl whose Emily the Strange t-shirt is in the dryer as she types.)
So, Mom, Dad, Mom-in-Law, Brother--whomever you may be--be aware that you're likely to see a lot of things you don't know and might now want to know. But these are things that make me Stephanie. Good or bad, they're part of my history and my journey and my story.
I also recognize that you may not want to know those details, and that's okay, too. It doesn't hurt my feelings (and might even make me a little relieved) if you choose not to read my stuff sometimes. You didn't always like my hair or my music (and sometimes you still don't), but they are my choices and I stand by them fully. I'm no sweeter or easier now than I was when I was a little girl.
All I'm asking is that you remember that I grew up. I get to make these choices and decisions myself, and I accept the responsibility for those choices.
Ultimately, I did accept the friend requests from family members, and I'm pretty sure at least a couple of them have hidden me from their Facebook News Feed. That's okay. (I've hidden a couple of them, too.) Just because I may not like some things they say or do or think, that doesn't mean I love them any less. They're adults who've been on their own journeys and have made their own choices. We all get to turn a blind eye when we need to.
Sometimes it's just best to close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears, and la-la-la-la-la! at the top of your lungs.
I was told today that I'm a bit overwhelming at times.
Honestly, the thought of that doesn't surprise me, though I'll admit it hit me in a not-so-comfortable way. I'm not delusional about who I am:
I am loud and stubborn and demanding and spiteful.
I can hold a grudge for years.
I am verbose and impetuous.
I am moody and overly sensitive sometimes.
I can be obsessive and dogged and downright annoying.
I am boisterous and love to laugh. I have a laugh that is huge and joyful and impossible to miss.
I have learned slowly, and by overcoming some pretty substantial fears, to ask for the things I want. I'm still practicing how to reign in my approach and to be a bit more reserved when and where it's warranted.
I am intelligent and precocious. I have a large vocabulary coupled with a love of words and the way they sound, both in my quick Southern accent and in my mind's vocality.
I often make quick decisions, though not usually without merit. I'm capable of rapid thought processes, spinning so quickly from one thing to the next that there's a constant hum in my head like a hummingbird's wings. I do flit from flower to flower all too often, but that's because there are so many wonderful nectars out there to explore.
I am emotionally sensitive. No matter how stolid and easy-going I may seem, I get my feelings hurt, sometimes too easily. I would rather cut my own head off than let you see me cry, though. If I'm ever openly teary, you should know that I'm really, really hurt. I learned early on that sometimes it was better just to keep my mouth shut. If I'm not talking or if I seem distant, chances are I'm angry and am choosing not to engage it and escalate the problem. And much in the same way that I jump from thought to thought, I've been known to waffle between emotions, almost like trying them on for size to see what suits my mood.
I am immersive in the things and people that I love. I love figuring out what makes people tick, what brought them to this place in time and why they do the things they do. I love the details, of getting into something on a truly granular level. There's a pure, aesthetic joy in discovering how music and books and people are connected to the things around them, and to themselves and to me.
I am determined and will do what I need to do for a desired end result. I go after what I want, certainly, but I also work hard for those who matter to me. If I believe in you, I will support you exhaustively. I don't like to give up once I've taken on a task, often challenging myself and turning it into a personal game to win. If that means I have to bother someone or get in their face, there's a damn good reason, whether or not they know it.
A lot of these traits are ingrained, intuitive threads in the fabric of Stephanie. Some are learned behaviors that came about as coping mechanisms for any number of emotional trauma, both significant and seemingly inconsequential. I am always willing to examine the why and how of myself. It's the obsessive/immersive thing.
I accepted these truths about myself long, long ago. I do what I can to embrace them, though I fully recognize that there are flaws to be diminished and perfected. I'll work to make that happen, but only after I step out onto the emotionally slippery slope of self-examination. Sometimes that's quick and relatively painless; sometimes it takes a while to edge my way out there. There's a strong probability that I will spend a lot of time talking or writing about it, with startling verbosity. And my words may come out of anywhere at any time, just because I happened to think of them while I was in the middle of something else entirely.
But boiling me down to overwhelming.... That's like being told my muchness is too much.
Maybe it is, but it's who I am. It's a good with the bad, fantastic with the imperfect, kind of deal. I won't change who I am to suit someone else and their mood. If I find that you're worth the effort, I'll make adjustments and do what I can to make it work. Ultimately, though, I will always and unapologetically be me--not "maybe Stephanie" or "almost Stephanie". Just Stephanie.
It's been almost two months since I started this blog with the original post about having lost my muchness. In the hyperactive, social-media-induced distractibility that is our world, I thought I'd go ahead and do a little retrospective, so to speak, and check in on how those first couple of months has been.
First and foremost, THANK YOU!to everyone who's joining me on this trip down the rabbit hole. Your support and encouragement have been overwhelming. I knew going into this that I had some friends who would jump on board, either because they knew me or because they actually liked what I had to say. I have been simply amazed at the outpouring of comments from people who enjoy my writing. Whether you comment on the blog, on my Facebook, or send me a private message, I do love to get your feedback, so keep it coming. Even if you don't like something, don't be afraid to tell me. I can't grow as a writer without critique.
I've been especially blown away by the women who have been so amazing during this journey. Let's be honest: women can be awful, especially to each other. When I did the piece on body image, I was initially more concerned about the response and criticism I would get from my female friends than from anyone else. It's so far inside the realm of plausibility that other women would judge me that I fully expected it to happen. Instead what I have found is a spectacular group of ladies who have said they're with me, that they feel much the same way about their own bodies--or their own self-doubt, or their own muchness--that I do. If you're one of those women who feels a little relieved to know there's someone else out there going through something, know that I am refreshed and reassured when I know you're with me, supporting me all the way.
Second, it's been a pretty productive two months. I've done twenty posts (this is twenty-one) on all kinds of topics, Alice-y and not. This writing is, in some ways, my truest voice, the timbre closest to my own if you were to sit down and talk to me. (Though you totally miss the pseudo-Valley Girl tones that have come out of my Southern mouth unexpectedly since the age of twelve.) Someone suggested I do a podcast to give readers a real sense of how it sounds when I get all giddy about Alice, or all pissed off about stupid people. (If I wrote about that every time it happened, I'd never stop blogging. Be thankful I'm learning to edit myself.)
My fiction project is coming along nicely. I'm getting a little closer every day. I've done some revisions, though I haven't finished the story, and am at about 115,000 words. (I'm currently on page 214.) When I was unsure of where I was going with the story, the feedback from you guys was incredibly helpful. I stayed the course but was surprised to find that the course changed itself. The story naturally went in a little different direction than I had anticipated. I think it's tighter now, more streamlined and less convoluted, than I had originally envisioned. When I let go of the fear and distress, the characters were able to tell me what they needed to do. I am hoping to be done by the end of this month with the first draft, but I'm not pushing myself to meet an unnatural deadline. I don't want to sacrifice the truth of the story just to say I made some date. I recognize that these things have to come in their own time and in their own way.
Lastly, it's been a really unexpected couple of months. So many things have happened that I've talked about, including the holiday rush and Iceapalooza and all kinds of musical discoveries, and a lot that I won't. (A girl can't reveal all her secrets!) Some days have been a proverbial rollercoaster, but it's given me a lot to work with, a lot of inspiration to call on. Some of it will definitely show up again in my writing, intentionally or not. A few of you may be surprised to find details and conversations happening between fictional characters that actually happened between us. Just remember that those moments made a huge, unforgettable impression on me, and I had to work through them to learn the intended lessons.
And you can guarantee someone in my story will be wearing pink, glittery shoes.
So thank you for sticking this out with me. Thank you for telling your friends about me. And thank you for putting up with me. (I know how I can be. Really.) We've only just hit the bottom of the hole and have so much more to explore.
I'm so glad you'll be here to hear all about it when the baby turns into a pig.
My very favorite movie, ever, is John Cameron Mitchell's 2001 masterpiece Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It's a really spectacular film about soul-searching and pain and love and identity. The main character is a slightly-but-justifiably crazy blonde with an overwhelming affinity for glitter and rock 'n roll. You can't get much muchier than that! How could I not love her?
I started thinking about this movie toward the end of Iceapalooza 2011. It's not kid-appropriate, so I had to wait until they weren't around to watch it for the hundred-dozenth time. Last night, in a fit of self-indulgent moroseness, I curled up on the couch to get my glam and drag on.
The first thing I'm always struck by is how gorgeous the film is; it is deliciously beautiful, cinemagraphically, even in its grittiest moments. It's visually clever in its economy of field; sets are often small and cramped, and Mitchell is astonishingly efficient as using the small areas to their fullest effect. (Hedwig's play area in the oven in East Berlin is my favorite.)
The second thing that always blows me away is Mitchell's performance as Hedwig. It's a character he created originally for the stage play of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, then translated it to screen as writer, director, and lead actor. He is remarkably talented as both actor and singer in the film, and his performance garnered a 2001 Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. (He also won a Best Director award at Sundance, along with numerous other accolades.) I remember watching the Golden Globes that year, which I rarely do, and thinking, "Wow! That's fantastic that such a performance got the nomination, but there's no way in Hell he'll win." I was right, of course.
The third thing that always kicks my ass is the music. The music and lyrics were written by Stephen Trask after he and Mitchell met quite by accident on a plane. Trask received an Obie award for the play, as well as a Grammy nomination for the film. For the production of the film, the musicians prerecorded the music for the songs and synced along during filming. Vocals, however, were done almost entirely live on set, to create a true feel of live performance. I can listen to this soundtrack over and over and still get something new from it every time.
As so commonly happens these days, I'm always on the search for Alice-y things to write about. Watching the movie again, I was struck by how much Hedwig is like Alice. So I started looking for other similarities between the two stories. Turns out, there's a lot.
The story that's told in Hedwig doesn't unfold chronologically. A lot of what the audience sees happens somewhat in flashback, as Hedwig is telling her story during her performances. For the purposes of comparison, I'm breaking it down into a neater timeline. (I still suggest you go watch the movie. Duh!)
[The best way to view Hedwig and the Angry Inch is to watch the movie, about 90 minutes, then watch the documentary "Whether You Like It or Not: the Story of Hedwig", then watch the movie again. It's amazing to see what they did with a $6,000,000 budget and some divine inspiration.]
SPOILER ALERT!
Hedwig is born Hansel Schmidt in pre-Wall Germany. He's the "slip of a girly boy" son of an American GI and an overbearing German mother, who flees to East Berlin as the Wall goes up, because, she says, it's better to be forever powerless than to be corrupted by your own power. Hansel grows up as flamboyantly as possible in this dark, austere environment.
"Our apartment was so small, that mother made me play in the oven. Late at night I would listen to the voices of the American masters, Tony Tennille, Debby Boone, Anne Murray who was actually a Canadian working in the American idiom. And then there were the crypto-homo rockers: Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie who was actually an idiom working in America and Canada. These artists, they left as deep an impression on me as that oven rack did on my face. To be an American in muskrat love, soft as an easy chair not even the chair, I am I said, have I never been mellow? And the colored girls sing... doo do doo do doo do doo... but never with the melody. How could I do it better than Tony or Lou... HEY BOY, TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE!"
At the ripe age of 26, Hansel is sunbathing nude, surrounded by barbed wire and debris, when Sergeant Luther Robinson, stumbles upon Hansel and tells him that he's so pretty he must be a girl. Sergeant Luther plies Hansel with Gummy Bears, the brightly-colored, sweeter versions of the German Gummi Bears, then with other candy. They fall in love, and Luther wants to marry Hansel. To be able to get him out of East Germany, Hansel will have to prove he's a woman. Luther and Hansel's mom, Hedwig, hatch a plan to get a sex-change operation for Hansel, then to give the new her Hedwig's passport. "To be free," Mom-Hedwig says, "one must give up a part of oneself."
The operation goes horribly wrong. Hedwig's incision closes up, and she's left with the angry inch. Luther takes her to Junction City, Kansas, where he leaves her for another man on their first anniversary. Hedwig takes on odd jobs ("mostly the jobs we call blow") and babysitting to make ends meet.
While babysitting the infant son of a General from the nearby Army base, she meets the General's 17-year-old son, Tommy Speck. Tommy is instantly drawn to Hedwig and goes to see her perform at a local shop with her band, comprised entirely of Korean-born Army wives. Tommy and Hedwig begin a mostly one-sided sexual affair, but they also begin writing songs together for Tommy's burgeoning music career. Hedwig gives Tommy his new identity of Tommy Gnosis. Just as Tommy is finally beginning to accept the reality of what Hedwig is, he panics and leaves her. He goes on to become an internationally famous rock star, performing the songs Hedwig wrote.
Hedwig gets a new band, the Angry Inch, made up of Eastern European immigrants. She keeps all of their passports to keep them from leaving her. At some point she marries Yitzhak, played by Miriam Shore. (The juxtaposition of Shore soprano harmonies with Mitchell's tenor melodies is outstanding.) Yitzhak wants to be a woman, wants to be Hedwig in a lot of ways. He seems to love Hedwig even though he's scared of her, but he becomes more and more bitter about their relationship as the film progresses. He auditions for the part of Angel in a cruise ship performance of Rent, but Hedwig tears up his passport when he confronts her and tries to leave.
Hedwig hires a new manager, Phyllis Stein (Andrea Martin), and goes on a tour that shadows that of Tommy Gnosis. While Tommy plays huge arenas, Hedwig and the Angry Inch play at the neighboring Bilgewater's, a chain of family restaurants whose patrons are mostly offended and disgusted by Hedwig's show. She does develop a small following of loyal fans who surround her, wearing their own giant, yellow foam hair that mimics Hedwig's signature blond wig.
Hedwig has simultaneously filed a lawsuit against Tommy for stealing her songs. She tries to get close to Tommy ("You know how much I don't like that word, stalking"), to try to force him into admitting he stole her work. She becomes more and more irrational and bitter as her journey unfolds. One night, she reverts to working as a prostitute, and she is unexpectedly picked up in a limo by Tommy Gnosis. He eventually relents and apologizes for stealing her songs, which it turns out he never understood anyway. They argue and are in a car accident. The story becomes public, and the tables are turned.
Hedwig does her last real show, at the Times Square Bilgewater's, and goes fucking nuts. All the pressure and the drama and the strife culminate in this intense climactic performance where she violently rips off her drag while the crowd and the band are agape.
There's a sudden cut to an all-white room, everyone dressed in white, where Hedwig sings "Midnight Radio", a song of celebration of "all the misfits and the losers" of the world who are brought together by music through their own darknesses. Hedwig gives Yitzhak her wig, encouraging Yitzhak to go and be his dream. In the final moments, Hedwig is brought face-to-face with Tommy, alone on a dark stage, singing his version of "Wicked Little Town". Hedwig is now more Hansel in smeared make-up, having lost all of the female trappings. Hansel/Hedwig walks naked down a dark alley into the night. FADE OUT.
Okay, so back to this Alice analogy. We're working from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, being the original work from which all other Alices derive. The comparisons of Hedwig to Alice don't follow exactly in chronological order, either, between the movie and the book, so bear with me.
Hansel in East Berlin is a young Alice, playing in a world that bores her. He/she is distracted by the White Rabbit (Sergeant Luther) and follows him down the rabbit hole that is the crazy process of the sex change operation. Hansel is brave and reluctant about being with Luther, i.e. growing and shrinking, as he takes the brightly-colored Gummy Bears and the American candy bars. It's a total EAT ME/DRINK ME moment.
Hansel's mother Hedwig is the Mouse that Alice first encounters after she falls to the bottom of the hole. Alice has already been battling with the beginnings of the identity crisis, shrinking and growing to fit her round peg through the square door hole. She is huge and cries great, giant tears, then shrinks and is trapped in the pool.
"O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!" [snip] The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing.
The elder Hedwig responds similarly to Hansel. She's never understood her son and why he can't just assimilate into the East German culture and relinquish his power to the forces that are greater than he. She seems to recognize that Hansel is drowning and helps push him to the dry banks, i.e. across the Wall to America.
The bands, both the one comprised of the Korean wives and the Angry Inch, are the birds on the bank and the other random, talking animals in the story. Their actions may have some momentary significance, but they mostly pass through the time as extraneous decoration to Hedwig's journey. She may interact with them, but it's often more to show dimensions of Hedwig than it is to illustrate anything about the musician. Much like the Dodo, the Dormouse, the Eaglet, etc.
Sergeant Luther (the White Rabbit) takes Hedwig (Alice) to Junction City, Kansas, and abandons her a year later in a trailer park. The trailer park is one of my favorite analogies in this whole comparison. I debated whether it was like the tea party (which is really Bilgewater's in all of its incarnations) or maybe the Queen of Hearts' croquet ground. But no! There's a not-so-well remembered scene in Alice where the white rabbit goes looking for the Duchess' gloves. He sees Alice and mistakes her for his maid servant, Mary Ann, and sends her into the house to get the gloves. She goes inside, but she starts to grow and gets so big that she's stuck in the house. A crowd outside the house throws rocks at her, which turn into little cakes that Alice eats and shrinks back to her normal size.
The trailer is the White Rabbit/Luther's house. Luther mistakes Hansel for a woman originally, and then still expects Hedwig to be a woman, even though the operation was botched. Hedwig gets stuck inside, trapped under the weight of her situation and her own identity. One of the best scenes in Hedwig happens here, the "Wig in a Box" performance. She sings about how she gets sad, not fitting in, and puts on different wigs to be different selves. The confident energy becomes so overwhelming that the sides of the trailer burst open to let her muchness out into the night.
Yitzhak is the Hatter. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Hatter explains to Alice that he and the March Hare are always stuck in time, having tea, because it's how he escapes decapitation by the Queen of Hearts for singing. Yitzhak often tries to sing his own song, in his own way, and is silenced by Hedwig. He is perpetually stuck in the maddening role of Hedwig's emotional punching bag. He is always seen wearing a bandana or a wig, never a bare head.
Phyllis Stein is the Cheshire Cat. She appears kind of randomly to tease and advise Hedwig. There's actually a deleted scene in which Phyllis has a cell phone switch installed into the roof of her mouth. To make her phone work, she has to click her tongue over and over. It's very reminiscent of the grin.
Hedwig's public crusade and attack against Tommy's plagiarism is very much like the trial in the King's court. The jury/public knows really very little about the actual facts and can only make judgments based on the absurdities they glimpse from time to time. There's a very large public gathering in the final Bilgewater's scene, which erupts into utter chaos, just like the Knave's trial.
Tommy Gnosis is certainly the Knave of Hearts. The Knave is put on trial for stealing the tarts. Tommy is accused of stealing Hedwig's tarts: her songs. Like the Knave, Tommy never really has a good explanation for what happens.
That covers most of the major characters, except my favorite: the Blue Caterpillar. Because I love the name Absolem that Tim Burton later gives the Caterpillar, I'm sticking with that for now. Absolem is a tiny, wiggling thing that obscures Alice's vision with his smoke screen. He taunts her and teases her, then tries to lead her toward the truth of her own identity. He builds and destroys her confidence and challenges her sexuality with his own phallic little body.
Do you get where I'm going with this??
Absolem, the Blue Caterpillar, is the Angry Inch. Not the band. The actual "one inch mound of flesh".
Hedwig is taunted and driven by the Inch, much as Alice is by Absolem. Both the Inch and Absolem control the relationship until the very end, when Hedwig and Alice respectively revolt against the madness surrounding them and wake from the crazy dreams they've been in.
And Hedwig certainly does wake. She becomes Hansel, reverting almost to his original form and state, though newly confident if unsteady.
Honestly, I was surprised by how many comparisons could be made between the two stories. Alice has been altered and changed and derived from so many times, that it's surprising when I see a new version of her. I have no idea if John Cameron Mitchell had any intention of having such parallels to Lewis Carroll. (I have searched online and found no reference to it anywhere.) Perhaps it works because Alice is so archetypical of the battle of the inner self with the outer perceptions.
No matter, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a masterful telling of one girl's struggle to really find herself in the midst of chaos and confusion and misunderstanding, all set to a kick-ass soundtrack. It's something every girl can relate to, as well as a few men I know. The added glittery glam and fanciness just make it that much better.
I'm pleased to say that I've had a really productive few days, writing-wise. Iceapalooza 2011 forced me to spend some time working. I managed a few blog posts, a few smaller pieces, and 11,000 words on my big fiction project. (I'm at 111,268, which translates to 207 formatted pages in Word.) Unfortunately, I've picked up a cold and haven't slept very well, between the coughing and just being keyed up from the cold meds.
My restless mind woke up this morning, debating about my next blog topic. I realized I haven't really delved into Through the Looking-Glass yet. Let's take a little trip, shall we?
Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There opens on a wintery afternoon. Alice is warm by the fire at home in the drawing room, watching her cat Dinah and two of her kittens, one black and one white. Dinah is busy bathing the patient white kitten, Snowball, while the little black one, Kitty, is playing and making kitten mischief. When Kitty demolishes on a ball of yarn that Alice has been rolling, Alice scoops her up and chides her for being a "wicked wicked little thing."
Alice lists the kitten's crimes of drinking her sister's milk and mewing while Dinah cleaned her. Alice remarks that Kitty would look exactly like Red Queen from her chess board, if only the kitten would sit up and fold its arms. Of course the kitten isn't cooperative in Alice's little game of "Let's Pretend." (What cat ever is?)
So to punish it, she held it up to the Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was, "--and if you're not good directly," she added, "I'll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like that?"
Alice goes on to describe Looking-glass House, which looks exactly like her own house, in mirrored reverse. She explains to Kitty how everything there is the same but different, how the Looking-glass House milk is perhaps not good to drink, and how she would like to explore the tiny bit of passage she can see at the back of the parlor there. As Alice admonishes Kitty to play Let's Pretend and journey through the looking glass, the glass of the giant hearth mirror begins to "melt away, just like a bright silvery mist."
In another moment, Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. "So I shall be as warm as I was in the old room," thought Alice: "warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and ca'n't get at me!"
Everything Alice sees after she steps into Looking-glass House is very different from the "quite common and uninteresting" things she can see in the old room. The chess board is askew, and the pieces are walking about the board and talking. When Alice tries to intercede helpfully in the game, the pieces can't hear or see her and are frightened by being moved around by a huge, invisible force. She sees a book and finds all the words are written backwards, in mirror text, of course. The poem is "Jabberwocky", which she doesn't understand at all.
Alice reminds herself to explore the rest of the house before she has to go back through the Looking-glass, and she decides to see the garden. She finds that she doesn't have to walk to get down the stairs, that she can float, and must grab onto the door-post to stop herself from floating away.
She was getting a little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find herself walking again in the natural way.
She goes out to the garden but is shocked to find that the paths don't work like she expects. They' twist and turn "more like a corkscrew than a path!" The paths don't lead in the direction she wants to go, and she spends a long time getting turned around, but she always ends up back at the house. She encounters the talking flowers, which are beautiful but argumentative--both with each other and with Alice. They're judgmental and difficult, not at all what Alice assumed flowers would be like, you know, if they could talk.
Alice is suddenly confronted by the Red Queen from the chess board, who is the same size as Alice now. In anticipated Carroll style, the story just changes and moves on. There's rarely any resolution to the immediacy of the situation, but that style of storytelling lends itself well to the dream-like state of Wonderland, as perceived by Alice. She goes on through a series of loosely-connected events until she wakes and returns to her normal drawing room, with Dinah and Snowball and Kitty.
The Looking-glass House isn't all Alice thinks it's cracked up to be. It's not an exact opposite, it's a mirror.
For a quick refresher, mirrors work by reversing all asymmetrical objects, meaning objects that aren't superposable on their mirror images. (Left-right reversal is a recurring theme in both of Carroll's Alice stories and nonsense writing.) Corkscrews also come up again and again in Through the Looking-glass. Corkscrews are helices, asymmetric three-dimensional curves that spiral in reverse in the mirror.
So even when it seems that Alice has compensated for the visual reversal, everything still moves differently. Except Alice. Her right and left still function like they're supposed to; she still moves to and fro mostly as she expects her body to move, even when the world around her is in complete juxtaposition to herself.
I think everyone wonders from time to time what it would be like to step through the Looking-glass into the giant mirror-image of our own lives, to see what it would be like to live as a slightly different version of our selves. I also think we'd be surprised, like Alice, to find that things aren't as oppositely perfect as we'd imagined. It would be incredibly hard to function in that place where everything is backwards while you, yourself, are forwards. So much oppositional concurrence would be unnerving and distracting after a while.
As I've talked about before, the mirror is not always my greatest ally. To rely on a backwards, superficial image of myself to define who I am is screwy enough, but to be forced to take the perceived imperfections with me, the ones that stare back at me so glaringly, would kind of defeat the purpose of trying somewhere new.
Plus, I'd be afraid of what I couldn't see in the mirror. All of the little things hiding behind the big things. It's scary enough to live in a world where I can anticipate how the unexpected might move, but to be constantly blind-sided by complete chaos would send me down my own corkscrewing path.
There's a certain enjoyment in wondering how my life would be different on the other side of the mirror. Ultimately I find that I'd rather stay in my own parlor, curled up by the fire, and watch my kittens creating mischief their own mischief, while I ready my yarn for creating something new.
