Sunday, August 22, 2010

Good Like Sunkist, Made Me Wanna Know: Who Done This?

The answer to the above is, quite obviously, Marky Mark. I love Mark Wahlberg. I mean, oh my God I just absolutely love him. Usually, I don't really go in for beefcake, so the response Wahlberg elicits from my lady parts is a somewhat unexpected one. For the most part, the men I crush on, celebrity-wise, are sort of weird looking, dark and/or mysterious, waifish or schlubby, artsy and probably gay. That's just my style, I guess. And then there's Mark. Oh, Mark. Mark Wahlberg makes me want to put a giant, poster-sized version of his Calvin Klein advertisement on my wall and draw a big red heart around his head in permanent marker, along with "Sab & Marky Mark 4EVA." You know, just like Mark himself did in the masterpiece "Fear"; just knifed "Nicole 4EVA" all up on those glistening pecs. I also consider that Mark is not so much acting in any of his films as he is displaying facets of his actual persona. Thus, I've not bothered to learn the name of Marky's character in "Fear," even though I think about "Fear" and how it applies to my life at least once a week, because as far as I'm concerned that was just Marky Mark demonstrating what would happen if he had a psychotic break and Alyssa Milano were hanging around wearing a high waisted thong.

Maybe I like Mark Wahlberg because he doesn't seem like he'd be very smart and there's something strangely comforting about the thought of falling asleep in the strong arms of a Boston accent. On the other hand, maybe I like Marky Mark because I think he's secretly SO smart. Like, tortured genius level of intellect. Maybe I like that I can totally picture Mark Wahlberg secretly sitting in a dimly lit room, reading, oh, I dunno, "Waiting for Godot" or some other piece of existential literature, pausing, mid page, to look into the single flickering, fluorescent light and saying, so quietly not even he is sure he's spoken aloud "Why doesn't anybody take me SERIOUSLY?" And maybe that question would be fair. Mark Wahlberg works so hard! Just think of all the enjoyable films he's been in! Maybe not GREAT films, but films you'd watch. Films you'd watch and probably say "Oh, that's Mark Wahlberg. You know, I actually really enjoy watching him on camera. He seems to be a pretty hard working actor. I wonder why nobody takes him seriously?"

There's no reason Mark Wahlberg shouldn't be taken seriously; he seems like a great guy! I picture Mark hanging with all of his bros at a basketball court in Southie (is Marky Mark even from Southie? I just assume everyone from Boston is from a hardscrabble, Catholic, Southie upbringing). Mark is obviously wearing some sort of stained wife beater, or possibly no shirt at all. Look at that crazy Mark! I know he sleeps around, but he just seems so sweet! I bet he's really good to his mom. See how he ties that bandana around his head?! Watch as he sensually poses against a chain link fence. Oh, now he's using two cinderblocks as weights! I guess that's how they do it in hardscrabble Southie! No real weights, just two cinderblocks on either end of some industrial rebar stolen from the foundation of the new bank building that seems like it will just NEVER be finished. But then, that's Southie: broken dreams as far as the eye can see. The only distraction from disappointment is to hone one's shimmering pectorals and make love under the influence of Guinness on all those cold, cold Boston nights. Is that the woman who sings on "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)?" You know, the kind of fat lady with the impressive wail that they replaced in the video? God, that skinny bitch's lip sync-ing was AWFUL. Just the worst. America's obsession with weight is so embarrassing.

I really don't know very much about the actual life of Mark Wahlberg. My research for this blog consisted of watching the "Good Vibrations" video on repeat and looking at a lot of shirtless photos. Didn't Marky Mark get married not long ago? To a lady he had a kid or two with? I'm not entirely sure about this because it's the sort of news I would hear, process, then choose to ignore upon deciding its effect on my fantasies of having a Funky Bunch reunion tour made in my honor would be entirely too negative. I did recently read a blurb where Mark himself claimed he was in talks to make a movie with teen heartthrob, Justin Bieber. My response to this gossip was first "WHAT?!" and then "OMG FINALLY!!" Mark needs to be on film more often. Particularly in the sort of fun, frothy films which would star Justin Bieber and allow me to fantasize about hanging out with my husband, Mark, and his little bro (though they're not genetically related, just close from their time in the orphanage in Southie,) Justin. "Mark!" I'd say "Don't fight over me!" I'd have to say this a lot because Mark would often be jealous of strange men. "Oh baby," he'd respond, face streaked with tears, belying his tough talk, "Oh, baby it just drives me crazy to see anyone look at you that way." And I would smile, because I'd know he'd care. Then, my love, Mark Wahlberg, would rip off his shirt. "You drive, Biebz," he'd command, one beefy arm looped round my shoulder, and we'd all share a good laugh as the Corvette stuttered into the sunset, because Justin is not a very good driver. Not a very good driver at all.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Prop 8 Overturned: Welcome to the Land of the Obvious!

Well, it's been a week. A test of the human will to overcome small trials, which is why I haven't been here to bloggify in a while. I'm sorry, I know there are many people who have been bitterly mourning this absence, but don't worry! There will be some typically moaning coverage of my experiences, filled with the angst and ennui you crave. There will be both durm and strang aplenty. Right now, though, I just want to take a little time out and post about something other than myself, a person I'm finding particularly boring at the moment. I'm tired and I'm just sort of barely able to eke out a little strang, and the ability to durm again seems far-off. So, something else! Let's talk! Or, rather, let me talk at you and you look interested, kay?

So, Prop 8 got repealed. Which is a good thing. A great thing, really. I've been listening to Culture Club all day in celebration. Of course, if you let yourself think about it too much,it's a victory that starts to look a little dingy. A little small. All these years, all this technology and modern learning and we celebrate with thanks and joy and relief that people who want to get married are allowed to do so? In a single state? Why should this even be an issue? Why should it even be a question? And of course, the decision to overturn this decision wasn't made by the people. In truth it really had nothing much to do with the people at all, no glorious demonstrations of public opinion, no sea changes in the mind set of the majority. Don't get me wrong, I still think this is a victory, and one worth praising. I think that people are slowly, achingly slowly, starting to realize that maybe all human beings deserve human rights, but what I want to talk about now is those other people. Those people, that majority, who believed gay marriage is wrong, and more than likely still do. And belief is, I think, an essential word, here. It seems the whole argument over gay marriage and, by extension, the belief that maybe, just possibly, there is a whole spectrum of sexual interest and definition and that all of it could be worth respecting, comes down to two sides, and those sides argue with either belief or logic. To me and many others like me (including those judges in California), it seems obvious, it seems logical that gay marriage should be legal and that gays should have rights. For a lot of people though, voting people, they cannot shake the belief that this lifestyle is wrong. And that, the more I think about and the older I get, just makes me feel very sad. For them.

Yesterday I was at the grocery store and I saw a guy I went to high school with. He was about two years behind me in school, and I didn't know him all that well, but we were involved in some of the same activities (theater, mostly) and so I was familiar with him peripherally. He had always been, as far as I could tell, flamboyantly, obviously, unquestionably gay. In school I just assumed it was a known fact and didn't give the situation any further thought. Frankly, I found the boy a little on the annoying side. Sort of catty. But, beyond that, I didn't really spend much time considering him or find him all that interesting. Then one day I said something to a friend about him and she told me how he was taking a girl from another school to our homecoming. Well that's sweet of him to do, I said, picking at my lunch and not particularly interested.

"Why is that sweet?" asked my friend.

Well, I told her, it's sweet of him to take that girl so that she'll be able to have a date.

My friend crinkled up her forehead, looking confused, and told me she wasn't sure what I meant since he was dating the girl, since she was, after all his girlfriend. Well at this I did a spit take. I think I probably laughed, too, which isn't very polite, I know, but, I mean, really? I mean seriously? There was no way in hell this guy was straight, just absolutely no way, and I told my friend that. She shrugged. She's his girlfriend, she repeated. Well, I didn't say anything more. I had no doubt in my mind that the kid was anything but straight, but it wasn't really any of my business.

Not long after that, one of my best friends came out. While none of her friends cared, and although I knew, from the experience of other friends, that coming out in our community was no small step, I was flabbergasted by the cruelty she was met with. Did she get beaten up? No. She wasn't shoved into lockers or punched or kicked or anything like that, but the viciousness with which people reacted to her was shocking nonetheless. I remember one day, as I waited with her and several other people in the library for classes to start, a girl walking up to this friend of mine. I didn't know the girl, and neither did my friend, but there she was. "So, what," the girl said, her voice filled with contempt, with disgust, "you like pussy now?"

I couldn't imagine what sort of stunted, twisted sense of morality would cause a stranger to walk up to someone just to suggest they hated them, and purely for who they were, not because of something they had done or an offense they had committed. Youth can make people cruel. All those hormones and the confusion and all that, and maybe that girl, that nasty, cruel girl, got older and realized that she had been unkind. I certainly hope so, but I sort of doubt it. I noticed, too, that the boy I had peripherally known, with his girlfriend and his homecoming plans, hung out with a specific group. Rich kids. Popular ones. And, well, the way things worked, it wasn't that anyone I knew who had come out really changed at all after they announced their orientation. None of them suddenly switched from mild-mannered, church attending, clean cut young little lads and ladies and morphed into disco-dancing, fruity drink swilling, bumping and grinding fags or wallet-chain wearing, dog training dykes. Their personalities didn't change, but before they came out, for many of them, they had friends they no longer did once they announced they were gay. And this isn't even going into the shades of sexuality, the mutability of gender, the subtle variants of sexual definition. You were gay or you weren't. I'd always pretty calmly and quietly presented myself as bi, which was seen for the most part as extravagant and bizarre and impossible to understand, the reaction being mostly "What?" Followed by "Do you have naked pillow fights with your friends?" You were either gay or you weren't, and if you were you had better at least be one of those Cosmo holding fruits with good hair and a swish in your hips or those lezzies with a thick neck, a buzz cut and an interest in home repair. Something that could be easily understood. Something that could be boxed up, nice and neat, and shoved to the side. This is us. That, over there, is them. Freakish. Cartoonish. Obscene. As long as that boy could keep saying he was straight and talking about being straight and going with girls, well, that was all right. We could agree not to notice. We could turn our heads.

As with many things, I've come to regard the world as not much more than a macrocosm of the sort of stupid shit that happened in high school. When I see news coverage of anti-gay marriage protesters, red-faced and straining, spitting with anger, I am mostly just reminded of that petty little girl who was so unkind to my friend. It makes me sad. I think most people who believe, passionately and without question, that to be gay is wrong, that it is a choice and a perversion, believe so fully because they haven't had the chance to feel otherwise. They have come from families or communities where this belief is drilled into them from their childhood, and they are so consistently and for so many years denied access to any other opinion that they don't even seek out such education anymore. Their faith is unwavering. They genuinely believe whole huge chunks of people, who are different or believe differently or act differently than they do will be going to hell. And that makes me sad. What a terrible life that must be, to carry around so much hate. What a terrible weight that must be, to think that you are forever walking a very narrow line between right and damnation, eternal and full of pain. And then there are others, a smaller portion, who share many of the qualities of this first group but add to it unmitigated hatred. Cruelty. Anger. All too often, violence. These people are dangerous, but I can't help but feel a little sad for them, too. They are a sort who will never be able to let themselves go and laugh and be happy, because their cruelty to others is almost always turned toward themselves as well. People like this disgust me and make me tired, but I don't want to approach them and I don't want to argue with them. There is no point. Their punishment is having to live with a person like themselves.

There are, of course, less zealous and extreme impediments to equality. There are many more people who just feel confused and put off by people who are openly gay than there are people who believe in the unspeakable atrociousness of gay marriage. Most of these confused folks are just sort of bumbling but well-meaning. I genuinely believe that, although so many horrible things happen at the hands of humans on a regular basis, most people are, for the most part, good. They have jobs and friends and maybe they're not as sensitive as they should be, but they're not evil. Should people be educated in acceptance? Absolutely. There is, without question, a great deal of danger in the sort of everyday, innocent ignorance that is so common in our country (and probably the whole world). I think, though, that the majority of humans can learn to accept one another on the basis of being human, and that's hopeful. I feel sad for those that can't, and I do think the are some who can't, accept people as they are for precisely who they are. I feel sad for them but I don't particularly want to waste my time attempting to convince them to believe otherwise, because it's their loss (and it really is a terrible loss). So Prop 8 got overturned. That guy I saw at the grocery store is in college now, and out. And maybe things can change.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Fuck It, and Other Forms of Inconquerable Optimism

Some days I wake up, usually around three in the afternoon, and think “Oh, fuck. One of those days. At what point would it seem socially acceptable for me to take a nap?” Usually the answer is either “Never” or “9:30.” I once had a therapist (oh God, how gross that looks written out) lean forward during a session, after I had finally loosed the great floodgates of disappointment and listed out all the things that were bugging me at the moment, and look at me, after an extended uncomfortable pause, with the earnest, faux-warm (faurm?) gaze only professionals are capable of and say “You know, sometimes, the best thing to do is just go to sleep.” Yeesh! I mean, really! Although, to be fair, I guess she was sort of on the right track because on some days (days like today), when things feel weirdly dim and everything seems hard to stomach for both no reason at all and every reason fathomable, I do want to “just go to sleep.” Preferably for about a decade. Paycheck earned, madam!



I think days like this day, those days, are familiar to everyone on the planet. You open your eyes and can tell immediately, in the lean of the calendar on your wall or the way even the news' anchor's hair looks mussed, that things just aren't going to go the way you'd like. It's the sort of feeling that suggests its best to stay indoors and avoid open flame. If you funnel any liquids from one container to another, you're likely to wind up with a spill. If you try to negotiate a peace agreement between two arguing friends, you're likely to end up somehow admitting that yeah, you think they're fat. It is, put simply, like finding a black fly. In your Chardonnay.



My Dad came up to me earlier offering an Oreo. Just an Oreo, a singular cookie, as a sort of silent gesture of encouragement. It was helpful, although I was full. I guess he could sense my foul mood. I'd imagine the first clue was when I let the pot of noodles I was making boil over about three times before finally bowling them up and eating silently in my room. So Dad offers me the Oreo and I say “Thank you,” and think “Eh, fuck it.” I'm prone to moping, and, well, fuck it. I've grown accustomed to my cases of these days and I usually end up just sort of fucking it and doing something else. Quietly. I like to make lists, too. Yes, lists. When I'm feeling down in the dumps or—whatever, I make lists of things I like. Nice things. Like red-flavored things. Popsicles, ring pops, packets of Kool-Aid, anything with that special bite that may be named cherry or strawberry or watermelon but in reality is just vaguely—red-flavored. I like those things. I also like going to the grocery store at night, and songs that sound fun and jingly but whose lyrics are unmistakably sad. There are lots of little things I like; meeting strangers through their dogs and tacky old jewelry and cleaning the bathroom. Yes, cleaning the bathroom. I like that. I like making people take me for drives and leaning out the window like a Labrador, just to feel the air and I like the way, when you look at someone when they're not thinking, you can easily imagine the little kid they once were. I like the entire, seven-minute video for Mariah Carey's “Honey.” I like taking naps. And the rest? Well, fuck it for now.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Old/New

Not too long ago, someone that had once been important to me contacted me, after a fairly extended silence, over the internet and out of the blue. It was weird. Exceedingly, uncomfortably weird. I would have never contacted them of my own choice, I dreaded the possibility of running into them at the grocery store or the movie theater or any other number of innocuous locations where we'd be forced to make polite conversation, and then, poof, there they were again. No explanation. And, well, I guess that was fine. The message they sent was polite and fluffy, the subtext saying both “I miss you” and simultaneously “I'm a liar.” I didn't know how to respond. I didn't respond. I found myself wishing, with surprising desperation, that I had something stunning to report. That I had won a prestigious award. That I had a book being published by a top company, and forecasts suggested it was going to be a hit, both critical and monetary. That I was engaged to someone startlingly attractive and rich, or at least startlingly intelligent and fun. That I had a life. I did not, in fact, have any of these things. Not even close. Suddenly, with that single, unexpected communication, I felt separated from myself, and when viewed from outside, my life's horrible shabbiness snapped into clear focus. What was I doing? What had I done? For years I had insulated myself carefully, working earnestly on my writing, surrounded, for the first time, by like-minded individuals, it seemed I was, perhaps, not so terribly mediocre as I often feared I was. My parents were constant supporters. Their pride that I was in college, that I was going to finish college (one of the only people in my extended family to have done so), had been such a constant, buoying force that, for the most part, I brushed aside questions of whether I couldn't be doing something better. Somehow, this brief message erased all that. I could count the number of times I had been outside of my home state on one hand, on half of one hand. I had never visited another country, had never even been on an airplane, or seen the Pacific Ocean. For God's sake, I couldn't drive.



I know, in theory, that these are not the things which necessarily make a person interesting, or signify success. I know that Emily Dickinson wrote some of the most sophisticated poetry in the English language and barely left her home. I didn't have to feel inadequate because I wasn't some extraordinary figure who did extraordinary things. I didn't have to look good on paper. In theory. That's not how I really felt, though, not how I really feel. Graduation gaining close, I felt suddenly suspended in the ether. I was too old not to have done something better, or at least to have a clue how to accomplish the things I wanted. I was, at the same time, too young. I was too young for anything, too young to feel defeated or tired. And I did feel weirdly tired. “I don't want to be a dried up old cunt” I said to a friend, and I felt I was in immediate danger of becoming just that: a dried up old cunt before the age of twenty-three. I spent so much of my time tucking myself away to work on my creative pursuits, and for what gain? It all felt, suddenly, very silly. Very small.



Then nothing happened. Or rather, lots of things happened, quotidian, minor, occasionally beautiful, but not record-breaking. No one offered me a book deal. No one gave me any awards. I graduated, and then I came back home to my parents. I moved into my old room. Cleaning and re-organizing at the beginning of the summer, I found all sorts of strange detritus, perfectly preserved. Drawings from my sophomore year of high school. Old notes. Some things, the more uncomfortable remembrances, I threw away, quietly and without ceremony. Most things my mother insisted we keep. My mother seems to have been preparing my entire life, saving every evidence of my creative urgings, for an unnamed future where I will be famous and far away. All I thought, digging through notebooks and piles of sketchpads, was that I did not feel any different than I did at seventeen. It seemed as though circumstances had shoved me back into the approximate position I was in during high school, the same players on the board, the same location, when I was endlessly confused and felt impossibly, conspicuously out of place. And now, several years along, I still felt endlessly confused and out of place. Reading over my old writings, I thought about the person I thought I would become. I was nowhere near that sophisticated. I had imagined myself turning into a woman of immense confidence. I knew I would never be a great beauty, but I pictured myself gaining a sense of poise. I would walk into a room with all sorts of bangles on my wrists (I always imagined myself as the sort of lady who would wear great, exotic silver bangles on her wrists) and people would want to know who I was. They would know I was someone, they would sense how smart and funny and cultured I was, and would pass glasses of nice champagne into my hand. Here I was though, sweaty and thirty minutes away from the nearest town, peeling through old magazines on my hands and knees.



To tell the truth, what I have right now is an absurd luxury, and I am grateful for it. What I have right now is time. Time to sit around and write about things and think about them and analyze. College seemed such a brief, shocking interlude, an extraordinary dream. I pull my diploma out of its hiding place occasionally so that I can run my fingers over its lettering. Yes, it was real. I have the time right now to do that. To breathe. It's funny to be back here again. It's funny the way everything has changed and yet nothing has; I am still five-foot eight-inches tall, still awkward at introductions and confused by directions. I like the quiet here, away from the hustling world. There is time, now. I listen to the sounds of my mother canning beans in the kitchen. In the afternoons, I notice the growth of the hibiscus. I miss you. I'm a liar.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Desperately Funny

My mother worries. It's a nearly palpable force. She frets over my happiness, my health, how best to feed the dogs. Sometimes she says it out loud, when I seem particularly quiet one day or a burger looks too pink in the center: “I worry.” In our family, we refer to the syndrome as “being a Braithwaite Mother,” named for my great grandmother, the font of all concern, feeler of hot foreheads. I've inherited the trait. I think about the shocking unfairness of the world, wonder at the unkindness of humans. I fear for the safety of my friends and loved ones, spend inordinate amounts of time considering all the ways in which things could go wrong. I wake up in the middle of the night to check that my dog, a pug who occasionally suffers from seizures (not uncommon in the breed), is still breathing normally. For the most part, all of my concerns fill my head so densely they end up just sort of—balancing out. It becomes a dull hum, what I like to think of as a general sense of even-keeled malaise, but I worry. Sometimes, I worry too much.


There's really nothing all that extraordinary about my neuroses, or what I consider to be their more vicious, unkind manifestation: my recurring periods of major depressive disorder. A silly, rather vague and distant term, that: major depressive disorder. From what I've learned, what bored doctors have told me, it is essentially being miserable beyond common gauges of unhappiness, clinically worried, for periods lasting longer than three months. Major depressive disorder is likely to repeat itself, meaning, to appear, mysterious and angry, after months or years of wellness. I have read statistics which suggest that, with each resurgence, major depression grows more likely to end in suicide. Not a very hopeful outlook, to be sure. What really rubs me the wrong way about being depressed, about being a person who struggles to see the light in things, is the way it seems to be viewed as somehow glamorous. Even worse, I'm creatively inclined. What has always been for me a fact of life, a hovering beast, gets somehow tangled up with the things I do and becomes magical to certain outside viewers. I'm not cold and shut off, I'm mysterious. I'm not nauseatingly unhappy, I'm artistically tortured. The truth of the matter is, I have always felt about this uncontrollable facet of my character, more than anything else, embarrassed. It's embarrassing to be bedridden with an enormous, inexplicable sadness. It is, as far as I'm concerned, a demonstration of unspeakable selfishness. It's hard for people to handle these periods of depression, and the infuriating helplessness that results. For every acquaintance who can view these moments from a distance, who see the inescapable malady as a strangely romantic, soft-lit occurrence, who imagine the scene of Virginia Woolf's suicide as a quiet, dignified and mysterious, if tragic affair, there are the loved ones who must deal with the day to day reality of the matter. The less sensitive ones wish you would snap out of it, as I often do, too. The more familiar caretakers grow grim and accustomed to their duties. Making sure I eat. Clearing the medicine cabinets. Shoving me out of bed.


I'm not sure where our fascination, cultural and personal, with chronically unhappy souls comes from. I read a lot of articles about the topic, and the seeming connection, little understood, between depressive disorders and creative tendencies, trying vainly to make sense of the thing, or find some purpose to it. Mostly, my own experiences with depression seem boring and gruesome, encounters I would not like to repeat. I don't like who I am when I'm depressed, and I doubt anyone in their right mind likes me much either. It terrifies and bewilders me, then, that anyone would find any of this interesting, much less desirable. I mean, I read my share of depression literature, I love sad songs as much as the next guy. Christ, I even have a tattoo from a Sylvia Plath poem, but I've never wanted to be sad. I spend a lot of my time actively thinking about, worrying over, being happy.


What that yearning for contentment translates into, in my experience, is humor. Meaning a sense of humor; a refined awareness of the inherent absurdity of even the most terrible moments. Feeling rather disenchanted one day recently, I asked my best friend and fellow in clinical mood disasters “Do you think that we're funny because we're miserable?”

“Oh my yes.”

Meaning, not that people who are happy can't necessarily be funny, but that there's something about being on the wrong end of the sphincter that is despair, that great orifice of life constricting tighter and tighter around you until the very air you breathe tastes of the fecal residue of hopelessness, that makes you more able to appreciate the humor of, well, despair. In fact, I would say the majority of people who don't know me well wouldn't guess that I have been, on more than one occasion, very seriously depressed. Pessimistic? Sure. Sarcastic and cynical? Unquestionably. Seriously depressed? No way. And I much prefer it that way. I'd rather be wisecracking, verging on mean, than an object of pity, or concern. Quite frankly, this is the only good thing I can see coming out of familiarity with the heavier side of life: the ability to find the humor in things, to step back and say “Oh god, we are fucked. I am fucked. The whole planet is fucked. Oh my god I cannot even believe how fucked we all are. That is absurd! One would not think I would have the ability to be as fucked as I currently am! By god, that is hilarious!”



The last time I was majorly depressed was during my sophomore year of college. Desperately unhappy, I finally gave in and went to a counselor. The school counselor. My visits to therapists have never been very successful. I'm not comfortable talking about myself, by which I mean I would rather throw someone over the railing of a building than be forced to talk about how I genuinely feel about something, so my experience with mental health professionals has usually consisted of half an hour of uncomfortable, silent staring. And so it was with the counselor, a terribly, uh, well-meaning, woman who insisted I call her Bethany (not a very comforting name for a therapist). Well-meaning Bethany heard enough of my worrying to shuffle me along to a doctor, to be prescribed anti-depressants which I had, until that point, steadfastly refused. And so I found myself sitting on the examination table, being asked about how long I had been feeling sad while Lou Bega's “Mambo No. 5” blasted through the in-office speakers. I mean, blasted. Fuck.


Not too long after, I went home for a break. My parents were, understandably and characteristically, worried. We went to Wal-Mart one afternoon, the three of us. It was the first time they would let me out of their sight. I sort of wondered around the store, zonked on Wellbutrin, low on sleep, until I stopped in the middle of a back aisle. There was one of those displays they sometimes do for something new, or popular. It was this plush, robotic, hot pink pony, standing in its own plastic paddock. Jesus Christ, I thought. Jesus Christ, what the fuck is this? I looked at the price tag. I think it was somewhere in the $500 plus range. Oh, Jesus, I thought, my slow, sleepy brain churning, this is fucking terrible. This is the worst thing I've ever seen my life. Somewhere, a parent is buying this. Right? I mean, right? Why else would it be in the middle of the fucking aisle? People are buying this. I looked down. Attached to the—fence—by a plastic tether was a plastic carrot. I read the sign next to it. Apparently, the pony was supposed to mime eating the carrot. I held the thing up to the pony's nose. My God, I mused, shoving the carrot at the pink mouth, some poor kid out there just wants to be with their parents, just wants to ride a pony at the goddamn petting zoo and those rich bastards won't even make the time to do it. They Won't. Even. Do it. They'll buy the fucking robotic pony instead. By the time my dad found me, I was disconsolately jabbing the carrot into the plush head again and again. I turned and my eyes welled up with tears. The whole thing seemed terribly poignant “I can't--” I choked “I can't get the pony to eat.”

That's a funny story right? I think so. Really, I do. It's so silly, so over-the-top absurd, but that's genuinely how things looked to me then. I can see the funny now because I remember the intensity of the feeling then. I can recognize both how genuinely sad and how genuinely strange the moment was. And I am thankful for that. I feel as if I'm not thankful for a great many things, or not thankful enough. Ingrateful. I am, however, grateful, not to have been unhappy, but to have come out of it. Though I often find myself worrying, “being a Braithwaite mother,” feeling sorry for myself, I can see the humor of it, too. You laugh or you cry, right? Sometimes both make sense. And anyway I can step back from things, sometimes, and see the moment crystallized, perfect. I can look at the fall day and say to myself “Oh, this is nice. I will remember this. I will be grateful for it.” All too often, I worry. That's a part of me that's next to impossible to change. And, I don't know, fuck it: I worry. Let's smoke a joint or something.

The Future Is Not What It Used To Be

I really, desperately want a job. I think. Mostly I want all the things that having a job represents, the whole glamorous, big girl lifestyle: an apartment, shiny, smiling friends I'd regularly share meals with at classy and interesting ethnic restaurants (sometimes I would even pick up the tab with a laugh!). My fantasy vision of what my post-collegiate life would or should look like seems based, strangely and almost exclusively, on a very '90's state of mind. I seem oddly stuck in a Gen X frame of reference that, in this year of the lord two-thousand and ten, is desperately out of date and likely non-existent. Within the sillier, dreamier corners of my ever-cynical mind, I can't help but cling to these little visions. My brain seems convinced, in spite of itself, that there are essentially two options for the future, I will either A) get a low-paying job at record shop/used book store/small and progressive gallery, have a smallish apartment, decorated with a lot of door beads and Bush posters, retain my artistic credibility and be fairly happy, if still fundamentally existentially confused or I will B) get a better paying job, on the fast track to being a very high-paying job, in the more business oriented sector, working in the record industry/publishing/large and established art museum, have a smallish apartment, with sleek lines and gleaming white cabinets, not have enough time for personal art creation and be fairly happy, if still fundamentally existentially confused. I will be either Ethan Hawke or Ben Stiller. The choice is mine.


Of course, I realize that life never was and never will be quite this simple. Even in more profitable days, I know that the slow and gruesome transition to adulthood was a messy business, that Ethan Hawke in real life cheated on Uma Thurman (one of the most beautiful women in the world!) and Ben Stiller is a big jerk. The truth is that the 90's are just the home of my most comforting memories. I have a brother and a sister who graduated from high school in '93 and '94, respectively, and so the movies and the music that seem most familiar, most calming, and, in some strange way, most real are those that my siblings had around when I was a kid. In my head, those were the days of endless, easy possibility. There is part of me that still sees my sister as an impossibly glamorous creature, burning incense and listening to the Black Crows in her room, sneaking off to smoke joints with my cousins in the woods. And my brother, who mourned the death of Kurt Cobain with conviction, and took me for rides in his car, blasting Alice in Chains, will remain, in some part of my imagination, an edgy, cool character, funny and without a care.

The truth of them both is, of course, much more complex. My sister was pregnant with her son when she was younger than I am now, my brother was living on his own, with a serious girlfriend, by the age of 24. Still, I cling to these images, to the imagined world that died before I could take part in it, because to me there seemed something special about that time, something essentially hopeful, and, despite my play at vicious pessimism, I remain hopelessly hopeful. As I once heard Aimee Mann say in an interview "I consider myself an optimist. That's why I'm constantly disappointed." And, indeed, though Generation X seemed to define itself by moping, perhaps even bitterness, all that angst and ennui was really just disappointment. The culture of Gen X was all about longing for something better, and to long for such a thing indicates an unstoppable belief that there was, in fact, something better to be attained. While the 90's was guilty of navel-gazing, of an excessive and increasingly unfashionable deadly earnestness, my own generation seems, as a whole, well, a hole. A big black hole of nothing, tired of everything. To be cool is to be an ironic portrayal of a vapid culture that may or may not be tongue-in-cheek to begin with, a reflection of a reflection of a reflection until it seems impossible to tell what is genuine feeling and what is not. The joke is that there is no joke.

So I look for jobs, although probably not as hard or with as much zest as I should be looking, and I apply for some, although nothing has yet turned up. I pick through the offerings in D.C.,the nearest city to me, close enough to commute. It's a city I don't particularly like, and the offerings I find don't encourage me much. I don't want any of these jobs. I find myself feeling as if, were I called tomorrow and offered one of them, with benefits and a decent paycheck, I don't even know if I would take it. Of course beggars shouldn't be choosers, and the offer as yet has not happened, though if it did, if it does, I will take it. You see, I have hopes to move somewhere else, and that takes money. More specifically, I have hopes to move to the Pacific Northwest, to Portland or Seattle, places I have never even seen but I view, foolishly and unrealistically, as rainy paradises. I imagine these to be places where the things I like about the 90's still magically hang around. Places where people are shockingly earnest about their music and their art and riding bikes to work. Silly, really, to think that any place is perfect, but I imagine if I can make it out there, I can have the life I imagine, with the beaded curtains and the decent job, the smiling friends in the restaurant.

So, what does it all mean? What does it mean that I, and many others I know, yearn for a bigger life, spend lots of time envisioning existence in some other place, where things will be easy and good? Does my generation feel an unearned world-weariness? Are we confronted by the feel of a world winding down, falling apart, or do we just selfishly fancy ourselves to be more sophisticated, aware and worthy than we actually are? Well, fuck if I know. I figure being young is pretty much all about being stupid and confused and sure that your feelings are more clear, meaningful and deep than anyone who has ever lived before, and that's nothing new. I do know that I'm lucky, though. I'm lucky I have a family willing to let me move back in and slouch around jobless. I'm lucky I have parents I love and who humor me when I say I'm writing a book, just so I can feel like I'm doing something. And, anyway, things will come together somehow, perhaps not in the way I imagine or long for, but they will come. I hope.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

My Lady Icons: the Pursuit of Being Beautiful

When I was around five years old I remember my mother showing me a music video. Strange, that memory; this was before we had cable at the house,but, still, the image persists. And what a series of images they were. The music was itself alien, a strange synthetic pulse, but beautiful anyway. Dark. And then the woman singing the music. Well, I remember watching quietly, staring at her narrow-shouldered, flickering form on the screen. She was, I thought, quite possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, was quite possibly the most beautiful woman in the world. There she was, talking about how strange and scary desire can be (although I didn't understand the intricacies of all that just yet) while wearing a carefully tailored men's suit, her hair buzzed short and dyed a confrontational shade of orange. She was not pretty in the way most women I had yet seen were presented as pretty, she was, in fact, blurring the line of being a woman at all, and yet her face was perfect, skin flawless, features symmetrical and makeup carefully applied. And it was a lot of makeup, slick and shimmering, the high angles of her face smoothed to an almost inhuman sheen. The video was for the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)," the woman was, of course, Annie Lennox.

I followed Annie from that moment onward. I remember one night, not much older, seeing her video for "Walking on Broken Glass" and wrapping my head up in a scrap of red velour in hopes of mimicking the turban rocked by Ms. Lennox in her John Malkovich-yearning world. I think I mostly just succeeded in amusing my mother, and convincing her of what a weird kid I was. And really, it was weird. I don't know that most little girls idolize women who manage to be androgynous and over-the-top glamorous at once. And I didn't stop with Annie. Not many years later, VH1 started airing reruns of the Cher show, and I was absolutely IN LOVE. I mean, bizarrely, obsessively in love. I thought that Cher was the single most exotic and elegant creature to grace the face of the planet. The first C.D. I ever asked for as a gift was Cher's greatest hits. She was, to me, not far different from the unicorns and magical, twinkling sea creatures that covered the piles of Lisa Frank merchandise I invested my allowance in. I loved her and her Bob Mackie costumes, her long black hair. Most of all, I loved the character she presented herself as: someone sassy and funny, sometimes downright deadpan mean. Cher was not a wilting flower, she seemed, on the T.V. screen, as though she could be six feet tall and made of steel.


I continued, throughout my childhood, to maintain a fascination with glittery, near-absurd, glamorous figures. When RuPaul had her show on VH1, I watched it as often as I could. At first, my mother hesitated to let me follow the program; Ru was, after all, very adult fare, cracking dirty jokes with her guests. My siblings teased me endlessly about my unstoppable attempts to sneak viewings, but finally everyone was swayed to let me watch in peace by my deadly seriousness about the thing. RuPaul was, in my mind, a beautiful and fascinating woman. Of course, I understood that RuPaul was a man, too, but rather than being a repulsive or confusing fact, that was part of the intrigue for me. Ru seemed to be in on a big and wonderful secret, a secret that Cher and Annie and any number of other (in my mind) lesser ladies I followed were in on as well: that being a woman was really a funny sort of thing, that all the makeup and the clothes were sort of, well, silly, and as long as they had to do such a silly thing as be a “beautiful” woman, they were going to have fun with it.

I've continued to be fascinated by this sort of lady throughout my life, a sort that is over-the-top in her presentation and seemingly uninterested in tailoring her image to please anyone but herself. It's taken me years, though, to sit back and analyze exactly why I'm so intrigued by women like this, a very vague classification that I can only say remains defined, in my mind, by Annie and Cher and Ru. The conclusion I've come to is essentially this: I am drawn to these women because, in an industry, and a world, that promotes a very narrow definition of what is "feminine" and "attractive," these are people who seem to be fully aware of and yet uninterested in conforming to those ideas. It is, however, more complex than that. These are figures who are, in many ways, hyper-feminine. They recognize that women are expected to have perfect make-up and nice hair and be drawn to shiny, pretty things and they take all of those things to their extreme. They costume themselves, and as such are commenting on the fact that all clothes and hair and all of it are is a costume, a way to express oneself, not an indicator of worth or usefulness. I think these women, with their awareness of the silliness of the physical, have appealed to me for so long because I have never been much at home in my body. Not that I've really struggled with feeling unattractive (although of course I think everyone on the planet has those moments of doubt), but rather that, since I was a little girl, I found it odd to be connected with and judged on a body that I had very little control over.

I've always been a gal who is more in touch with her mind, more interested in thinking about things and imagining, than in her body. And the older I got the more foreign my body felt. It still makes me feel uncomfortable and somewhat confused when people compliment me on my appearance. Of course, it is always nice to get compliments, and most people mean well by it, but it seems odd that something my genetics and not my achievements decided should garner me any attention. When I went through puberty, I found myself feeling at an almost total disconnect from my own form. I had always pictured myself growing up into the sort of androgynous, slim and flat-chested, odd figure that would be able to wear loose low-cut shirts and men's clothing and be taken seriously. There I was, fourteen, longing to be Patti Smith, to confront the male gaze, to prove that I was smart and different and didn't have to appeal to men in the big-boobed, soft-hipped way that they wanted. And then my body changed. Then I became big-boobed, softer hipped. I had no idea what to do with myself. I was entirely lost. I had spent so much time in my scrawny pre-teen days building up anger at girls with traditionally desirable frames as somehow being at fault for their desirability that I had absolutely no idea what to do with my own, new "womanly" figure. Throughout high school I would hear things from boys like "Man, she's weird, but she's got a nice body. Bet she's great in bed." I became attractive not, as I had hoped, because of my personality, but rather in spite of it. I hated it. I hated myself.

It wasn't until my later days of high school, long past the point of caring about anyone's good opinion of me, that I returned to thinking seriously about my earlier icons, about Annie and Cher and Ru and their big beautiful makeup and strange hair. I thought about them a lot, and I thought about myself (as any seventeen year old spends a majority of their time doing). That's when I realized why I liked them so much, when I became aware that maybe, for me, the easiest way to become comfortable in my own skin was to acknowledge how ridiculous everyone's expectations of me, based on my body and appearance, were. I tell my friends these days that I don't really consider that I get dressed in the morning so much as I get costumed. I love fashion, and I like to have specific inspirations for an outfit in mind, whether it be a famous figure or a film or a photograph. I particularly love clothing from the 1950's and 60's, things that emphasize that "womanly" figure I once felt so uncomfortable with. And I don't wear those outfits because I'm trying to seduce anyone with my assets, I wear them because they're fun and, often, funny. I wear them because I damn well want to. And that's what Cher and Annie and RuPaul helped me to accept, the same reason I stand solidly by Lady GaGa and her infinite number of costuems: it's hard being a gal, with all the incredible, conflicting things expected of us, so it might as well be interesting and it might as well be fun. You might as well dress however the hell you want. I prefer a bouffant, a full face of shimmer, and a good sense of humor.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

An Inaugural Blogging Post: Discussion Of A Thing That Annoys Me, Among Many

I graduated from college two weeks ago, which, with the current economy and the oil spilling into the ocean and the general breaking open of the earth's crust and releasing of hell-demons ringing in the oncoming apocalypse and feasting on the flesh of innocents, means that I have moved back in with my parents, back into the same room I was living in at seventeen. And boy, what a whirlwind that has been. Really stings the eyes with a sense of endless possibility. Of course, I'm not alone. I would say a solid seventy five percent of my graduating class (this is based on serious scientific statistical data) is currently unemployed, dining with their families and praying for a merciful death. Those that do have jobs are weirdos. Overachievers. Nerds. No one likes nerds; they smell weird, probably from handling all the money they earn at their unholy “jobs” selling babies to the aforementioned hell-demons. And we all know what those demons do with innocents. In any case, here I am, doing what any uselessly educated loser does: blogging. And watching “2001: A Space Odyssey” at three in the morning, a film that, from what I can tell, is a lighthearted comedy about monkeys in space.

Obviously, then, I have an abundance of time on my hands, time I've been using to catch up on some music blogs, digging through mp3s of boring remixes and leaked tracks from upcoming hip-hop albums. The other day I stumbled upon a She and Him cover of the Smiths' “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.” She and Him as in the band fronted by Zooey Deschanel. Covering the Smiths. After my initial dizziness and nausea wore off, I thought about what, exactly, my reaction meant. It's a response I often have to encountering Zooey, one that's hard if not impossible to explain to most people. There is, to me, something fundamentally unsettling, something incessantly grating, about the actress. “But why?” I asked myself as I was wiping the sweat from my pale brow, “Why so visceral, so nasty, a reaction to a girl who is, by all accounts, cute and talented and not nearly so offensive as any number of other figures active in the world today?” And, well, all of those things are good arguments for Zooey. Though I may personally find her music to be as exciting as warm milk and Klonopin cocktail, she does have a good voice. She works with M. Ward. He's talented! She even writes her own songs. She's talented! And she's not a bad actress, not really. So why so much hate? Why can't I choke down my bile when it comes to her?

First, I should make it clear that my disgust isn't personal. I mean, Zooey Deschanel the person doesn't exist so much as Zooey Deschanel the idea. She's quirky! She has nice hair! She wears cute little dresses! My problem is that she has become the representative, in the minds of many, of what the ideal “alternative” girl is. And that's the core of it. The whole point of there being an “alternative” lifestyle is that it's different from the mainstream set of standards, so what does it say that there are so many people who seem to feel they deserve applause for having the sophistication and openness of mind to be attracted to this very beautiful, very conventionally beautiful, woman? And, again, allow me to stress my awareness that there are far worse people to praise, that Zooey at least has interests and talents and all that jazz, but I do question how much interest the people who love her have in her actual output. Further, Zooey seems representative of a larger trend in the idea of what even the ideal “different” girl should be. Elfin, giggly, deemed “interesting” but never seeming to express any particularly strong opinions about anything. And isn't that just a little bit scary? Is there no outlet where girls are allowed to be as sassy (or not) as they want to be? Where the hell is the arena for girls to be strong and funny if even in the outfield, when once we saw Courtney Love on MTV and Janeane Garofalo in movie theaters, the zaniest option we can come up with is a woman from a Hollywood family who is traditionally beautiful and relatively soft spoken, whose craziest moments come from the occasional vintage dress? And don't mistake me, soft-spoken, beautiful girls: I want every lady to be precisely what she is, nothing more or less.


What's unsettling about Zooey's popularity is that it seems prescriptive. It seems like a lot of girls these days, girls who are considered squarely in the “alternative” category, manufacture a persona that's quiet of voice and precious in presentation. Manufacture being the main word, here. Being quiet and precious is just fine if it's genuinely who you are, but Christ, can't we give girls a break from absurd standards even in counterculture? There seems no corner where a gal can be weird and truly outlandish without being simultaneously being deemed unattractive. And it's about enough. Let's see some dames being praised for being chill broads for a change. Let's try, just for a minute or two, not briefly mentioning a lady's talent and skipping quickly to the list of all the reasons she gives us a boner. Let's give Zooey a rest, and find some other interesting women to admire. And, dear god, let's avoid covering the works of Morrissey. You're giving me acid reflux.