SNAPSHOTS: Life
Apr. 30th, 2004 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plumtreeblossomSince I seem to be on a roll with peculiar memoir forms...
SNAPSHOTS
Age 0) Born with hip dysplaysia, I am wearing a heavy steel brace from hips to ankles. I'll wear it for the first two years of my life. I drag myself around on my front paws and get around just fine, or so I'm told.
Age 4) My first friends are the Collie puppies from my parent's small breeding kennel. My first human friend is a girl named Corrie. Our two families go to Nantucket together. Corrie's mother always spanks both of us no matter who started it.
Age 7) In 2nd grade there is an insane boy who both terrifies and fascinates me. I never speak to him but am silently preoccupied with the bizarre and dangerous things he does. They pull him out of school for good the day he cuts off his nipple with a pair of blunt-ended scissors.
Age 12) I take all of my Barbies to my grandparent's house and throw them one by one onto the garage roof. I am feeling angry and vindictive as I do it. I am mad at childhood, mad at my powerlessness, hungry for change. The once-cherished Barbies are now voodoo dolls; I'm flinging them away to carry my childhood out of sight.
Age 14) I've learned rendering in 8th grade art class. On weekends I spend hours on renderings of ivy growing around barbed wire, and then a desolate crucifixion scene on the stony surface of the moon. I am in love with the drawing because I'd hit so close to my own bone with it. I decide to show the lunar crucifixion to my mother and stepfather, hoping to worry them about my ennui. They glance over their highball glasses and say "That's cute."
Age 15) My first boyfriend and I are so in love that sometimes we lay in the grass at night and cry in each other's arms. Two months after we fall in love we find out that his father has been transferred to the Philippines and the family will be moving in a few weeks. He wants to consummate our bond by giving our virginity to each other, but at this age I don't feel anywhere near ready to have sex. I love him so much that I promise I'll try anything other than actual penetration. Two days before he moves, we crawl down a hole under a broken down bridge, the only private place we can access. This is when I learn that the term "blow job" doesn't literally imply blow.
Age 18) At Bradford College, there is a hard-to-reach rooftop that people like to drink on. We climb out the window of the 4th story women's bathroom onto the fire escape, and then shuffle carefully sideways along 6 feet of rusted rain gutter to the edge of the rooftop. 4 stories directly below is a bike rack full of bikes. Once we make it to the rooftop, we get drunk. Then go back the way we came.
Age 22) There are apartments above the Cathay Pagoda restaurant in Rochester that are occupied almost exclusively by drag queens. I move in with a gay man I am secretly in love with. From the queens, I learn all the tricks of their masquerade -- the eyebrow waxing, the tuck 'n tape, the 9 layers of pantyhose to mask leg muscles.
Age 24) Nobody has ever organized a performance art festival in Rochester before, so I do, and call it The Apocalypse Floorshow. In a piece I've written, my fellow performer is supposed to slap me hard across the face. I insist that he really slap me -- I don't want anything fake about the piece. He hates it, but he takes the direction. One night I turn at the wrong angle and his slap nails me right in the temple. I see a white flash and my knees crumple, but somehow I remain conscious. It is the best performance of the entire run.
Age 29) I learn that when the love of your life leaves you, it helps if you join a ska band. Jah love... and a new love in the band leader.
Age 31) My first week in Boston. Peter and I walking around and around Harvard Square singing the entire score to Jesus Christ Superstar while hitting each other with rolled up newspapers. Broke, but free from our manipulative hostess/landlady for one happy day. Where we sleep each night in Dorchester is unheated, and we can see our breath at night as it hovers above us.
Age 33) When my very first literary rejection letter arrives, I am utterly psyched. "I'm a real writer now!" I say, with a sense of earned belonging. It feels like entering a new league; elevating from those-who-write to those-who-write-and-submit. I take myself to the Someday to edit the story. When acceptance calls from literary journals eventually started coming, it is nice, but it just doesn't have the same bat mitzvah-y, right-of-passage feeling.
Age 35) I'm in Tokyo, wandering an enormous food emporium while my lover is teaching his English class. Everything the Japanese put in their mouths is a work of art. Food sculpted, food feng shui'd, food hand painted with other food. Outside a thunder storm has begun. I buy us each a tiny umbrella for 100 yen. I watch the storm and wait until I see him running toward me in the rain.
Age 37) In the dawn mist, I wake up as the minibus rattles up a steep hill. There it is. Stonehenge.
Age 40) I'm on the Red Line platform today, listening to a busker singing R&B. I don't even know the song, but I'm improvising vocal harmonies to the chorus. In my hand is a script with the audition monologue I've just chosen. On my lunch hour I bought Rough Guides: Beijing.
SNAPSHOTS
Age 0) Born with hip dysplaysia, I am wearing a heavy steel brace from hips to ankles. I'll wear it for the first two years of my life. I drag myself around on my front paws and get around just fine, or so I'm told.
Age 4) My first friends are the Collie puppies from my parent's small breeding kennel. My first human friend is a girl named Corrie. Our two families go to Nantucket together. Corrie's mother always spanks both of us no matter who started it.
Age 7) In 2nd grade there is an insane boy who both terrifies and fascinates me. I never speak to him but am silently preoccupied with the bizarre and dangerous things he does. They pull him out of school for good the day he cuts off his nipple with a pair of blunt-ended scissors.
Age 12) I take all of my Barbies to my grandparent's house and throw them one by one onto the garage roof. I am feeling angry and vindictive as I do it. I am mad at childhood, mad at my powerlessness, hungry for change. The once-cherished Barbies are now voodoo dolls; I'm flinging them away to carry my childhood out of sight.
Age 14) I've learned rendering in 8th grade art class. On weekends I spend hours on renderings of ivy growing around barbed wire, and then a desolate crucifixion scene on the stony surface of the moon. I am in love with the drawing because I'd hit so close to my own bone with it. I decide to show the lunar crucifixion to my mother and stepfather, hoping to worry them about my ennui. They glance over their highball glasses and say "That's cute."
Age 15) My first boyfriend and I are so in love that sometimes we lay in the grass at night and cry in each other's arms. Two months after we fall in love we find out that his father has been transferred to the Philippines and the family will be moving in a few weeks. He wants to consummate our bond by giving our virginity to each other, but at this age I don't feel anywhere near ready to have sex. I love him so much that I promise I'll try anything other than actual penetration. Two days before he moves, we crawl down a hole under a broken down bridge, the only private place we can access. This is when I learn that the term "blow job" doesn't literally imply blow.
Age 18) At Bradford College, there is a hard-to-reach rooftop that people like to drink on. We climb out the window of the 4th story women's bathroom onto the fire escape, and then shuffle carefully sideways along 6 feet of rusted rain gutter to the edge of the rooftop. 4 stories directly below is a bike rack full of bikes. Once we make it to the rooftop, we get drunk. Then go back the way we came.
Age 22) There are apartments above the Cathay Pagoda restaurant in Rochester that are occupied almost exclusively by drag queens. I move in with a gay man I am secretly in love with. From the queens, I learn all the tricks of their masquerade -- the eyebrow waxing, the tuck 'n tape, the 9 layers of pantyhose to mask leg muscles.
Age 24) Nobody has ever organized a performance art festival in Rochester before, so I do, and call it The Apocalypse Floorshow. In a piece I've written, my fellow performer is supposed to slap me hard across the face. I insist that he really slap me -- I don't want anything fake about the piece. He hates it, but he takes the direction. One night I turn at the wrong angle and his slap nails me right in the temple. I see a white flash and my knees crumple, but somehow I remain conscious. It is the best performance of the entire run.
Age 29) I learn that when the love of your life leaves you, it helps if you join a ska band. Jah love... and a new love in the band leader.
Age 31) My first week in Boston. Peter and I walking around and around Harvard Square singing the entire score to Jesus Christ Superstar while hitting each other with rolled up newspapers. Broke, but free from our manipulative hostess/landlady for one happy day. Where we sleep each night in Dorchester is unheated, and we can see our breath at night as it hovers above us.
Age 33) When my very first literary rejection letter arrives, I am utterly psyched. "I'm a real writer now!" I say, with a sense of earned belonging. It feels like entering a new league; elevating from those-who-write to those-who-write-and-submit. I take myself to the Someday to edit the story. When acceptance calls from literary journals eventually started coming, it is nice, but it just doesn't have the same bat mitzvah-y, right-of-passage feeling.
Age 35) I'm in Tokyo, wandering an enormous food emporium while my lover is teaching his English class. Everything the Japanese put in their mouths is a work of art. Food sculpted, food feng shui'd, food hand painted with other food. Outside a thunder storm has begun. I buy us each a tiny umbrella for 100 yen. I watch the storm and wait until I see him running toward me in the rain.
Age 37) In the dawn mist, I wake up as the minibus rattles up a steep hill. There it is. Stonehenge.
Age 40) I'm on the Red Line platform today, listening to a busker singing R&B. I don't even know the song, but I'm improvising vocal harmonies to the chorus. In my hand is a script with the audition monologue I've just chosen. On my lunch hour I bought Rough Guides: Beijing.