I know that summer has begun and the schools are emptying out...at least some of them. I also know it was a full moon on Thursday and it's a four-day weekend, starting last night. I know all of these things and thought I was prepared to deal with them, when, at two ten a.m., this morning, I was rudely wakened by about seven "kids" (maybe in their twenties?) screaming "FUCK!" and then going on to use the word as adjective, verb, noun, adverb and term of endearment, as loudly as possible, for a LONG TIME.
I figured, after the first shock wave, they were moving down the street to parked cars...supposedly illegal after dark, in the neighborhood, without a sticker. (Amazing that the police don't patrol the bar patrons and nightclub customers...) Noisy, but, like a passing thundershower, moving off. Oh no. For whatever reasons, these revellers had chosen to park under my windows, and continue the fuck-a-thon,at full throttle.
They also began peeing into the bushes and trash cans on the side of the building...announcing that they needed to do so and were doing so and the status of their project as it burst into full stream. The girls were the loudest, sadly to say. Then they started tossing bottles and breaking them in the street, laughing at that hilarity, and crunching cans. I didn't hear any cars being wrecked, or I would have reported a crime in progress and cops might have actually shown up while things were in motion.
But I know the "game". There have been many neighborhood meetings about the clubs in the area and their spill over into the neighborhoods. For a week or so, the sports bar had valets who would walk patrons through the neighborhoods to their cars, so to keep the loudness under wraps. For a week. (That was like three years ago.) Now, once two a.m. hits, all the valets are long gone and people not in the club lots move like screaming zombies down the sidewalks. It's scary, too, when you hear the slam of car doors fairly near-by, and know they are going to be pulling out, into the street, and driving...somewhere. We've seen the celebrity fender-benders...and the lack of response, even there--except by the papparrazi.
The neighborhood dogs were silent...suspiciously so. They bark when a leashed dog walks their block. I suspect that, like me, the owners were in their apartments with lights out, doors locked, and holding their breath till the hordes left, in silence. Nobody wants shots at their windows or retaliation in the street. Everybody knows the police, if they take it seriously as drunk and disorderly, won't arrive in time to find the culprits, and only come knocking for a report--so the whole night's shot. And there won't be follow-up, the next night, either. So, what's the point? Keep the dogs quiet and the shades down...
All I can do is to make people who- have- people, aware: if you need to get that plastered, with or without i.d. and friends in tow, pee before you leave the club. Please! Be at least unyelling as you walk around trying to locate your car. People live in the dark houses you pass. They've gone to bed long before you heard "Last Call!" However hilarious you think your nightly adventures were, or amorous, or dangerous, nobody outside the bar thinks so--especially nobody whose sleep you've wrecked. There are kids and old folks and sick and desperate people in those homes and you've managed to add to their miseries. Get drunk but don't mess with residents who aren't. Take your party home, quietly, and continue,there.
I may sound like that crotchety neighbor who complains about kids with frisbees at two in the afternoon on a summer day, but, really, I'm breaking my butt paying rent and trying to hold on. I don't need to feel like I'm living in a war zone, too. Cause, supposedly, THIS neighborhood is not.
If you drink, that's your deal. Just don't inflict it on me. If you have friends who get loud when they drink, or abusive, or feisty, get the car and pick them up outside the bar door,when its time to split, please. If you have "kids"--and these days that may well mean adult kids at home--teach them to respect other people's rights. Teach them manners, even when drunk. Teach them about being human beings. What might fly on "campus" isn't cool in the average two a.m. neighborhood of working people--or even people looking for work. Life sucks enough, sometimes, in this city. It doesn't need to suck this badly. Step up. Please.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
FIFTY-FOUR AND FINE
Tomorrow is my birthday. I figure that anyone on FACEBOOK will already realize this, so, no use in ignoring the date.
Usually, terrible things occur on or around this date. Everything from deaths of friends and relatives to Mom's first almost-liver transplant. As it goes, so far, Mom DID fall down the back porch stairs, snared by my sister's dog's leash. (My sister, the nurse-- who moved back in with the parental units, and her dog-- to "help out". ) My nurse sister (with the dog in tow ) was at my cop brother's house, bar-b-cuing, on Sunday afternoon. Mom and Dad and dog had left the party, early. Mom was helping dog take a pee break when dog saw cat in the yard. Dog, of course, went for cat, tipping Mom into a header off the porch. Mom landed on her face, on the flagstones. Dog did not pull a Lassie and howl for help--nor did she curl up around Mom's bleeding head and wait for rescue. Dog took, only reappearing long after Mom hauled her broken-ribbed self up the porch, into the kitchen, and fainted on 84 year old Dad.
Dad thought Mom was dead. (Dad weighs about 135.) He broke Mom's faint, but barely. Then, he called nurse sister and cop brother, still bar-b-cuing with the rest of the family. Nurse sister and cop brother called 911. Paramedics assured everyone, when they all arrived, that Mom had only fainted and not died. Then, they rushed her to the hospital.
For three days, the doctors watched Mom do what Mom does quite well. She amazed them. Even with three fractured ribs, a sprained ankle, a sprained wrist, facial stitches and multiple huge abrasions on her legs and side, Mom was up out of bed and moving. "I get stiff if I don't."
She wasn't even upset with the dog. (This, too, is amazing...this dog has gone through as many medical procedures as Mom, herself, and so, for this reason alone, Mom has finally "bonded" with an animal...) So they let her come home. Since she is also battling lymphoma , they didn't want her battered and bruised 80 year old body to risk catching something else, while in the hospital. Mom was thrilled. "I told the doctors I should come home..."
When one of the sibs finally e-mailed me about the accident, last week, I called Mom, immediately. Seems she is quite chipper and is less sore than poor Dad, who wrenched his arthritic back trying to catch her. In fact, the only thing Mom is pissed about is the loss of her ratty old bathrobe, left behind (and tossed out--thank god--by the staff) at the hospital.
"I know I have all those designer robes you kids keep giving me, but, that one was short, all cotton, lightweight, soft, zip- up and I've had it for years..." Which was the point, I guess. (Secretly, I think she liked it because it showed off her legs. For an eighty year old mother of five, Mom's got great legs, still...though she'll never admit it.) All the expensive spa and designer robes we've given her for a thousand Mothers' Days, birthdays, Christmases and hospital stays are lined up, neatly, in her closet. Unworn. (Full Length. Plush and brilliant.)
Other sister, who is also temporarily camped out at the parental units abode, got the blame for "leaving the housecoat at the hospital" when she picked Mom up. So, other sister went to K-Mart (the DREADED K-MART!!!!!) and bought an almost exact replica of the 25 year old cotton, shortie, zip-up, light-weight housecoat, after work, on Monday. (Other sister shuddered through the entire experience--not being exactly a "K-MART type"...)
When I called, Mom was prancing around in the new housecoat, quite happily showing off her still-black and blue and yellow legs, and predicting when the stitches in her scalp were coming out. I could hear the dog yipping in the background. (Dad didn't come to the phone.)
Feeling, as usual, helpless and distant from this drama, I ordered a Land's End similar garment for Mom. It came in rhododendrum--which is a color she may accept. (It's "feminine".) It is also short, lightweight and zip-up. The only drawback is that it has a hood. AND they call it a 'cover up'. Mom may object that it makes her look like a monk...or a 'street person'...or that it is only 'fit for the beach'...(It didn't come from Sears, or K-Mart.)
I figure, I'll wait and see. She's supposed to receive it on my birthday--tomorrow. It is a kind of mail-order irony, I suppose. If this is the only bad news I receive, I'll chalk this birthday up as one of the good ones. Hah!
Usually, terrible things occur on or around this date. Everything from deaths of friends and relatives to Mom's first almost-liver transplant. As it goes, so far, Mom DID fall down the back porch stairs, snared by my sister's dog's leash. (My sister, the nurse-- who moved back in with the parental units, and her dog-- to "help out". ) My nurse sister (with the dog in tow ) was at my cop brother's house, bar-b-cuing, on Sunday afternoon. Mom and Dad and dog had left the party, early. Mom was helping dog take a pee break when dog saw cat in the yard. Dog, of course, went for cat, tipping Mom into a header off the porch. Mom landed on her face, on the flagstones. Dog did not pull a Lassie and howl for help--nor did she curl up around Mom's bleeding head and wait for rescue. Dog took, only reappearing long after Mom hauled her broken-ribbed self up the porch, into the kitchen, and fainted on 84 year old Dad.
Dad thought Mom was dead. (Dad weighs about 135.) He broke Mom's faint, but barely. Then, he called nurse sister and cop brother, still bar-b-cuing with the rest of the family. Nurse sister and cop brother called 911. Paramedics assured everyone, when they all arrived, that Mom had only fainted and not died. Then, they rushed her to the hospital.
For three days, the doctors watched Mom do what Mom does quite well. She amazed them. Even with three fractured ribs, a sprained ankle, a sprained wrist, facial stitches and multiple huge abrasions on her legs and side, Mom was up out of bed and moving. "I get stiff if I don't."
She wasn't even upset with the dog. (This, too, is amazing...this dog has gone through as many medical procedures as Mom, herself, and so, for this reason alone, Mom has finally "bonded" with an animal...) So they let her come home. Since she is also battling lymphoma , they didn't want her battered and bruised 80 year old body to risk catching something else, while in the hospital. Mom was thrilled. "I told the doctors I should come home..."
When one of the sibs finally e-mailed me about the accident, last week, I called Mom, immediately. Seems she is quite chipper and is less sore than poor Dad, who wrenched his arthritic back trying to catch her. In fact, the only thing Mom is pissed about is the loss of her ratty old bathrobe, left behind (and tossed out--thank god--by the staff) at the hospital.
"I know I have all those designer robes you kids keep giving me, but, that one was short, all cotton, lightweight, soft, zip- up and I've had it for years..." Which was the point, I guess. (Secretly, I think she liked it because it showed off her legs. For an eighty year old mother of five, Mom's got great legs, still...though she'll never admit it.) All the expensive spa and designer robes we've given her for a thousand Mothers' Days, birthdays, Christmases and hospital stays are lined up, neatly, in her closet. Unworn. (Full Length. Plush and brilliant.)
Other sister, who is also temporarily camped out at the parental units abode, got the blame for "leaving the housecoat at the hospital" when she picked Mom up. So, other sister went to K-Mart (the DREADED K-MART!!!!!) and bought an almost exact replica of the 25 year old cotton, shortie, zip-up, light-weight housecoat, after work, on Monday. (Other sister shuddered through the entire experience--not being exactly a "K-MART type"...)
When I called, Mom was prancing around in the new housecoat, quite happily showing off her still-black and blue and yellow legs, and predicting when the stitches in her scalp were coming out. I could hear the dog yipping in the background. (Dad didn't come to the phone.)
Feeling, as usual, helpless and distant from this drama, I ordered a Land's End similar garment for Mom. It came in rhododendrum--which is a color she may accept. (It's "feminine".) It is also short, lightweight and zip-up. The only drawback is that it has a hood. AND they call it a 'cover up'. Mom may object that it makes her look like a monk...or a 'street person'...or that it is only 'fit for the beach'...(It didn't come from Sears, or K-Mart.)
I figure, I'll wait and see. She's supposed to receive it on my birthday--tomorrow. It is a kind of mail-order irony, I suppose. If this is the only bad news I receive, I'll chalk this birthday up as one of the good ones. Hah!
Thursday, May 20, 2010
SHE'S STILL TOPS TO ME
This country, for all the hype about "fifty being the new thirty", doesn't know a thing about aging gracefully. Now, I realize I am living in a city packed with beautiful young things all scrambling for the top, but even as I cruise the internet, reading various news stories or seeing photos from all over the map, I am shocked at the lack of value for anyone over 20. (Or should I say: anyone who LOOKS over 20...)
This morning, I woke to comments posted about the recent Kelly McGillis photo ops from Jerry Bruckheimer's party, in Hollywood. (Of course they reunited Tom Cruise with Kelly McGillis--this time, allowing the tall beauty to stand up straight and not crouch behind the little guy--her arms draped over his flight jacket.) Kelly looks regal. Her skin is flawless, her eyes are sparkling, her smile is enigmatic. Clearly she has matured--which is what is supposed to happen in our lives. Compare her to the still-grinning Cruise, who appears shrunken, (his smile a frozen caricature), his hair dyed, his body masked behind tailored clothes (matching a face which has been tailored by surgeons and God knows who else), and you suddenly realize what it will be like when androids live among us. Cruise still looks like his brain has remained with "a need for speed" or, given the chance, the most pressing issue on his mind is where the photographers have set up their lights. Perhaps that's all a "star" needs. Perhaps I'm being judgmental. (Cruise isn't running for Congress--yet.) But given the choice, I sure know who'd I'd like to sit down over dinner with. Or who might be able to carry a deep conversation.
The bigger issue, for me were the comments posted under the photograph. People feeling they needed to speak out negatively on how McGillis has "aged"--with not a single mention of the looks of the men in the picture. Yes, she has chosen not to go the plastic route; yes, she has chosen not to color her naturally gray hair...her body isn't that of the twenty something who raised men's (and women's) libidos back in the eighties...but she isn't twenty. She's a striking fifty-something, accomplished stage and screen actress, mother, activist and outspoken contemporary, American woman. She looks as if she's had a real life. She wears that life proudly.
Bruckheimer has graying hair. He has scruffly skin and wrinkles. I don't see his Tarzan figure swinging through any trees. His age spots and rough, five o'clock beard don't take off any of his years--yet no one seemed to comment on that. Meanwhile, Tom Cruise bares big teeth, while one can almost feel him tensing his buttocks, about to leap upon the nearest couch and scream "Katie!" (He hasn't changed since the Oprah interview that solidified how uncool the man really is, with an acting range of a two, on a scale of one to ten...maybe.) Blockbusting roles aside, it's Tom's connections that got him where he is and keep him looking as he does. (Nothing a few million can't accomplish.)But, as far as the people posting comments go, Tom is the role model we should follow. Hmmmm.
When Kelly McGillis took the stage in Pasadena, last summer, she dominated. Her reviews were terrific.Her interviews for the Los Angeles Times were humble, honest and open. She left people feeling that, here is a human being with soul. Someone worth knowing. An actor, not full of herself, just (still )full of her dreams. (Something we need in these days of strife.) Maybe it's because of all those years of stage work, back East, or her continuing study of her craft? Maybe it's being a single Mom who didn't allow papparazzi to rule her life--or the lives of her children? Maybe it's just being willing to be a natural woman. Whatever the recipe, even the hardest critics had to take note of her brilliance. She is an actor's actor. And she still has the right stuff.
Kelly McGillis looks like America; the real America; as it matures gracefully.(I hope the wise among us will make note of that.)Maybe even post our comments where she can see them. For those of you still needing your fix of sanitized youth, vapid eye-candy, or cartoon America, there are always clips of "Top Gun" on Youtube...
This morning, I woke to comments posted about the recent Kelly McGillis photo ops from Jerry Bruckheimer's party, in Hollywood. (Of course they reunited Tom Cruise with Kelly McGillis--this time, allowing the tall beauty to stand up straight and not crouch behind the little guy--her arms draped over his flight jacket.) Kelly looks regal. Her skin is flawless, her eyes are sparkling, her smile is enigmatic. Clearly she has matured--which is what is supposed to happen in our lives. Compare her to the still-grinning Cruise, who appears shrunken, (his smile a frozen caricature), his hair dyed, his body masked behind tailored clothes (matching a face which has been tailored by surgeons and God knows who else), and you suddenly realize what it will be like when androids live among us. Cruise still looks like his brain has remained with "a need for speed" or, given the chance, the most pressing issue on his mind is where the photographers have set up their lights. Perhaps that's all a "star" needs. Perhaps I'm being judgmental. (Cruise isn't running for Congress--yet.) But given the choice, I sure know who'd I'd like to sit down over dinner with. Or who might be able to carry a deep conversation.
The bigger issue, for me were the comments posted under the photograph. People feeling they needed to speak out negatively on how McGillis has "aged"--with not a single mention of the looks of the men in the picture. Yes, she has chosen not to go the plastic route; yes, she has chosen not to color her naturally gray hair...her body isn't that of the twenty something who raised men's (and women's) libidos back in the eighties...but she isn't twenty. She's a striking fifty-something, accomplished stage and screen actress, mother, activist and outspoken contemporary, American woman. She looks as if she's had a real life. She wears that life proudly.
Bruckheimer has graying hair. He has scruffly skin and wrinkles. I don't see his Tarzan figure swinging through any trees. His age spots and rough, five o'clock beard don't take off any of his years--yet no one seemed to comment on that. Meanwhile, Tom Cruise bares big teeth, while one can almost feel him tensing his buttocks, about to leap upon the nearest couch and scream "Katie!" (He hasn't changed since the Oprah interview that solidified how uncool the man really is, with an acting range of a two, on a scale of one to ten...maybe.) Blockbusting roles aside, it's Tom's connections that got him where he is and keep him looking as he does. (Nothing a few million can't accomplish.)But, as far as the people posting comments go, Tom is the role model we should follow. Hmmmm.
When Kelly McGillis took the stage in Pasadena, last summer, she dominated. Her reviews were terrific.Her interviews for the Los Angeles Times were humble, honest and open. She left people feeling that, here is a human being with soul. Someone worth knowing. An actor, not full of herself, just (still )full of her dreams. (Something we need in these days of strife.) Maybe it's because of all those years of stage work, back East, or her continuing study of her craft? Maybe it's being a single Mom who didn't allow papparazzi to rule her life--or the lives of her children? Maybe it's just being willing to be a natural woman. Whatever the recipe, even the hardest critics had to take note of her brilliance. She is an actor's actor. And she still has the right stuff.
Kelly McGillis looks like America; the real America; as it matures gracefully.(I hope the wise among us will make note of that.)Maybe even post our comments where she can see them. For those of you still needing your fix of sanitized youth, vapid eye-candy, or cartoon America, there are always clips of "Top Gun" on Youtube...
Saturday, May 15, 2010
THE RISK OF WRITING ABOUT HOME
Something I've only lately learned is that the act of writing about home can be dangerous. Or, at the very least, controversial. I have learned this lesson the hard way, like most of my life's lessons...sigh. And like all of those lessons, I have to test the edges, from time to time.
Narda Zacchino, past editor of the L.A. Times, once told me that she was less interested in reading my horror novels than a novel about "your childhood adventures, Minns; what went into making you who you are". I consider Narda a friend but thought she was just messing with my head. After all, at the time, I was teaching her two sons, in Orange County. Parents who knew I was a novelist, let alone a horror novelist, all probably would have preferred I wrote about childhood. I just thought, at the time, there were more rip-roaring stories to relate than a New England Irish-Catholic kidhood. Today, I'm not so sure.
After being informed that my thirty-plus year absence at all High School reunions had piqued the curiousity of not a few classmates and that raised interest was also fuelled by rumors of my literary explorations, I began to re-think the issue of writing about "home". I mean, in my published novels, the biographical trail markers are clearly visible. I'd made a promise a long time ago NOT to reveal certain intimate facts of my past, and so, I clothed those facts in fiction.
Call it purple prose or just over-the-top Goth potboilers, I tried to touch on issues that were true to my heart. I kept my promise of camouflage, but I also mined the core experiences. However, often, the results were not what I had intended.
Various people got upset. I didn't become rich and famous--or even infamous. (And I never won the girl...or at least not the girl I had hoped would read the truth and come back, looking for reconnection. ) People in my hometown were either amused; shocked; horrified or disappointed. Again and again I was told, "You clearly have talent. Why choose to fritter it away? Why not just write about your family; your home; your childhood? People would love to hear about those things!" (Which people? Not the people who were already besmirching my reputation because of past literary sins. And surely not my family, who had, indeed, recognized themselves in my fiction and were less than amused. Maybe Narda? Hmmm.)
Well, I haven't been in contact with Ms. Zacchino since she fled L.A. But, in the last year, having witnessed both parents in a physical decline, the obliteration of many childhood icons (while on a holiday visit back to New England) and the rapid aging of my blood family, I needed to capture what I could, before it was all lost. Or permanently changed. However colored my lenses are, I needed to tell what I experienced and tell it as accurately as I dared. (Dare, being the operative word.)
So, I wrote a novel of those early days, back in Massachusetts, amid four siblings and grandparents and a neighborhood bordered on one end by the same Church three previous generations of family had attended; and on the other end ,by the Catholic school that the same generations had graduated from....me being the last in line to actually go through to the eighth grade. I wrote about nuns and priests long dead or escaped from religious life; I wrote about class relations and friendships and child abuse and solidarity even among fighting Irish sibs. I wrote about being saved by a grandmother who passed on such a mystical presence that some of the sibs, even now, pray to her like a Saint--which she probably is. I wrote about drinking and fornication and loyalty and friendships that remain, still. I captured places that no longer exist in a town that is barely holding on. Yes, there are bits of horror because bits of horror are the blood of New England. (That's the truth. Always been and always will be.) Yes, the queer kid is also in there because she emerged from that soil and that's the truth, too. Names of people, though not their real names, popped out of my consciousness with precision. Street signs and odors and colors I'd forgotten... all floated up and took over my dreams. When the novel was finished, it made me sad. It was like closing a photo-album of people who have passed. People that you have loved.
I wonder if Narda (or my irate classmates back in New England ) will ever get to read this book.
I wonder if my teen-aged nieces back in Massachusetts will pull it off their shelves for insight into who "Auntie K.K." was, or what life was like back on 88 Maple Street "in those days". (Mostly, I wonder if I got it right. I mean, I know I got it down the way it plays in my head, but, that's only my side of memory.) I'm sure my sibs will be pissed. Names of characters, settings, even certain incidents will be debated. For those that I did include, as fictionalized characters in a novel, they may come looking for me with hammers and nails...I can only hope those I omitted don't join them in the hunt.
Finally, through this process, Nana's words come back to haunt me...warning me and egging me on, to be "like the girl who wrote "Peyton Place", with full knowledge that if I succeed, I probably won't be welcomed back there, again. In the meantime, like all other words spilling out of me these days, the novel's in the hands of Some Bigger Force. Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to autograph the first copy to Narda, after all. Just have to wait and see.
Narda Zacchino, past editor of the L.A. Times, once told me that she was less interested in reading my horror novels than a novel about "your childhood adventures, Minns; what went into making you who you are". I consider Narda a friend but thought she was just messing with my head. After all, at the time, I was teaching her two sons, in Orange County. Parents who knew I was a novelist, let alone a horror novelist, all probably would have preferred I wrote about childhood. I just thought, at the time, there were more rip-roaring stories to relate than a New England Irish-Catholic kidhood. Today, I'm not so sure.
After being informed that my thirty-plus year absence at all High School reunions had piqued the curiousity of not a few classmates and that raised interest was also fuelled by rumors of my literary explorations, I began to re-think the issue of writing about "home". I mean, in my published novels, the biographical trail markers are clearly visible. I'd made a promise a long time ago NOT to reveal certain intimate facts of my past, and so, I clothed those facts in fiction.
Call it purple prose or just over-the-top Goth potboilers, I tried to touch on issues that were true to my heart. I kept my promise of camouflage, but I also mined the core experiences. However, often, the results were not what I had intended.
Various people got upset. I didn't become rich and famous--or even infamous. (And I never won the girl...or at least not the girl I had hoped would read the truth and come back, looking for reconnection. ) People in my hometown were either amused; shocked; horrified or disappointed. Again and again I was told, "You clearly have talent. Why choose to fritter it away? Why not just write about your family; your home; your childhood? People would love to hear about those things!" (Which people? Not the people who were already besmirching my reputation because of past literary sins. And surely not my family, who had, indeed, recognized themselves in my fiction and were less than amused. Maybe Narda? Hmmm.)
Well, I haven't been in contact with Ms. Zacchino since she fled L.A. But, in the last year, having witnessed both parents in a physical decline, the obliteration of many childhood icons (while on a holiday visit back to New England) and the rapid aging of my blood family, I needed to capture what I could, before it was all lost. Or permanently changed. However colored my lenses are, I needed to tell what I experienced and tell it as accurately as I dared. (Dare, being the operative word.)
So, I wrote a novel of those early days, back in Massachusetts, amid four siblings and grandparents and a neighborhood bordered on one end by the same Church three previous generations of family had attended; and on the other end ,by the Catholic school that the same generations had graduated from....me being the last in line to actually go through to the eighth grade. I wrote about nuns and priests long dead or escaped from religious life; I wrote about class relations and friendships and child abuse and solidarity even among fighting Irish sibs. I wrote about being saved by a grandmother who passed on such a mystical presence that some of the sibs, even now, pray to her like a Saint--which she probably is. I wrote about drinking and fornication and loyalty and friendships that remain, still. I captured places that no longer exist in a town that is barely holding on. Yes, there are bits of horror because bits of horror are the blood of New England. (That's the truth. Always been and always will be.) Yes, the queer kid is also in there because she emerged from that soil and that's the truth, too. Names of people, though not their real names, popped out of my consciousness with precision. Street signs and odors and colors I'd forgotten... all floated up and took over my dreams. When the novel was finished, it made me sad. It was like closing a photo-album of people who have passed. People that you have loved.
I wonder if Narda (or my irate classmates back in New England ) will ever get to read this book.
I wonder if my teen-aged nieces back in Massachusetts will pull it off their shelves for insight into who "Auntie K.K." was, or what life was like back on 88 Maple Street "in those days". (Mostly, I wonder if I got it right. I mean, I know I got it down the way it plays in my head, but, that's only my side of memory.) I'm sure my sibs will be pissed. Names of characters, settings, even certain incidents will be debated. For those that I did include, as fictionalized characters in a novel, they may come looking for me with hammers and nails...I can only hope those I omitted don't join them in the hunt.
Finally, through this process, Nana's words come back to haunt me...warning me and egging me on, to be "like the girl who wrote "Peyton Place", with full knowledge that if I succeed, I probably won't be welcomed back there, again. In the meantime, like all other words spilling out of me these days, the novel's in the hands of Some Bigger Force. Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to autograph the first copy to Narda, after all. Just have to wait and see.
Friday, May 14, 2010
WHY IT MATTERS AT ALL
As I see all the posts about Obama nominee for the Supreme Court, Kagan, it both amuses and saddens me. She's short, white, Jewish, a woman, slightly round with hair only a little longer than my own. She's got a double chin and she's almost as old as I am. However, she's got no court experience that would seemingly be a root consideration for anyone applying for the position...hmmm...but then, again, she's "from Harvard", and we all know what that means...we've seen those credentials in the recent past, haven't we?
Many pundits cite that she's "similar to Obama in her thinking". I don't know for sure what that means. I don't for sure know what Obama is thinking. Seems like a lot of flash and dazzle and a spectacular group of youngish people surrounding "his image". The most recent intersection/traffic jam about Kagan and Obama (and all that image-making ) seemed to come to a head when the rumors about "Kagan is gay" broke.
So many people responded: why does it even matter...who cares? Obama's people wrangled Kagan's college roomie and some guy she seemed to date, a few times, to give "expert witness" that she's "straight". Now, for one thing, I am totally thrilled that the hate-mongers seem to be in the minority. Either times are shifting for real or homophobes are less likely to use their computers for blogging. But the second point is more problematic. People thinking that "it doesn't matter" when, clearly, it very much matters. Just ask Obama's staff...
Let me explain: as long as some groups are hated in this country or targeted for hate crimes, as a collective, then belonging to those groups matters. Being gay/lesbian means belonging to one of these targeted groups.(Even being thought to be queer can put a bulls-eye on your back. Still. Even though Showtime would tell you otherwise.)
We don't want our society to necessarily act in this way, but certain segments still do. Let's be real. Or, as real as the President, when he claims to be both White and Black--depending on which days and what speeches he is delivering. Obama and his "gang" know full-well the importance of identifying (or not) with a certain segment of the population. (All the more sensitive if one was born into that segment and didn't "just choose" to be a member.)
It matters if you believe an individual will exclusively represent ALL MEMBERS of that special group. Does the President, then, represent ALL WHITE PEOPLE in a special way? Or does he represent ALL BLACK PEOPLE? Or ALL HETEROSEXUAL MALES? Or ALL HARVARD GRADUATES? Or,as he's told us, does he represent, in a special way, ALL his Gay friends?
Obama has made many promises, like past Pres. Clinton, to move forward on human rights issues for his lgbt constituants. And like Clinton, he has mostly been slow-moving and back-burnering those promises. Yeah, the economy sucks; yeah there are wars waging all around us;yeah the ocean is dying as we sit here and the planet looks like a toilet in many patches. But, most of these situations were in place before Obama stepped up to his job. A job that his gay and lesbian support base made possible--just like Bill's. So, even as Obama seems to waffle about promises made to a specialized "group" that helped to elect him; he claims that he has many lgbt friends and wants to do right by them. He's told us that WE MATTER. Our fight for civil rights matters.
You'd think, then, maybe he WOULD nominate a queerbaby for the Supreme Court, if she had all the right stuff. (Because it does matter. ) It shows he is thinking about people as individuals. He is including voters from minorities; groups that he doesn't belong to. He is a new kind of leader. You'd think.
Instead, his "gang" hunt down and leak out info about Kagan that may or may not be true--from sources that knew her as a college student "back in the day"; who are offering sound bites regarding social networking that cannot really be verified as far as its intimacy quotient. Basically, a fluff story that sends just enough questions into the atmosphere to offer "something for everyone". Is Kagan a lesbian? Is she protesting too little? Too much? What would it mean if? (Oh,if only...and then, what WOULD that mean?)For me, the bigger question is ,what does it mean that Obama allowed "his group in the White House" to handle the issue of Kagan's sexuality in such a slip-shod, Planet Hollywood way. The stakes are higher than that.
It does matter.
Many pundits cite that she's "similar to Obama in her thinking". I don't know for sure what that means. I don't for sure know what Obama is thinking. Seems like a lot of flash and dazzle and a spectacular group of youngish people surrounding "his image". The most recent intersection/traffic jam about Kagan and Obama (and all that image-making ) seemed to come to a head when the rumors about "Kagan is gay" broke.
So many people responded: why does it even matter...who cares? Obama's people wrangled Kagan's college roomie and some guy she seemed to date, a few times, to give "expert witness" that she's "straight". Now, for one thing, I am totally thrilled that the hate-mongers seem to be in the minority. Either times are shifting for real or homophobes are less likely to use their computers for blogging. But the second point is more problematic. People thinking that "it doesn't matter" when, clearly, it very much matters. Just ask Obama's staff...
Let me explain: as long as some groups are hated in this country or targeted for hate crimes, as a collective, then belonging to those groups matters. Being gay/lesbian means belonging to one of these targeted groups.(Even being thought to be queer can put a bulls-eye on your back. Still. Even though Showtime would tell you otherwise.)
We don't want our society to necessarily act in this way, but certain segments still do. Let's be real. Or, as real as the President, when he claims to be both White and Black--depending on which days and what speeches he is delivering. Obama and his "gang" know full-well the importance of identifying (or not) with a certain segment of the population. (All the more sensitive if one was born into that segment and didn't "just choose" to be a member.)
It matters if you believe an individual will exclusively represent ALL MEMBERS of that special group. Does the President, then, represent ALL WHITE PEOPLE in a special way? Or does he represent ALL BLACK PEOPLE? Or ALL HETEROSEXUAL MALES? Or ALL HARVARD GRADUATES? Or,as he's told us, does he represent, in a special way, ALL his Gay friends?
Obama has made many promises, like past Pres. Clinton, to move forward on human rights issues for his lgbt constituants. And like Clinton, he has mostly been slow-moving and back-burnering those promises. Yeah, the economy sucks; yeah there are wars waging all around us;yeah the ocean is dying as we sit here and the planet looks like a toilet in many patches. But, most of these situations were in place before Obama stepped up to his job. A job that his gay and lesbian support base made possible--just like Bill's. So, even as Obama seems to waffle about promises made to a specialized "group" that helped to elect him; he claims that he has many lgbt friends and wants to do right by them. He's told us that WE MATTER. Our fight for civil rights matters.
You'd think, then, maybe he WOULD nominate a queerbaby for the Supreme Court, if she had all the right stuff. (Because it does matter. ) It shows he is thinking about people as individuals. He is including voters from minorities; groups that he doesn't belong to. He is a new kind of leader. You'd think.
Instead, his "gang" hunt down and leak out info about Kagan that may or may not be true--from sources that knew her as a college student "back in the day"; who are offering sound bites regarding social networking that cannot really be verified as far as its intimacy quotient. Basically, a fluff story that sends just enough questions into the atmosphere to offer "something for everyone". Is Kagan a lesbian? Is she protesting too little? Too much? What would it mean if? (Oh,if only...and then, what WOULD that mean?)For me, the bigger question is ,what does it mean that Obama allowed "his group in the White House" to handle the issue of Kagan's sexuality in such a slip-shod, Planet Hollywood way. The stakes are higher than that.
It does matter.
Friday, May 7, 2010
BUKOWSKI EFFECT
When I first came to Hollywood, the writer I most read was Charles Bukowski. At that time, no one back in the East Coast ivy-league enclave I hung out with even knew who he was. If they had, it would have both shocked and disgusted them. Not only was he "a guy"; he was "an old guy". He was less than working class; looked like a leper; dressed like somebody out of a 1940s poorhouse; was an alcoholic who celebrated his black- outs, sexist behavior, life with cockroaches and crabs, and was most at ease in the company of insane prostitutes far past their prime.
However, he was a poet. A real poet. And while not as "pretty in his prose" as Steinbeck or Joyce, maybe, there was that same observational/participatory truth. He was not only watching the world around him (in all its misery and glory), he was living it. Minus pretention. Minus cool-handed irony. Minus anything, it seemed, including a conscience or a mirror.
As much as I despised a lot of his activities, there was a lifeblood in his writing that I couldn't ignore. It spoke to me. Gave me something to ...well...not exactly model my life upon (brrrr...) but something that gave me hope. That told me: this man, at his worst, still writes. In paper-thin wooden shacks without floor nor electricity nor anything to write upon except grocery bags,with broken pencil stubs, he writes. And though there is a valid point that many of the scenarios he wrote about are repetitive (we know the punchline before we even crack open the cover of the book), so are most American lives. (I'm willing to bet: so are most EARTHLY lives...)
The fact that Bukowski was from California, but didn't turn out as we are taught Californians turn out, i.e. successful; tanned; beautiful; charmingly casual; fitness freak, spoke to me. The fact that he was forced to take jobs he was vastly underqualified for, often, and was often fired, gave me hope the few times I was desperately looking for jwork--even with a sterling four year college degree-- gave me hope when I found work that I had to accept (because the rent was coming due or there were no groceries in the house)but hated doing. The fact that he got up and began his mornings with a stiff drink; then went on to end his evenings in the same way; helped me get clean and sober, (but more, to understand my drinking Irish family in a way that had puzzled and shamed me in the past). The fact that he was so butt-ugly, yet, women followed him home and considered him a genius, gave me unrelenting hope that maybe, out there, I, too, would one day find Redemption.
More than anything, the image Bukowski always included in his work: of the lone writer, tapping out his life, on a typewriter, while listening to classical music in a city of razzledazzle and Rap, late at night, in a cheap apartment, sitting in his underwear in the cooling dark, wrestling demons (and angels) onto a page...for me, this was The Holy Grail. He wasn't young anymore. He was often alone. But he kept at it. None of the prize-winning poets nor the Harvard-educated novelists I was taught by could offer such sage advice. Nor serve as such living role models. He didn't give a rat's ass about impressing anybody. All he desired to do was: to write.
Yeah, after years of fighting to survive, he did find an editor who took pity; offered him barely enough to cover his rent, every month, for life. (A miracle!) In return, that editor got sole rights to all Buk's work: prose, poetry, essays. Later, the investment paid off like a gold mine--and is still paying off, though Bukowski, himself, is long enough dead. But that blessing was years in the coming.
Yeah, he got to quit the USPS and focus, finally, on the telling and re-telling of the tales which nourish me--still. Yeah, they even made a couple movies and some documentaries out of those tales and that life. Big stars , like Sean Penn and Bono, marvel at Bukowski's wordsmithing. And yeah, he finally ended up marrying a beautiful, independent woman, who stayed with him till the end, when cancer he thought he had beaten, as a younger man, roared up, again, and took him down.But when he went, he was working on a lap-top; he was wearing clean clothes and good shoes; he had a house not far from the beach and a great car; he was off the hard liquor and his sound system was state of the art. He was still ugly. He was old. A helluva lot of American critics despised him and continue to argue about his place in the lexicon of American Literature.
I think he won the brass ring, after all.
For a feminist (still), a working writer who doesn't have a patron (or even an agent), a woman trying to make it alone while no longer young nor pretty, Bukowski is a weird addiction to admit to --but, if he can get under my skin and give me the chops I need to sustain the flow, it's an addiction I'm going to keep.
However, he was a poet. A real poet. And while not as "pretty in his prose" as Steinbeck or Joyce, maybe, there was that same observational/participatory truth. He was not only watching the world around him (in all its misery and glory), he was living it. Minus pretention. Minus cool-handed irony. Minus anything, it seemed, including a conscience or a mirror.
As much as I despised a lot of his activities, there was a lifeblood in his writing that I couldn't ignore. It spoke to me. Gave me something to ...well...not exactly model my life upon (brrrr...) but something that gave me hope. That told me: this man, at his worst, still writes. In paper-thin wooden shacks without floor nor electricity nor anything to write upon except grocery bags,with broken pencil stubs, he writes. And though there is a valid point that many of the scenarios he wrote about are repetitive (we know the punchline before we even crack open the cover of the book), so are most American lives. (I'm willing to bet: so are most EARTHLY lives...)
The fact that Bukowski was from California, but didn't turn out as we are taught Californians turn out, i.e. successful; tanned; beautiful; charmingly casual; fitness freak, spoke to me. The fact that he was forced to take jobs he was vastly underqualified for, often, and was often fired, gave me hope the few times I was desperately looking for jwork--even with a sterling four year college degree-- gave me hope when I found work that I had to accept (because the rent was coming due or there were no groceries in the house)but hated doing. The fact that he got up and began his mornings with a stiff drink; then went on to end his evenings in the same way; helped me get clean and sober, (but more, to understand my drinking Irish family in a way that had puzzled and shamed me in the past). The fact that he was so butt-ugly, yet, women followed him home and considered him a genius, gave me unrelenting hope that maybe, out there, I, too, would one day find Redemption.
More than anything, the image Bukowski always included in his work: of the lone writer, tapping out his life, on a typewriter, while listening to classical music in a city of razzledazzle and Rap, late at night, in a cheap apartment, sitting in his underwear in the cooling dark, wrestling demons (and angels) onto a page...for me, this was The Holy Grail. He wasn't young anymore. He was often alone. But he kept at it. None of the prize-winning poets nor the Harvard-educated novelists I was taught by could offer such sage advice. Nor serve as such living role models. He didn't give a rat's ass about impressing anybody. All he desired to do was: to write.
Yeah, after years of fighting to survive, he did find an editor who took pity; offered him barely enough to cover his rent, every month, for life. (A miracle!) In return, that editor got sole rights to all Buk's work: prose, poetry, essays. Later, the investment paid off like a gold mine--and is still paying off, though Bukowski, himself, is long enough dead. But that blessing was years in the coming.
Yeah, he got to quit the USPS and focus, finally, on the telling and re-telling of the tales which nourish me--still. Yeah, they even made a couple movies and some documentaries out of those tales and that life. Big stars , like Sean Penn and Bono, marvel at Bukowski's wordsmithing. And yeah, he finally ended up marrying a beautiful, independent woman, who stayed with him till the end, when cancer he thought he had beaten, as a younger man, roared up, again, and took him down.But when he went, he was working on a lap-top; he was wearing clean clothes and good shoes; he had a house not far from the beach and a great car; he was off the hard liquor and his sound system was state of the art. He was still ugly. He was old. A helluva lot of American critics despised him and continue to argue about his place in the lexicon of American Literature.
I think he won the brass ring, after all.
For a feminist (still), a working writer who doesn't have a patron (or even an agent), a woman trying to make it alone while no longer young nor pretty, Bukowski is a weird addiction to admit to --but, if he can get under my skin and give me the chops I need to sustain the flow, it's an addiction I'm going to keep.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
THE TREATMENT
You would think that a writer, in L.A., would have written at least one treatment after three decades so close to Hollywood. However, the women's arts community and a radical social life after college in New York didn't predispose me to such ends. Next, fleeing from the intellectual and refined life of "the arts", I was a street counselor for teen hustlers on the mean Sunset, Hollywood and Santa Monica Blvds. After watching too many kids die from AIDS and a too real run-in with a serial killer, I fled back to academia. I didn't want to write about what I was trying to forget. Writing can be "re-living"--if done well. Instead, I became a teacher of special programs at UCI--rose to Head Teacher and then butted heads with the Powers that Be. However, while esconced there, I did manage to publish several novels, short stories, some articles and a few poems. I even tried a stage play of one of my unpublished works. (But that's a whole nother story!) There simply was no pull towards screenwriting. Until...
Fast forward five years. Back in LaLaLand Proper,smack dab in the Miracle Mile,knocking my knees against Hollywood. The agency I ran back to do "real world stuff" (this time MESHING art and education and disenfranchised teens...) folds and I'm left looking for "the next thing". Well, so is half the country. A disproportionate number have settled in warmer parts of CA. We are all unemployed. Time to go back to my roots while I'm looking for new work...I write, in white heat. I finish three new novels. I begin two new blogs. I update my profile on Facebook. I keep in almost daily contact with family and very old friends...then, one of those very oldest friends hits me with a challenge. To do a treatment AND a screenplay, with her as collaborator, about her dead life partner. (Sounds of brakes squealing...)
Now, she's never done this kind of thing in the past, but she is a published writer . She's got the computer software to cover "form" and feels that I have the qualities to make this somewhat tame biography juiced up, while retaining the dignity it deserves. She and the life partner are well known figures in several communities--not the least of which is the political arena. They are also well known lesbians. It seems, no other screenwriter friends want to touch this project. Too volatile. Too complicated. And in some ways, maybe, too sweet? I mean, middle aged white women activists who have been partnered for several decades sweet. Take any two of these adjectives and the demographics of the movie-going American audience fall away like leaves in New England autumn. One screenwriter friend of mine, who knows the story, told me, over lunch, "Minns, this is an impossible task...remarkable women, but, where's the action? Where's the arc ? This isn't Paris in the 20's..."
Ignoring him, I finished my French Onion soup and looked to the future. The immediate future. I adore the friend who is my collaborator. I applaud the life she built with her now deceased. Their contributions to a very select part of U.S. history deserves to be recorded. Noted. Understood. Now, whether it makes for good cinematic entertainment...well...I guess part of that falls on me. Still unemployed. Still working "on spec". Still feeling that there is some Big Reason I've been pulled to L.A. (of all places) and keep rolling back into it, like the other lost souls of this Depression. So, maybe it IS this opportunity. God knows, I've never attempted a screenplay before. And while there are no explosions (so far in the treatment), there is a great car chase scene through the Hollywood Hills. There is sex. There is death. There are riots and laughs and at the core, a great love story of the twentieth and twenty-first century.
So now, having just finished the first draft of "the treatment", I await its judgement from my collaborator, whose life is wrapped up in those lines. I guess I am the ultimate cliche--bar none.
At least my rent is paid.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
MY KINGDOM FOR GOOD HAIR
Since I was a wee kidlet, my hair has always been challenging. In early attempts to control the wild in me, my Mother grew it out and pulled it back in a simple, 1950's pony-tail. (With, of course, the appropriate bangs.) However, soon as I realized it got caught in tree limbs, underbrush, toybox hinges, old fashioned bed springs, and any zippers (on me or my siblings), I begged to be freed. When first grade approached, Mom had one set of twins and my younger sister to contend with. "Off with the pony-tail" seemed like an excellent idea.
Trouble was, Dad freaked. When his guy buddies at the garage kidded him about his "new son", Dad fumed home and told my Mother, that until my "Pixie cut" grew out, he was taking me nowhere...and also banned me from wearing "boys' dungarees" till I moved away--preferably into some other unlucky man's home. Mom, a 1950's era- over-burdened-with-kids-housewife, was mortified. It became the major battle of wills between us. (Only recently, at age 80, has she semi-retired.)
Of course, I had my "girly moments"; mainly in the social shark tank of High School--where I did travel and date and generally rub shoulders (and other naughty "parts") with the boys--but after months of "growing it out", I would wake up one random moment,with a long hair in my mouth and others across my eyes ,sweating from heat- exhaustion- of- the- head. Maybe it was remnants of a past life? Too young for menopause or night-sweats...I just couldn't stand it any longer. Off with her hair!
The local salon owner, who Mom had taken all of us to until the boys demanded "a real barbershop", was used to these "cut" scenes with me. They had standing orders, since that first shear lunacy of my original "Pixie Cut", to NEVER go that short again. Somewhere in the middle of Dorothy Hamill's famous "bowl" and the "pixie" were the waters we were treading. Sometimes they got it right. Sometimes, well, I got very studious and didn't come outside for a week or so. Of course there was always "the perm"--which in my case, came out of a pink and white "Toni" box and was administered by both Mom and Nana--Mom's Mom. (I don't even know if those kits are legal anymore...it's a wonder I don't have brain cancer...)Besides burning everything from my shoulders on up, I usually came out looking like a Brillo pad. Or worse. Then, as it grew out, it was okay. I actually envied girls with Carole King frizz. But, I could only handle the longer locks for a few months, and then...wham, bam, thank you ...well, you know the rest. Luckily, in the sixties and seventies, there was a lot of interesting head coverings around.
In the last year, I've let my hair grow out. Just a bit. As an adult, I've been nothing, if not creative in the hair department. Freed up from my East Coast restrictions, hair has been a major form of self expression. And while I am far from being as versatile as my African American friends, I have pretty much taken hair past the two-inch barrier in every possible way. Hey, I'm a painter. Of course there is color. (And "product". ) Forget the curls; now it was spikes and dreads and chunks and teenie-weenie braids. At one point, I had a "tail". But, because I'd spent the 80's dying it white then adding road hazard warning "tints", the brittle tail broke off in the hand of a nice guy who was trying to be cute and get my attention, by giving it a gentle tug, at a party... (Imagine his surprise...)However, in the last years of my life, I've been very, very (experimentally) short and spikey--adding to the prematurely whitened (out of fear) Irish genetics I carry. (Think "Billy Idol meets Mrs. Santa"...if you are old enough to remember either)You get the picture. But, since unemployment, I realize, I have to pull back and get a bit more conservative looking. My resume must match, minimally, my "image". Course, I'm an artist, and artists aren't great conservatives. Even if it is Hollywood.
I did try. Grew out the bangs (shades of childhood) and even the back. Almost as long as early Kate Gosselin. Went from white to a "pale natural blonde" and only spiked out every fifth strand. Then, began not to spike any of them. For about two days in six months I achieved "the look". I could pass. I knew it was having the desired effect when I started getting called "ma'am", at Starbucks, on Sunday morning.
That was the last straw. The warning bell. The cry for freedom. In my dream, I simply went monkish and shaved it all off. Hey, it's an Irish thing, right? Look at Sinead. (What happened to her, anyway?) Annie Lennox--well, how about Pink? When I woke up, I grabbed the scissors and, well, maybe not Brittany radical, but not Friar Tuck, either. I just reclaimed the kid my Dad refused to be seen in public with.
I'm not being called "ma'am" anymore--even got a "miss" at the grocery store, on Monday. The spikey, short and blondish, wild child rebel gets another few weeks of feeling "clean" and "grounded" and self-possessed. I may be poor, at this moment, but I'm still proud.
And, there's always my beanie.
Trouble was, Dad freaked. When his guy buddies at the garage kidded him about his "new son", Dad fumed home and told my Mother, that until my "Pixie cut" grew out, he was taking me nowhere...and also banned me from wearing "boys' dungarees" till I moved away--preferably into some other unlucky man's home. Mom, a 1950's era- over-burdened-with-kids-housewife, was mortified. It became the major battle of wills between us. (Only recently, at age 80, has she semi-retired.)
Of course, I had my "girly moments"; mainly in the social shark tank of High School--where I did travel and date and generally rub shoulders (and other naughty "parts") with the boys--but after months of "growing it out", I would wake up one random moment,with a long hair in my mouth and others across my eyes ,sweating from heat- exhaustion- of- the- head. Maybe it was remnants of a past life? Too young for menopause or night-sweats...I just couldn't stand it any longer. Off with her hair!
The local salon owner, who Mom had taken all of us to until the boys demanded "a real barbershop", was used to these "cut" scenes with me. They had standing orders, since that first shear lunacy of my original "Pixie Cut", to NEVER go that short again. Somewhere in the middle of Dorothy Hamill's famous "bowl" and the "pixie" were the waters we were treading. Sometimes they got it right. Sometimes, well, I got very studious and didn't come outside for a week or so. Of course there was always "the perm"--which in my case, came out of a pink and white "Toni" box and was administered by both Mom and Nana--Mom's Mom. (I don't even know if those kits are legal anymore...it's a wonder I don't have brain cancer...)Besides burning everything from my shoulders on up, I usually came out looking like a Brillo pad. Or worse. Then, as it grew out, it was okay. I actually envied girls with Carole King frizz. But, I could only handle the longer locks for a few months, and then...wham, bam, thank you ...well, you know the rest. Luckily, in the sixties and seventies, there was a lot of interesting head coverings around.
In the last year, I've let my hair grow out. Just a bit. As an adult, I've been nothing, if not creative in the hair department. Freed up from my East Coast restrictions, hair has been a major form of self expression. And while I am far from being as versatile as my African American friends, I have pretty much taken hair past the two-inch barrier in every possible way. Hey, I'm a painter. Of course there is color. (And "product". ) Forget the curls; now it was spikes and dreads and chunks and teenie-weenie braids. At one point, I had a "tail". But, because I'd spent the 80's dying it white then adding road hazard warning "tints", the brittle tail broke off in the hand of a nice guy who was trying to be cute and get my attention, by giving it a gentle tug, at a party... (Imagine his surprise...)However, in the last years of my life, I've been very, very (experimentally) short and spikey--adding to the prematurely whitened (out of fear) Irish genetics I carry. (Think "Billy Idol meets Mrs. Santa"...if you are old enough to remember either)You get the picture. But, since unemployment, I realize, I have to pull back and get a bit more conservative looking. My resume must match, minimally, my "image". Course, I'm an artist, and artists aren't great conservatives. Even if it is Hollywood.
I did try. Grew out the bangs (shades of childhood) and even the back. Almost as long as early Kate Gosselin. Went from white to a "pale natural blonde" and only spiked out every fifth strand. Then, began not to spike any of them. For about two days in six months I achieved "the look". I could pass. I knew it was having the desired effect when I started getting called "ma'am", at Starbucks, on Sunday morning.
That was the last straw. The warning bell. The cry for freedom. In my dream, I simply went monkish and shaved it all off. Hey, it's an Irish thing, right? Look at Sinead. (What happened to her, anyway?) Annie Lennox--well, how about Pink? When I woke up, I grabbed the scissors and, well, maybe not Brittany radical, but not Friar Tuck, either. I just reclaimed the kid my Dad refused to be seen in public with.
I'm not being called "ma'am" anymore--even got a "miss" at the grocery store, on Monday. The spikey, short and blondish, wild child rebel gets another few weeks of feeling "clean" and "grounded" and self-possessed. I may be poor, at this moment, but I'm still proud.
And, there's always my beanie.
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