Note from the bloggerette herself: I began this blog in February of 2009 under very uncool conditions. Since then, it's been an inconsistent commentary on my journey back to coolness. To borrow a phrase from a certain television show, it's about to get raw like sushi, so haters to the left.
Yesterday, I lost my breasts. The material that used to be my generous rack is now probably reduced to incinerated ash, along with the perfectly intact reproductive organs I lost a few months ago. It's quite something that none of this anatomy was problematic. I saw a picture of my uterus, Fallopian tubes, and ovaries, laid fully intact on a sheet of surgical material, and they all looked like a textbook diagram. (My bestie used one of her medical school textbooks to show me some female pelvic muscles a few days ago, and it was uncanny how similar my own erstwhile organs looked compared to the textbook images.) That might be one of the more difficult things to wrap my head around. The organs to which I've bid a resolute farewell were fine. The issue was the risk of what they could have become. The term "time bomb" has been helpful, in that it was only a matter of time before those parts would likely make me really sick.
I've already been sick. This blog documented the whole experience. While the whole spinal cord tumor chapter of my life was valuable and ultimately life-saving, it's not something I'd like to relive. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It's a helluva thing for a medical provider to tell you that there's a thing growing unbidden, uncontrolled inside of you, and that a series of difficult decisions will have to be made to deal with the mysterious It. I don't want to go through that again. If I could help my loved ones avoid that fate, too, I would.
Removing my reproductive system was an internal struggle. The hard parts of that recovery were within me. I think my husband saw me staring into space a few times, trying to identify what messages my body sent, what needs I could meet.
Removing my breasts is external. Anyone who has seen me in person recently could easily see that my body has a new deficit. For now, I have tubes coming out of me-- drains to collect excess fluid and a 'wound vac' whose mechanics I don't entirely understand but whose little noises are kind of charming, plus a very snug arrangement of bandages and a compression garment. The breasts that used to require visiting a specialty store to find an adequate bra? Gone. I don't yet know what I'm going to do with the wildly expensive bras. Their sizes sound like jokes to anyone who's never existed outside of the 32A-36DD spectrum. My plastic surgeon guessed that my new 'mounds' will have the size of the bras I wore in 7th grade.
So, for breast-owners who opt for prophylactic mastectomies to reduce the risk that comes from the genetic mutation that I have, there are a few options. They can have their breasts removed and call it a day, That approach is called 'going flat' or AFC [aesthetic flat closure]. The folks who take that route are unbelievably cool. Another approach is to fill the voided space with implants or material from other parts of the body [a 'flap' reconstruction, usually from the lower abdomen]. I opted for a middle road called a 'goldilocks' closure or SWIM [skin-sparing Wise-pattern internal mammary perforator]. Basically, the breast tissue was removed entirely to lower or damn-near eliminate my breast cancer risk, and then a plastic surgeon used the resulting skin and subcutaneous fat from the area to create mounds that resemble breasts. Since my body skews juicy, I was a good candidate for this procedure, and now I wait to see if it heals into what I'd prefer.
For now, I'm in an extraordinary amount of pain. I can't sleep in my own bed because I have to remain on an incline; I can't shower because the drain ports can't get wet; I can't lift my arms over my head because it would tug on everything that trying ti heal. I have big feelings about what I've gone through and what the next chapter of my life will look like. I have enormous feelings about the people closest to me to who've dared to share some of this burden, particularly the more grisly parts. (Seriously, partnership hits a new level when one's spouse has to empty drain bulbs into a measuring cup to check how much magic potion my wounds have produced in a given clip of time.) One thing that has become very clear is that these tough moments-- when the meds haven't kicked in, when the meds have kicked in too much, when getting comfortable is just not in the cards-- are really untouchable. I'm fortunate to have people who can hear about the moments, but it's just me in this sore body. It's just me with the horrific daydreams and constant worry that a gnarly infection is just around the corner. It's just me sitting here waiting for my next dose, trying to find some comfort from a blinking cursor. I wouldn't wish this isolation on anyone, but it's difficult to shake the feeling that it's going to be a source of strength in the future. It's difficult to shake the feeling that these tough moments, these tough decisions, are giving me a new lease on life.
Today marks 10 years since a tumor was removed from my spinal cord. I have complicated feelings about it.
On one hand, I've been in pain for a decade. Fact. At times the pain has been just a little whisper, at other times it's been a deafening scream, generally proportional to how well I've treated myself. When I've been eating well, moving my body, and throwing deuces to the bullshit, my pain has been ok. When I've been mainlining Diet Coke and different permutations of flour and cheese, chaining myself to office chairs and my living room couch, and letting the nonessential become central, my pain has been all but unbearable.
At the moment, I'm closer to the latter end of the spectrum. Not so much on the Diet Coke, but the rest of it-- the more insidious poisons-- have been standard operating procedure. In an effort to diffuse the root causes of poor decision-making, I've been working with my therapist and listening to a wellness podcast. One of the techniques I've learned is to break down a bad spell into smaller components and it all starts with identifying neutral facts. So, here are some of mine.
Sometimes it hurts to wear some pieces of my clothing
Sometimes the first steps I take in the morning are agony from my hamstrings and foot muscles being so tight
Sometimes my neck and shoulders are so tight and sore that it causes my face to flush
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and my hands are numb from the different knots or tightening in my arms and shoulders
I can't lay comfortably on a yoga mat [as I learned about 2 hours ago]
I can't always breathe well at night
If I could take a vacation to anywhere in the world, I would hesitate to go because I'd be bringing this body with me, and pain is pain regardless of time zone
On the other hand, I'm grateful that I've made it 10 years. I'm grateful my tumor was benign. And there are many neutral facts that really sing.
I've had 2 careers, both of which taught me many lessons, one of which has allowed me to make an actual living and help take care of my little family.
My parents are still alive and well, and my family of origin has grown
by 2 siblings-in-law, 3 nieces, and 2 nephews
I met and married a
brilliant and loving man, who brings me coffee in bed, touches my surgery scar with tender fingers, and makes me laugh every day.
I became a
co-parent to the best and worst dog ever created, who will literally sit at my feet while I take a shit if I let her.
I've taken a few major risks to varying degrees of success.
I've been
utterly moved by books, movies, music, and art
I've held onto friendships that were established long before my back was
split open, and developed a few new ones, too.
All told, not a wholly bad decade, especially considering I didn't
know if I would survive my surgery. I hate what I went through. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. But it made me more empathetic, it made it a piece of cake to say 'I love you' to the important people in my life [as documented in early entries of this blog-- I think I called it 'lovebombing'?]. Another lesson that therapy clarified for me: more than one thing can be true. We can hold space for several realities.
I don't know if I'm going to resume blogging beyond this post, so I want to make clear that I will be forever indebted to the people who extended such kindness to me 10 years ago. Jan, Doug, Carrie, Jennie, Joey, Kelly, Andi, Denise, Mary, Lea, Steve, Adrienne, Katie, Thea, Molly, Sally, Olivia, Jill, Britt, Tony, Colleen, Andy, Laura, Ben, Sally, Buzz, everyone who sent photos for a remarkably cute 'Team Dana' slideshow, Grandma G [may she rest], Grandma M [may she rest], Pepe, Janey, Gige, Erin, and probably a lot of other people who were somehow referenced in this blog but I can't recall at the moment. I tend to assume that most people are assholes [just because life is hard and we develop defense mechanisms] but what I went through also showed me that everyone has immense capacity for kindness. I highly recommend this perspective. "You're probably an asshole because you've been through some tough times, but I also believe that you can be awesome." Give it a whirl.
In a few short hours, you'll be driven away to a new life away from me, and it's bittersweet. I'd be remiss if I didn't mark the occasion with a few words. I know you didn't hear me talk too much; you know I hate talking on the phone [and your road noise has gotten ridiculous, buddy] and my verbal communication within your navy blue walls was usually musical. But if this was a vlog, here's what I'd say about you.
I'm sorry for not vacuuming you more often. Over the years, you've been soiled with sand, leaves, road salt, dirty slush, powdery snow, all sorts of my bodily detritus, and you probably would've liked a few more breaks from that. Sand was a good look on you, though. And your driver's seat was the perfect place for me to tweeze my eyebrows.
Thanks for having such great acoustics. I'm convinced that no woman's voice has ever sounded richer, fuller, and more beautiful than mine, singing at the top of my lungs whenever ever I had the opportunity. Car-singing is one of my most trusted methods of feeling better. Singing through tears, singing through road rage, singing through boredom or the nagging need to pee; you were my favorite venue for that. I hope your next owner plays good music and has a better knack for harmony. (Let's just admit, though-- I do a great harmony to Heart's Alone. I owe that to you.)
I'm sorry for the time that Evone Perez vomited Goldschlager on your passenger-side seatbelt and footwell. [Is that the right term for where one puts their feet? Let's assume so.] You deserved better than that. You deserved better than several decisions that were made in your seats.
Thanks for being my wheels on 5 different campaigns. Those campaigns brought me to where I am today, and their outcomes aside, I am grateful. Speaking of which, sorry for whichever of my Team SRB teammates spilled coffee on the driver's side of the backseat. I think it was Mike Levin. It wasn't intentional. That was a trying summer. You were witness to some very low moments.
Thanks for making entries and exits so easy for the less-than-able bodied. You were pretty clutch during Grandpa Garbon's last years. Remember buying all of that Goddamn mulch? Yeah, gross. But buying that mulch was kind of a thing at the time.
Thanks for being so easy to park.
Sorry that I never got laid in your backseat, but I'm not sorry for keeping your interior clear of sex juice. It's difficult enough removing petrified Diet Coke from your floor mats, I can't even imagine something protein-based.
Speaking of Diet Coke-- remember that one time when I left a Wendy's cup in the leftside cupholder, and then the bottom sort of disintegrated, and then there was that pool of Diet Coke left behind, and then I used a tampon to soak it up? That was both disgusting and awesome, and I feel awful that the mechanic saw the used tampon still in the cupholder because I was too lazy/amused/forgetful/whatever to remove it.
Thanks for always starting when I needed it, even when it took a few tries. Everyone needs an escape route and you were mine, and I am so grateful.
Thanks for looking so good with bumper stickers on your trunk door. My candidates were lucky to have their names on you.
Thanks for being such a comfortable place to take a little rest-stop snooze. One of my favorite naps of all time was in your driver's seat, en route to Indianapolis to see Jennie, I believe; I stopped at a rest area on 94, pushed the seat back, reclined, cracked the window, kicked my bare feet up on the dash, used my baby blanket at a cover, and wow. That was a blissful 25 minutes.
Sorry for blaming you for my ignorance of coolant levels. That noise you were making was awful, and I should've taken action a lot sooner.
Sorry that my ass got so sweaty during the summer; the swamp-ass you endured during the summer of 2011 was significant. Conversely, thank you for having such high-functioning ass-warmers for the winter. The temperature differential in every place I've lived has always been nuts, especially Michigan. In the course of, what?, 5 months, you've endured a swing of well over 100 degrees if we're counting the wind chill factor and YOU CAN BET YOUR NAVY BLUE ASS I'M COUNTING IT. You are a tough cookie, Cruiser.
I know you had your warm-up years with my mom, but I think your prime was with me. And I'm very grateful. The Runaways won't sound the same without you.
While I continue my job hunt, I've been lucky to snag some holiday work at a family-owned toy store where Mama Jan has worked since I was in second grade. It is unbelievably pleasant. Truly. Why? 1. It is the exact opposite of the work I was doing during the 2012 cycle-- there is no pressure, I'm working alongside a large team of people, I never have to wear pantyhose, it's almost entirely physical, and all of my tasks are completely black-and-white. For example, there will be a massive pile of empty shipping boxes after a ton of toys have been received, priced, and put away, and I get to take a box-cutter, and turn the massive pile into a tidy stack of flat cardboard-- and then the manager will be like, "Ugh, THANK YOU for cutting all of those down!". It is unbelievable. I'm given a simple, finite task. I do the simple, finite task-- while wearing jeans, a hoodie, and Chuck Taylors, and listening to the dentist-office-adult-contemporary station that plays on the PA system [sometimes they play 80's Cher or Heart, and I LOVE that shit]-- and then I am praised for my work. Sometimes I'm asked to wrap gifts. I do that, hand the wrap gifts to the waiting customers and genuinely wish them Happy Holidays, and every time, the customers are all smiley and grateful. It's amazing. 2. Sometimes, one of the staff will bring in cookies or treats that are kept in the break room. This happened yesterday. Even though I am doing my level best to avoid wheat flour, I had one of those peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-coconut bars or whatever the fuck they were, and WOW. Delightful. Such a simple thing. 3. A lot of the toys that are made for girls perpetuate the worst kind of gender politics and social programming-- the shit that I rant about on a weekly basis-- and even though it drives me nuts, seeing those items is sort of motivating for me. It reinforces my ambition to make things better. Also, one of the product lines has this little set of arts-and-crafts kits that feature drawings of female "rock stars"-- not actual musicians, just illustrations of girls singing or whatever-- and it's pretty awful. Women didn't pick up guitars or sit behind a drum kit, defying male stereotypes and pushing boundaries, to sell a bunch of plastic shit in hot pink packages to little girls. Hey, parents, if you want to introduce your child to actual female rock stars, here's a wild idea: visit a record store or your local library's music collection. Ok. So, you can easily see how this could turn into Something for me. I mean, I could go on and on, and that shit never gets old for me. 4. A lot of the toys offer serious amusement to the irreverent among us. For instance, this. 5. Several of the people that behind-the-scenes-- either in the stockroom or in the shipping department-- are younger than I, and while I usually cannot stand anyone born after 1984, a few of my younger associates have really impressed me. I told Wifey Laura that I was 99% sure I'm supposed to be the spirit guide to a girl I work with. I take this very seriously. Anyway, so my current job is a pleasant one. However, one complaint. There seems to be this perception that it's a good idea to wear awful, cheap perfume or scented body products to a retail location where there's no fresh air and the furnace is cranking to combat the December chill. Let me the blow the whistle on that. It's NOT. It is not a good idea. I daresay it's a bad idea. No good comes of that, at all. The only benefit is to the wearer, and that benefit is temporary, as the wearer's nose will quickly become accustomed to the scent and then be inured to it. So, then the rest of us have to smell it, whether we want to or not, and some of us get wicked bad headaches from Vanilla Sparkle Paradise or Wonderstruck by Taylor Swift or Beautiful Heat by Beyonce or whateverthefuck it is. To all 4 people that read this blog, please spread the word. Nobody wins with bad perfume except the perfumer. TSwift and Bey have enough money, I promise. So, I left the store last night with a MOTHERFUCKER of a headache, laid down to take a nap around 7:30pm, and woke up at 4am, ready to take shit on. Cut to now. I read my entire Twitter feed, made coffee and enough brown rice to last me a week [I probably shouldn't be using my big-kid chef's knife before 5am, but those onions weren't going to chop themselves, 'nawm sayin'?], and read some good stuff. Cue my love letter to Lindy West.
* * *
One of my favorite writers is Lindy West-- she writes for a number of different publications, but I'm most familiar with her work for Jezebel. I had read a lot of her stuff, but didn't start paying attention until this piece: [NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT MY MATERIAL. LINDY WEST WROTE IT. SHE WROTE THE HELL OUT OF IT. I COPIED AND PASTED IT FROM JEZEBEL. IF YOU ARE READING THIS, AND YOU'RE A LAWYER, AND YOU WANT TO SUE ME FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, THEN THIS DISCLAIMER PROBABLY WON'T HELP MY CASE BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO WRITE A DISCLAIMER, BUT I THINK THE JUDGE WILL BE LIKE, "Y'KNOW WHAT? SHE GAVE IT A TRY, AND THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME. CASE DISMISSED." AND THEN WILL DROP THE MIC. ONCE AGAIN, I DID NOT WRITE THE FOLLOWING. I PROBABLY COULD'VE JUST POSTED A LINK TO IT, BUT IT'S TOO GOOD TO NOT INCLUDE THE FULL ARTICLE. BY THE POWERS VESTED IN ME BY THE INTERNET, I NOW PRONOUNCE THIS COPIED-AND-PASTED ARTICLE DISCLAIMED. IT IS TOTALLY DISCLAIMED.]
Congrats, New Grads! By the Way, You Don’t Know Anything
It's the time of year when the internet is deluged with condescending lists of "advice for graduates"—stuff like "experience Paris" and "learn to wear purple until you laugh until you cry until you laugh"—and since all of that shit is just literal barf smeared on a laptop screen, I decided I might as well take a stab at it myself. Let's help some kids.
1. Experience Paris. Just kidding.
You know what? International travel is great and all, but it doesn't magically turn you into a genius or a good person. If you make it to 30 without ever having had the financial flexibility to purchase a $1000 plane ticket, then you're pretty much just normal—not some barefoot hill-goblin. And you know what? Everything in Paris is fucking covered in gruyere. You're only 22-years-old (or something). Do you really want to get sick of gruyere already? Seriously. You want gruyere in your life for as long as possible.
2. This is the most important thing of all the things: you think you know stuff, but you don't.
People act like college is this gateway to adulthood, but it's really just more playtime. Adulthood is the gateway to adulthood. It's not that you're not smart, but I'm like a decade older than you and I'm STILL half baby. I only know like two things at this point, and I am literally the Albert Einstein of being in my twenties. You're going to keep learning stuff constantly for the next 50 years or so, so just calm down and let the learning happen.
3. No one wants to hear about your semester abroad in Thailand.
4. Take all the help. Take it!
Okay, so there are no jobs, you have tons of debt, and everything is fucked. I'm sorry. If moving in with your parents for a while is a viable option, if you have the ability to ease into independence, you should take it. Otherwise, when you actually become independent, you'll have thousands of dollars in credit card debt and a shitty rental record, and then when your car gets towed because of unpaid parking tickets you won't be able to afford to get it out of the impound lot, which means you essentially just went into debt so that you could give away your car. These things affect your credit for years and can come back to screw you even after you've learned your lessons [Ed: After ten years, I'm still dealing with the effects of my just-out-of-school credit fuckery. Take this advice VERY seriously. Don't be me.]. So if you have help available to you, take it. If you can, move in with your parents and get an unpaid internship. Then get another unpaid internship. Write a blog or whatever. Get to know people in your chosen field, don't be a presumptuous dick (nobody owes you shit), and remember that it's your privilege (i.e. parents) that got you here. Your responsibility as a privileged person is to not be a Republican.
5. To the non-privileged people, yes, you will have to work harder than the people in item #4, and that completely sucks.
The world isn't fair. I'm sorry. It just isn't. But take the job you have to take, and try and do the work you love in your free time. Chances are, you're smart and tough and not a dick. That will help.
6. You look really pretty today.
7. Say yes to everything. Take the meeting.
Any job in the field that you eventually want to get into is better than any job that's not in that field. Pay your dues. Nothing is beneath you right now. And be shrewd. Like, if you graduate from culinary school and what you want is to be a fancy chef, it's better to get a job as a dishwasher at a nice restaurant than as a line cook at Denny's. I thought I wanted to be a writer, so my first unpaid internship was at a shitty fake magazine that was owned by these super sleazy Young Businessmen in the Valley. It was basically just a coupon book that kept the dudes afloat while they focused on their real project—inspirational corporate fire-walking. So mostly my "editorial internship" consisted of picking up firewood at a seedy lumber yard and driving it across town to this weird, empty porn-condo that, I guess, was Creepy Firewalking, Inc.'s HQ. Then the dudes would touch my arm and try to get me to walk on hot coals because "it's spiritual," and then they would give me $20 and it felt dirty. It was fucking awful, but I'm still glad I did it, because I totally got real magazine jobs later. Resumes are all smoke and mirrors anyway.
8. Be nice to your parents, because they are going to die and you will be sad.
Unless your parents were horrible, in which case fuck your parents! (Not literally.) One of the best things about being a grown-up is that you get to burn bridges with people who are complete dicks to you. You make your own family now.
9. That said, you should also never ever burn any bridges.
My dad was literally nice to everyone he ever met for his entire life, and every time shit got complicated some old rando would pop out of the dumbwaiter and be like, "Hey, do you want this job? I love you!" He called it luck, but I call it being fucking nice to people. (Just kidding, we didn't have a dumbwaiter. But maybe you can, once you get one million jobs from being so nice all the time!)
10. You are a no-strings-attached person right now. Congrats!
This is your big chance to be responsibly poor, before your poverty starts fucking up anyone else's life. You (probably) don't have kids, a spouse, a mortgage, or responsibilities of any kind. What you do have is the stamina and the drive to cope with a staggering amount of discomfort (i.e. an air mattress in a windowless closet in a garbage shack under the freeway with 13 vegan roommates growing white-people dreads) in the name of freedom (i.e. an unpaid internship supplemented only by your busking salary and plasma sales). Do it now. Because believe me, by the time you're 30, you won't even have the patience to sleep on a fucking couch, let alone share a microwave that smells like the ghost of Braden's ravioli.
11. Don't get confused, though: Unless you are actually poor, you are not actually poor.
I know I said "poor" in item #10, but I was being lazy. I'm sorry. What I really meant was "broke." Don't get some chip on your shoulder about how disenfranchised you are because all you have is a liberal arts degree and 100 Top Ramens. It will make you sound silly and careless. Some people have been systemically disadvantaged their entire lives and now they live in their cars and don't even have Bottom Ramen. Here's an easy way to tell the difference: If you got arrested, do you have someone that could bail you out of jail? If the answer is yes, then you are broke and not poor. "Poor" is not a game. You are "broke."
12. You should care about politics.
Unless you care about politics too much, in which case please stop caring about politics so much because you're making everyone tired.
13. Invest in potatoes.
Potatoes are delicious and they cost almost negative money. Any idiot can cook a potato, and if you're following this guide, there's a good chance you're going to be very hungry for a very long time. Potatoes!
14. If you must make art about your own life, go for it.
But don't expect anyone to take you seriously until your life actually has stuff in it.
15. Don't believe anything that someone sitting at a folding table on the street tells you.
They are either a weird monk who wants to give you a "free book" for $15, or they think 9/11 was an inside job, or they want you to sign up for a garbage credit card, or they are Lyndon LaRouche.
16. Your time as a libertarian, Buddhist, and/or bisexual is over.
Unless you're an actual bisexual, in which case I TOTALLY BELIEVE IN YOU. PLEASE DON'T YELL AT ME. I know a lot of you guys are mad at me right now. Shit. I feel like I'm breaking my own rule at #9. But I told you, I'm still learning! (See half-baby, item #2.) And also, libertarians are mean. I am not sorry for that part.
17. It's time to figure out your weird sex stuff.
I know that when you were younger you hated yourself for liking anything besides tender vanilla caresses, but hush. If you can only self-lubricate by imagining that your mattress is stuffed with Michael Landon's hair, embrace it! And remember that there is someone on the internet who has an actual mattress stuffed with Michael Landon's actual hair, so you are not even close to being the creepiest Cheerio in the box. Also, if you really just like tender vanilla caresses, that's adorable! Do that! Don't let anyone tell you what to do with your parts.
18. None of the stuff that you think is a big deal is a big deal.
Like, nobody on the entire earth cares if you got your period and stained your pants. Fuck, nobody even cares if you just SHIT your pants. Just go home and change your stupid pants! People have bills to pay! People are busy! No one is looking at you!
19. Don't structure your life based on lists on the internet.
That's crazy. You do you, special snowflake.
* * *
Ok, now this is me (Dana) writing again. How hilarious is that piece? LW has pieces with more gravity, certainly, and she gave a pretty powerful speech about internet trolls [if you're not familiar with that term, look it up, but to Cliffsnote it for you, it has nothing to do with bridges or riddles], too, but the legit belly laughs that she gave me from that piece is what cemented my Lindy West fandom. So, anyway. LW's latest piece is about modesty, written in response to some young women in South Pasadena starting Modesty Week at their school. Oy. Here's LW thought about it:
[ONCE AGAIN, I DID NOT WRITE THE FOLLOWING MATERIAL. LINDY WEST DID. AND THEN SHE PUBLISHED IT ON JEZEBEL.COM, AND I COPIED AND PASTED IT HERE BECAUSE I THINK LINDY WEST IS AMAZING AND IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO ME THAT EVERYONE AROUND ME KNOWS ABOUT HER. DON'T SUE ME FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. I HAVE VERY LITTLE IN TERMS OF LIQUID ASSETS AND I HAVE NO NEFARIOUS INTENT SO A LAWSUIT AGAINST ME FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT OR THEFT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OR WHATEVER WOULD BE NEITHER A FINANCIAL NOR MORAL VICTORY, AND ISN'T THERE A BETTER USE OF THE LEGAL SYSTEM? BOOM. DISCLAIMED.]
The Merriam-Webster English Dictionary defines "opening your article with a quote from a dictionary" as "the most bush-league garbage move of all time"—but that's because it's mainly used by pimply baby boys in red states who want you to know howpersonally wounded they are by the existence of Black History Month. In some cases, consulting a dictionary can be legit instructive. Like right now, when we have young women running around proselytizing about "modesty" in the name of women's lib. Um, ladies, no.
modesty (n.)
1530s, "freedom from exaggeration, self-control," from M.Fr. modestie or directly from L. modestia "moderation, sense of honor, correctness of conduct," from modestus "moderate, keeping measure, sober, gentle, temperate," from modus "measure, manner" (see mode (n.1)). Meaning "quality of having a moderate opinion of oneself" is from 1550s; that of "womanly propriety" is from 1560s.
This is what "modesty" means. The key points here are "correctness of conduct" and "womanly propriety." If we're looking at the concept of modesty in the non-humble sense, it is a gendered term. It means adhering to a paternalistic and historically oppressive moral code. It means "know your place." It means that certain behaviors are "appropriate" for a woman and others aren't—not for a human being (we're not talking about murder or dog-marriage here), but for awoman. It means that ladies need to be covering up their tittayz.
Ladies. You do not need to be covering up your tittayz.
Now, that doesn't mean that you need to be showing them off and waggling them about in church, or splitting the difference by sort of intermittently flashing them like a strobe light. It just means that you get to do whatever you want with them, regardless of any and all 400-year-old notions about "womanly propriety." Barring public nudity laws (which are also kind of silly, but whatevs), the idea that society can tell you how much of your body to reveal or hide implies that your body does not belong to you. The concept of modesty is proprietary and patriarchal and ancient. I'm pretty sure that even the most hardline anti-feminist can admit who owned women's bodies in the 1560s, when the term came plopping out of the etymological birth canal. Hint: it wasn't women.
Anyway, that hasn't stopped the city of South Pasadena from declaring December 3-7 "Modesty Week" (oops, guess you missed your chance to wear your high-necked chemise with your most dour stomacher!), in response to one high school student's pro-modesty crusade:
Saige Hatch, 15, launched the South Pasadena High School Modesty Club in September to combat the proliferation of short shorts, miniskirts and bare midriffs. Hatch blames popular culture and peer pressure for sexualizing women and girls.
"Women have fought for their rights, liberty, and honor more in the past 200 years than in all recorded history," reads a statement on the club's website, www.modestyclub.com. "Our bright, heroic women are being made the fool. A fool to think that to be loved they must be naked. To be noticed they must be sexualized. To be admired they must be objectified."
Fine, fine, yes, sure, fine. Sounds pretty good so far. I am against the hypersexualization and objectification of teenage girls, and I don't love it when I come downstairs and find my 11-year-old stepdaughter watching The Real Housewives of Gonorrhea Island or whatever. I've done my share of railing against gratuitously "sexy" Halloween costumes. I get it. Also mini-skirts are gross because your vagina touches the chair!!! Unfortunately, further research into the philosophy behind Hatch's Modesty Club makes it clear that this isn't some thoughtful, progressive anti-objectification thinktank—it's more like the South Pasadena High School Slut-Shaming Club, or the South Pasadena High School Uphold the Patriarchy Club. Great.
The club asks girls to pledge they will "wear shorts and skirts at knee length," "shirts and dresses that cover my stomach, lower back, breasts and shoulders" and "not ask, persuade, or allow a boy to do anything with me that will jeopardize the code of chastity."
Boys have less to worry about, but are called on to keep "a neat and clean appearance" and "maintain the utmost respect and honor for the virtue of girls."
F-PLUS. CLICK.
To be very clear, I don't have a problem with these kids wearing turtlenecks and having a club and doing whatever the ding-dong they want (I'm trying to work clean here—Hatch's brother made headlines a few years ago for starting a No Cussing Club, no joke). They seem like sweet kids, and I'm sure their motivations are honest and heartfelt. But I take issue with puritanical standards of female chastity and virtue (which are deeply tied up in conservative religious rhetoric—Hatch, perhaps not coincidentally, is a cousin of Orrin Hatch) being publicly validated by city officials.
Obviously "modesty" has shed some of its patriarchal baggage in the long, slow slog toward modernity, but its fair to say that it's fundamentally intertwined with the concept of women-as-property. "Oh no! Don't let other people see my stuff, because then the stuff will get gross and lose its value!" Cover your goodies, ladies, because everyone knows the menfolk are too busy thinking about man stuff—like winning hella bread, and being all of the presidents—to restrain their penises from homing in on your holes like hungry little dowsing rods.
The idea that the onus is on women to "preserve" their chastity by not "tempting" men—instead of on on men to stop themselves from taking it forcefully—is a fundamental imbalance in our society that creates tangible problems for women every day. And it's coupled with the idea that women who DO "give up" their lady-flowers (and maybe even enjoy it) are somehow tainted and less valuable than women who wear knee-length skirts. However subtly, the word "modesty" is pregnant with all of that meaning (sluuuuuuut!!!). "Modesty" is about men, not women—it's no coincidence that patronizing bullshit like this "Guys on Modesty" Pinterest pageis a thing:
Guys on Modesty is a male perspective Blog on the subject of modesty. We aim to redefine modesty from a negative virtue-a long list of don'ts-to a positive: A way of living that woman aspire to be.
That is the purest distillation of "modesty" I can think of. Couldn't have said it better myself. Just like with the Modesty Club, it's the intent and the context that matter. Wearing a high Peter Pan collar is not objectively problematic (and some of the dresses on the "Guys on Modesty" page are fucking cute, goddamnit). The problem is the implication that there's a "right" way to be a woman, and that men—anonymous, strange men on the internet, no less—have some say in what that "right" way looks like. And I'm very sorry, "Guys," but my only "womanly duty" is to myself.
I have no beef with the kids, regardless of how misguided I think their reasoning is. I only take issue with the adults who indoctrinated these girls into the idea that their personal worth is tied up with their "purity" (notice that no such rules apply to the boys—they're only asked to try to not sully the precious womenfolk). The idea that women's bodies are some kind of exceptional holy commodity undermines equality in a million ways—from access to reproductive health care (hey, how 'bout you cover my vagina the same way you cover the rest of everyone else's body?) to the fact that 2012 is a banner fucking year in the America household because we've elected 20 whole lady-senators to the United States Senate (we can't elect any more or there'll be menses blood all over the Senate chamber!). There is nothing wrong with wearing a modest blouse. There is something wrong with wearing a modest blouse because some dinos told you it is your "womanly duty."
I want my kids to understand that they have value beyond their sexual capital—that they shouldn't dress just to titillate (at least until college, or whenever that phase happens), but they don't need to hide under baggy smocks like their knees and shoulders are some sort of irresistible garden of penis-witchery. They get to live their lives for themselves. Not in thrall to some ancient notion about the commercial value of unsullied vaginas.
I am a person. I'll dress the way I want and act the way I want, and if I want to show all of my boobs that is not an invitation or a justification to rape me. And the fact that I had sex out of wedlock does not make me tainted or virtueless or lower my "value" in any way, any more than it lowers some horny little dude's "value." So fuck these kids' parents and especially fuck the city of South Pasadena. Because if any of you really give a shit about women's safety, then how about you make it "Don't Rape Women Week" in South Pasadena? Or encourage your earnest little kids to start an "End Sexual Violence Club"? ...No? Just "Cover Up, Ladies, You're Making the Rapists' Erections Cry Week"? 'Kay, then. 'Kay. Bullshit.
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Back to me again. Once again, LW left me breathless. I couldn't agree with her more stridently. This is an important issue to discuss with young women because we get really conflicting messages about how to present ourselves. And, I hate to bring this up, but for women with more pronounced curves, it's a tougher row to hoe. Two of my BFFs are naturally lean, and therefore have smaller bustlines, so they can wear pretty much anything on top, without issue. Put those ladies in a camisole, and they look gorgeous. But, my sisters and I have much larger bustlines, and it's really easy to make some innocuous garment look full-on slutty. It's tricky! Trying to find professional clothing is a total assache-- find button-down blouses that fit a large bustline wtihout gapping, without drowning the rest of one's frame, is just this side of impossible. Also, if you're curvy, and you put on a pair of heels, guess what: you get curvier! Your butt gets higher, your calves get more pronounced, and your breasts may as well be put on a fucking stage with spotlights and a velvet curtain.
Working in electoral politics, this is a legit thing. Because so much of it is attending events, meeting new people, navigating through groups, whatever, one's appearance is a part of the game. I attended a training last spring with EMILY's List, and there was a designated part of the program that addressed how to dress and groom oneself. Because, for better or worse, politics is a man's game, so the differences between men and women are thrown into sharp relief. If a woman wears a pants suit, she runs the risk of appearing to underplay her femininity and ZOMG-she's-anti-woman-and-she's-probably-a-lesbian-and-definitely-anti-family. If a woman wears a dress, she runs the risk of appearing to sexualize herself and ZOMG-she's-anti-woman-and-she's-probably-slept-her-way-into-the-general-election-and-is-definitely-anti-choice. This past campaign, I attended a ton of fundraisers, and I can say without hesitation, that my appearance played a significant role in how "well" I did. If I wore pants and a conservative sweater or maybe something less feminine, I'd have one set of results. If I wore a dress, and heels, wore my hair down or used a slightly heavier hand with my make-up, I'd have an entirely different set of results. To be honest, I really enjoyed the opportunities to dress up and I imagine that I carry myself different when I'm fully "done", and I struggle with rationalizing that to the militant feminist that lurks within. I never wore anything super low-cut, and I never tried to use my decollete as a bargaining chip, so is that the difference? Like, is that where the line is drawn? I can be feminine or whatever, and it's all kosher as long as I don't throw my cans in someone's face?
I have no answers for this. For Halloween, someone suggested that I dress up as Joan from Mad Men. So, I dd. I altered a day dress, found some spray-on red hair colorant, teased the shit out of my hair and put it into this elaborate twist, etc. And it was pretty fun. I was all proud of myself because I didn't fall victim to the "slutty ______" Halloween costume pressure, but I'm unconvinced that my "pride" is warranted. I even prepared a Rosie the Riveter costume in case I ultimately decided that dressing as Joan was antifeminist. I mean, I still had shit on display, like deliberately. I still wore bright red lipstick, and wore something to cinch my waist, etc. So, where does that fit into a point of view that finds archaic norms about female modesty totally fucking ridiculous, but that also finds slutty Halloween costumes to be repugnant, offensive, awful?
And to be honest, there are times when I wear something lower cut, when I kind of AM throwing my cans in someone's face, and I feel like myself. I don't have a tight waist or an ass that won't quit [but high-five to those of you that do!], but my breasts are pretty spectacular and fairly symmetrical. I have a constant internal debate about whether or not this point of view is healthy.
Y'know, I'm thinking that the main reason I like LW's take on modesty so much is that is validates my desire to bring 'em out more often. Hmm. Like I said, I have no answers for this, only questions.
Happy Holidays, readers! This is the worst kind of symmetry, but the last time that I wrote an entry, it was soon after the passing of my maternal grandmother, Edna Mae-- and this entry comes soon after the passing of my paternal grandmother, Clara. I am fresh out of grandmothers and I won't mince words: it fucking sucks. I miss them. I had all of my grandparents for almost 26 years, and it was an incredible fortune that I sometimes took for granted. So, now I'm 30 and I'm down to 1 grandparent left. I recognize that I need to take advantage of the time that I have left with my pepe (my paternal grandfather), but it's like I don't know how to go about it. What am I supposed to say? "Pepe, you're the only grandparent I have left, so I'mma need all of your free time from here on out, mmkay?"
It seems almost too right that I'd have to start this entry with a nod to my grandparents, because what I really want to write about is what comes before us, on whose shoulders we stand, and what inspires us. [Sweet CHRIST, I hate when I have this much to say because I have to get it all down in one fell swoop or I know I won't have the right words the next day, or I won't have the same fire. I don't like to write unless there's something I HAVE to write.] So, let's get into it. Strap in.
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Alright. BFF Molly and I have been BFFs for a length of time that is now closer to 2 decades than it is to 1 decade. You can surely imagine how many mixes have been exchanged. We have our own styles of mix-making. I won't write to Molly's approach, but mine is usually pretty wordy. I once sent Molly a set of mixes with "liner notes"-- like, 5 or 6 pages explaining why I included each song and what she could take from it. Sometimes it would include some music history-- God only knows what I wrote when I included songs from Sam Cooke or Jeff Buckley. I'm fairly certain that Molly didn't read everything that I'd include, but I LOVED writing those notes. I threw together 3 mixes for her over this past Thanksgiving, but didn't have time to write any notes, or even fuck around with the song order for each one. [There's a scene in High Fidelity, both film and movie, that discusses the construction of a mix tape. The order is key. I'm a firm believer.] I made copies of each mix for myself and have listened to them over the past few days, and sat down tonight to write the liner notes. I haven't written anything longer than a few paragraphs in quite a while, and I was getting the itch, so I thought that liner notes would be a good starting point to get my swagger back. The first mix I was chronicling is called "MKD's Ladyfierce Mix". I include that information so that you might get deeper insight into how much fucking FUN I have with this stuff. Here's how the liner notes started:
1. You Drive Me Wild (The Runaways)-- The thing about most Runaway songs that really gets me is how confident the lyrics are, despite being written by 15/16/17-year-old girls, decades ago. It's my understanding that they were the first girl group to be so overt and aggressive with their sexuality, when historically female ensembles had been good-girls or just total jailbait. The lyrics here, in "I Love Playing With Fire", and in "Cherry Bomb" are so self-assured, self-actualized, that even if it sends a somewhat irresponsible message to really young women, I don't care because it's genuinely refreshing.
2. The Wild One (Suzi Quatro)-- If nothing else, Suzi Q is from Detroit. Word.
3. Tymps (The Sick In The Head Song) (Fiona Apple)-- I love how Fi-Fi writes her lyrics. Kayne West interviewed her right when this album came out for Interview Magazine [they shared a producer right around that time, Jon Brion], and I will never forget reading that Kayne literally told her that her "vocabulary was so ill".
4. Tell Him (The Exciters)
5. Rock N Roll (The Runaways)-- This is the original version of that song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osOq7G-fiY8 I enjoy that The Runaways changed it to "that LA station". When I release an album of cover songs, this song will be included, and I'll change it to "that Dee-Troit station".
6. River Deep, Mountain High (Ike and Tina Turner)
7. Lollipop (Squeak E. Clean & Desert Eagles Remix) (The Chordettes)-- You can hear that drum sample I mentioned at the :40 mark. It's from Tone Loc's Wild Thing. Check it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=387ZDGSKVSg
8. The Kind Of Boy You Can't Forget (The Raindrops)-- I didn't know this UNTIL RIGHT NOW, but The Raindrops were not an African-American girl group like The Crystals or The Ronnettes, but rather the name that Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry used for their own songs. They were married, and were 2 of the biggest songwriters in the Brill Building. As soon as you read a bit about Ellie Greenwich, you're going to be like, "Fuh REAL!?" because she's responsible for some of the most delightful pop music. Check it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellie_Greenwich AND HOLY SHIT, she wrote my favorite pop Christmas song, too! Check that, also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV8x7H3DD8Y
9. I Love Playin' With Fire (The Runaways)
10. I Drove All Night (Cyndi Lauper)-- I'm uneasy that Celine Dion covered this song. Uneasy.
11. Here's to Us (Halestorm)-- Is it too much to ask that I sit at a bar surrounded by campaign teammates and we randomly start singing this in unison?
12. He's A Rebel (The Crystals)-- Another example of me being blown away by pop music...Darlene Love sang the lead vocal on this, and according to her Wiki page, she sang back-up on some of my favorite songs
I've been a fan of Darlene Love for a while, for several reasons, but visiting her Wiki page and then her AMG page [wait a sec, are you not aware of AMG? Right that wrong, friend, and right it quick.], really drove home how amazing and criminally underrated she is. CRIMINALLY. I knew she had sung back-up for Sam Cooke, another of my favorites, and I wanted to know which songs she'd touched. Looking at her credits, I noticed that she had worked on some of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts' albums, too. Alright, to say that I "noticed" it doesn't cover what really happened. I read those credits with the same emotional reaction that Allie had in The Notebook when she read the first of the 365 letters that Noah had sent her-- tearful delight, incredulity, regret at not having read those words before, etc. I was on tilt, for sure.
And then I thought a little further. Everything I know about Joan Jett-- which is not nearly enough-- indicates to me that OF COURSE she'd have Darlene Love sing back-up. I LOVE Joan Jett. I hella, hella love her. I started listening to The Runaways after seeing the eponymous film last winter, and it really turned into something. It made me get back in touch with the inner riot grrrl, and exploring female artists that I'd overlooked. The overall ethos she expresses-- making noise, not apologizing, being your own advocate-- was the perfect companion to a seismic shift in my own sensibilities that started last spring. Then, a few weeks ago, I was in DC [for BFF Katie's wedding!] and I made an all-too-brief visit to the National Museum for Women in the Arts to see a special exhibit called Women Who Rock. I wasn't sure what to expect, but on the real, I am grateful that I went on a Monday at midday because I was the only person in the entire exhibit, and it allowed me to really feel it. The exhibit includes clothing, instruments, and random memorabilia from a ton of incredible women in music. Check it. And I saw things that took my breath away. Truly. (I described the experience on Facebook thusly: Attention, residents of Washington, DC and the surrounding communities. If you don't take the opportunity to check out the Women Who Rock exhibit at the National Museum for Women in the Arts, please punch yourself in the face. I saw handwritten lyrics to "Cherry Bomb", a pair of Patti Smith's boots, Kate Pearson's wig, the dress Cyndi wore on the cover of She's So Unusual, one of Cher's Bob Mack
ie creations, an original issue of Bikini Kill, Kim Deal's bass, Madge's J-PG gold conical bustier, and I was sobbing for pretty much the entire time I was in the exhibit because HOLY SHIT IT'S JOAN JETT'S LEATHER JACKET WITH A PIN THAT SAYS "PRO FUCKING CHOICE" AND I JUST CANNOT HANDLE THIS EXCUSE ME WHILE I REMOVE MY GLASSES AND WEEP INTO MY JACKET SLEEVE AND CAN I JUST SET UP A COT AND HANG HERE UNTIL THE EXHIBIT CLOSES AND AREYOUFUCKINGKIDDINGMEHOWISONESUPPOSEDTOHANDLEALLOFTHISWITHOUTACOCKTAILANDALICENSEDTHERAPIST. StevieDonnaMarianneSheilaLindaPatSiouxsieDebbie, praise.)
Seriously, sobbing uncontrollably. [Oh, that's Nicks, Summer, Faithfull, E., Ronstadt, Benatar, Sioux, and Harry, respectively.) My interest in/obsession with Joan Jett and female musicians only intensified after visiting the exhibit, so seeing this connection between her and Darlene Love was pure magic to me. I couldn't help but think that maybe they're pals in real life. Maybe they've performed together.
So, I pushed it a little further and found this.
And I lost my shit once again. To cite another John Cusack film, it's like the universe keeps revealing these women to me. [That's from Serendipity.] (The tough thing, for me, about finding these little gems is that I get deposited onto some ecstatic plane of emotion, and can never seem to find anyone who can meet me on it! ATL Laura and my friend Sara gave worthy attempts, but they really had to be there, y'know, in my head to fully understand. It would probably help if more of my friends were prone to manic or hypermanic episodes. Whatevs. My friend KB gave it a shot but, again, she had to be there.) It doesn't seem like nearly enough people in my life are familiar with Darlene Love. It is ridiculous because NO ONE has a voice like hers. She belongs in the same vocal stratosphere with Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Freddie Mercury, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, etc. Aside from her own hits, she sang back-up for some true, true legends, and a lot of it was uncredited. I cannot even imagine how much of her voice is out in the ether. (Speaking of back-up, Joan Jett sang on Peaches' "Boys Wanna Be Her", which gives me delight beyond measure.) She was there for arguably the most important time in pop music, when Phil Spector was producing his Wall of Sound.
Anyway, I posted the above video on Facebook, hoping beyond hope that I'd find some kindreds. No dice. Is it possible that not everyone is knocked out by these powerhouse women? Why do I feel like more of the exception that the rule?
I think about the women who costumes and paraphernalia I saw at the NAMWA exhibit, and I'm just floored. (Granted, there were some exceptions. In addition to an explanation about rape threats on an Tumblr comment thread, I'll also need an explanation for why Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera get to share ranks with Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt. Sure, Brit has given us some fun shit to dance to, and some of my favorite car-singing moments were thanks to Xtina, but what barriers did they break? What risks did they take? Some current-day female singers might end up really accomplishing something beyond mere hooks and records sales-- truly, I'm optimistic about a few-- but riot grrls they are surely not.) Time and time again, these women blazed a trail. They made noise when everyone and everything was telling them to keep quiet. And in the process, they created some of the most indelible moments in popular culture and a soundtrack to our lives. [Quick question: how badly do you want to listen to "Edge of Seventeen" right now? Or maybe "Love Me Like a Man?" So badly, right?!] A few weeks ago, a friend was bitching on FB about being tired and unmotivated, and I just unleashed. We just don't have time. This girl has a ton of potential, and I cannot sit idly by as she wastes it. What if Aretha had been like, "Meh, y'know what, I think I'm just gonna marry well and hang it up"? What if Cyndi Lauper was like, "Eh, I'll probably just wear jeans and a t-shirt. I don't want to be too weird"? No. Fuck that. This is what I wrote to my friend:
"Think of all of the women who came before you, who didn't even have the option of professional everjetting*, who were relegated to hearth and home, forced to bear the responsibilities of a family instead of pursuing a career or chasing a quixotic dream in a faraway city. We stand on the shoulders of generations of silent, bored women, generations of untapped potential and missed opportunities. You have the opportunities that our foremothers couldn't have imagined, so don't fuck around and waste those hard-won chances that lie at your feet. You would be cheating yourself out of adventure and success, cheating the world out of your awesomeness, and spitting in the faces of those who came before you. I wouldn't relay these words to every woman; I'm relaying them to YOU because I believe you are exceptional. Wake up, get your ass in gear, and don't rest until you kick some ass today."
(*Everjetting is sort of an inside joke. It relates to an alias I assigned to myself when I feel like I'm living up to my potential and kicking serious ass.) I was a bit histrionic that morning, and I'd had some strong coffee, too, but I'll be damned if I wasn't being completely honest. We truly stand on the shoulders who came before us. Thank CHRIST I haven't had to blaze any trails! It would not go well. They've been blazed, for sure. It's our job to make sure they remain that way, that we're guardians of our progress, that we don't take everything for granted, that we keep at it and speak up and make sure that we reach back at every turn to pull the next woman up. I look at my niece and think of the friends she'll make, and my hope for her and those girls is that they be governed by grace and guts, not by bullshit. If I can have a hand in that, then I can die happy.
I am lucky that I work in a field where I have ready access to strong, accomplished women, rife with grace and guts. I'm addicted to them. My quite amorphous professional ambition is to get good women elected. Everywhere I turn, I see new examples of women being abused, ignored, or marginalized. It's like technology has given society new and fun ways to be shitty to women. Some of my favorite female writers have been vocal about the harassment they get from internet trolls, and it goes so far beyond ridiculous. Honestly, can someone explain to me the psychosis required for someone to send a rape threat to a feminist blogger? I sure as fuck don't understand it. Is there some reptilian corner of the male brain that drives one to violence in response to a call for gender equality? I just...ugh. So, instead of just complaining, my response is to work towards getting more women elected to public office. I could go into greater detail about the logic that connects "women are up Shit Creek" to "I need to work in politics", but now is not the time. Here are some things that keep me motivated:
1. Professional or collegiate football, and the related hysteria, commercialism, and mindfuckery
2. The Kardashians
3. Any of the Real Housewives [except maybe Caroline Manzo]
4. The sheer number of women I know who changed their name upon getting married [yeah, yeah, it's traditional, but FOR FUCK'S SAKE, that tradition is based on flagrant and archaic patriarchy]
And then there are the things that keep me inspired:
1. A strong female voice, musical or otherwise
2. Women who can shred
3. Men who get it
4. Women who get it-- OK, so here I was going to include a link to something that Amy Poehler once said, but I couldn't find just one, so suffice it to say that Amy Poehler gets it.
5. My mom-- we're not always aligned politically, we're not always aligned about what I should be doing professionally, but she approaches everything with circumspection and kindness, and thus sets a good example for me (a judgy bitch).
I'm between campaigns right now, so I don't know what's next. My career in politics hasn't been easy, and I'm grateful for that. I'm getting psyched for a new challenge. I know that whatever I do next will involve smart, motivated people for whom the phrase "fire in the belly" is entirely apt. I might never get to meet my favorite female icons, but I have gotten to meet some of their political counterparts. Legislative rock stars, if you will. Daydream: Secretary Clinton runs for POTUS in '16, I get to work on her campaign, and the entire living roster of the Women Who Rock exhibit all offer themselves as campaign surrogates, and I get to kick it with Dolly Parton and Kathleen Hanna. And when I say "kick it with", I mean "shit my pants and hide in a janitor's closet so that I don't embarrass myself in front of". I'd pull it together in the end though. It's a part of everjetting.
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Here's to DLove and Joan Jett, to the women who refuse to shut up and who dare to play with fire.
So, a bit of lag time between posts once again. This time is due in part to the passing of a great woman, my grandmother, Edna Mae. She passed away last week at the age of 92, leaving behind 7 children, 18 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren. Oy. (It makes me tired and sore to merely think of those numbers.) Understandably, I heard a lot of sweet stories about her in the past week, and there were a lot of tears shed over losing a mother figure with all of the diurnal, domestic, familiar images that usually accompany a woman in my grandmother's position. I definitely have some of those memories of her-- whether or not she enjoyed it, that woman could cook. And when I was living Cincinnati, she took it upon herself to be my personal seamstress and she was remarkable at it. (I was worried that the somewhat vast age gap between us would get in the way of the final product, but it absolutely did not. I should've known better.)
But, being the woman I am, I'm drawn more to the memories of my grandmother as a someone beyond a wife and mother, caretaker and nurturer. She was a ballet dancer. She was a model. She had a lovely singing voice. She could be a really good gal-pal. And she was kind of salty, too. I had the chance to live nearby for a few months and develop a kinship with her beyond the grandma-grandchild relationship; we talked about boys, we argued about politics, we talked shit about people in our family that we driving us nuts at the time, she needled me about coming back to the Church and I needled her about Fox News, etc. She had that irreverence that I so adore in my friends and siblings, and I feel very lucky that I was privy to that even for a short time. During a visit back to Cincinnati, I was staying with her. I had gone out for the evening to see some friends, and I was dealt a really upsetting revelation. When I walked in my grandma's door that night, she was still up, reading and listening to Hannity or whomeverthefuck, and she greeted me warmly. I immediately burst into tears, and she let me sort of collapse on her [despite her being a somewhat frail 90-year-old and me being a somewhat drunk, somewhat thick 27-year-old], and she talked me through the bruise on my heart. I'm telling you: a really good gal-pal.
I can't help but notice something interesting about my grandma's passing. So, when her husband, my grandpa, died in July of 2008, it set my path in an entirely new direction. If that hadn't happened then, I wouldn't have gone to Cincinnati and had my first taste of campaigning; I don't know how my tumor would've revealed itself but I wouldn't have had the same neurontourage and met those incredible people who pulled me through; I wouldn't have met Jill or Olivia, or any of the political folks that continue to inspire me today; I wouldn't have had the chance to get to know my grandmother the way I did. Now that she's gone, I am wondering if I should be ending this chapter of my life and moving onto something else. That was an entirely unplanned detour on my journey, so should I be getting back to the original path? I apologize if I'm being redundant, but one of my favorite song lines is particularly germane here.
One of the best things about having a house to myself is that I can sing as loudly as I want, at any time of day, to absolutely any song I choose. There was a bit of a ramp up period, but already I'm at the stage where the singing isn't enough; I've engaged the Mariah hand and its companions. I might have to record some of these impromptu performances. BFF Katie might really enjoy that in between "catching babies".
I'm expecting to be swept up into another campaign in fairly short order, so I'm embracing this interim time, and it's been pretty sweet so far. I have started working on 2 new fiction writing projects, and I've used a new approach to both. My best writing-- the stuff that means the most to me, the stuff that I feel really exhibits what I can do-- comes from spontaneous moments when something is really bubbling beneath the surface and I write to exorcise the demon. Someone once told me that you're an artist when you can't not create your art, be it painting, sculpting, writing, acting, whatever. I feel very lucky that I have firsthand knowledge of that feeling. I've had nights when I can't sleep until I get something down on paper.
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Sidebar: Sister Jennie refers to the band Florence + the Machine as "Delores and the Synthesizer". It is fucking hilarious, and my current playlist on [a certain online music service that I will NOT mention on this blog] just played a song from that band. Sister Jennie is unlike any other.
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Othersidebar: The holidays at Casa Mofo left me with a very full refrigerator and, sadly, only one stomach into which the leftovers can be deposited. So, I've been cooking quite a bit, and currently, the house smells like slow-cooker jerk chicken and apple-blueberry crisp. Regarding the chicken, there is something singularly satisfying about eating food with flavors that were developed and mastered in parts of the world that will never know terms like "wintry mix". Also, I'm embracing the opportunity to fill the house with smells that the 'rents don't enjoy. Roasted cruciferous vegetables, curry, onions, garlic, etc-- I'm going to get this joint jumping. For what it's worth, I just took a few bites of the apple-blueberry crisp and SWEET CHRIST ALMIGHTY. I'm getting the vapors. I put a little extra lemon zest in the filling and used 5 different variety of apples and added coarse sea salt to the topping...I might need a cigarette after this.
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I get an idea and then I start writing the basis for the idea. It's like I see the picture, but when I begin, I first write the "frame" so that I can nail it down before I get to the picture. The logic behind this is that writing the picture will be easy because it's already so vivid and developed. Right now, I'm working on the pictures first. I could hear the dialogue, I could see the character's faces, and I wanted to--
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Back to the othersidebar: I'm sorry, but holy shit, this crisp is delicious. And by the way, by adding blueberries to the recipe, some of the apple slices have been tinted this beautiful shade of magenta and some of them have a gradient effect. It is borderline obscene. Man, am I grateful for my hedonist side!
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--secure those pieces before they lost anything. I haven't been hit like this in a while, and I have no idea how long it'll last. I feel a bit like a pitcher in the 5th or 6th inning of a no-hitter. (Because I SO know how that feels...) I'm trying to keep all conditions stable, not change any habits, and maybe I can draw this out long enough to nail down the full skeleton of each story.
I won't get into the details of either piece, but I will say that one of them was partially inspired by a conversation I had with my aunt Mary-Ann over Thanksgiving. I don't know if she knew how beautifully or pithily she had articulated this one particular idea but holy shit. The other one was handed to me by BFF Molly. Literally. It was wrapped up with a bow. I cannot fuck that one up because the 'making of' story would be just too good to miss.
So, what else. The holidays in DKMland were rife with mirth. Rife, I tell you. All of my siblings and their respective spouses were under one roof and it was fantastic. The word "fortifying" seems appropriate. So, Sister Jennie got married in November, and there was this moment in the proceedings that I will never forget. (Bear with me; this whole thing will tie up quite nicely.) I'm standing up as a bridesmaid, Sister Carrie was a few spaces up from me, and then Jen and Brother Chris were at center ice. Immediately to my right was Brother Dave, holding the Gretabunny [whose dress was on backwards], then the Corcfortons, and my parents, BFF Katie and Dr. Kevin right behind them. There was this very tight concentration of very important people, and there's magic in that. In anticipation of our annual Christmas Eve shitshow, there was this consensus among my siblings that we wanted to keep things a little more mellow this year. Now, I LOVE my extended family; I am fully aware of how lucky I am. But, every Christmas Eve, there's just all of this rigmarole that accompanies our annual party, and it gets easier and easier to miss the opportunities for that magic ohana feeling we had going during Sister Jennie's wedding. So, this year it was just my immediate family-- there are 10 of us now-- plus Sister Kelly's family, our beloved family friend Gige and her son Rob, and the participants of our sibling hoodie exchange. We were all able to sit at one table [well, it was several tables that we sort of shoved together], no one was climbing over anyone else, there were no voices fighting for top volume, and it. was. fucking. awesome. It made me fall in love with my family all over again.
Alright, generally, I wouldn't do this, but I'm going to unpack that last sentiment. Here's why I love my family all over again, and I'll do this in age order.
Il padre-- Watching my dad relate to BFFs Katie and Molly is a damn gift. Our family has always operated with a gentle open-door policy, and my dad set the tone for that, whether he meant to or not. He has this inherent understanding of the idea that your family can definitely include the people you find, not just the people who've dipped in the same gene pool, and it's one of my favorite things about him. I love that his was one of the loudest voices in the audience at BFF Katie's med school graduation when her name was announced.
Mama Jan-- We were doing some last-minute shopping for Bro-Joe, and I spotted this framed photo by a Detroit-based photographer, Michael Heughens, that I knew he'd love. Jancakes was a little on-the-fence about it, and after some pleading, she goes, "You know what? I'll return that remote-controlled helicopter I got him and get him this instead." I genuinely love that my mom bought a legit TOY for her baby boy of 34 years. [BTW, check out Heughens' work. There are some great shots.]
Bro-Joe-- I love how he comports himself around his wife. He's not annoying about it, it's not like gushy bullshit, but he does these little things that all add up to him taking his role as Kelly's husband really seriously. And I also love that his marriage has introduced 4 great new people to our family.
Brother Chris-- the newest member of my ohana! Alright, so a very basic element to the DKM psychosis is awkwardness, right? A major, major factor in whether or not I can genuinely like someone is whether or not I feel awkward in his or her presence. Not only do I feel zero awkwardness when Chris is around, but I think he actually makes me more comfortable. Forrealsies. This is no easy feat. (If I made a fabric chain with all of the shirts that I have ruined with nervous sweating, it would span the fucking globe.)
Sister Carrie-- on Christmas Eve, Dr. Kevin was given some fancy new undersquares as a white elephant gift. Even though Carrie has her Master's degree, even though she is somebody's mother and somebody's wife, without a moment's hesitation she grabbed one of the pairs and - poof! - new millinery accessory. Like the seltzer bottle or a pie in the face, undersquares on the head is a major icon in the commedia delle Monforton and I will never not love that about Carrie.
Sister Jennie-- You know how I hate cleaning my room, in a way that has several levels to it? In anticipation of Carrie/Dave/Greta's arrival, I had to tighten up my cleaning game, and Jennie was all over it. Even though she doesn't empathize at all, she understands that I ascribe meaning and gravity to pretty much everything, often to my own detriment. She gets that throwing something out is tricky for me and she doesn't make me feel like total nutbar Aunt Gladdy character for it. She spent hours in my room with me, gently kicking my ass and keeping things moving, and even vacuumed the corners of the ceilings for me. And this was all done despite her feeling like shit for her entire visit home.
Brother Dave-- I'm pretty sure that Dave's entire raison d'etre is being a dad. He's remarkable. He doesn't get rattled, he doesn't flinch, he just executes. Right after Thanksgiving, the Gretabunny was having some tummy trouble and it was causing her to break her pattern of being the most mellow baby of all time. So, in one particularly unpleasant episode, Greta just LOST it-- screaming, face flushed like a little strawberry, in very obvious pain, the whole thing. Carrie, the concerned mommy, was understandably distraught to see Greta like that; Dave handled the very unpleasant task at hand [specifics are entirely unnecessary here], picked up the baby, and went out onto the front porch with her to literally and figuratively cool her down. It was amazing.
Sister Kelly-- Kel and Bro-Joe stayed at Casa Mofo together the night before they went back to SanFran. I was hanging out with BFF Katie earlier in the evening. I come home, see Bro-Joe and my dad in the TV room, probably watching the 2nd episode of 24/7: Road to the Winter Classic [which I cannot recommend highly enough], and I hear Jan and Kel in the dining room. I walk in to find my brilliant and lovely sister-in-law on her hands and knees scrubbing the carpet; one of the four-legged nieces had left a Christmas gift under the dining room table and Kel was cleaning up said gift. Seriously, WTF.
Anyway. I had a wonderful holiday. It wasn't as populous as it usually is-- ACG and Wifey Laura were busy moving into their new Minneapolis digs, there were no random IA reunions-- but the time I spent with my loved ones was sweet. One of my favorite holiday quotes is: "Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love." I have some bad-ass co-conspirators.
