Sometimes being an American makes me inherently whiny. And for good reason. But it goes against my own belief that whining, while it may be a good idea in the moment, is a waste of time--even when it's on Oprah, and you get an honorarium--but in the end, the world is all "Wild Kingdom" anyway; you're on your own, so get over it and step up and just live already. ever since i was 8 years old, i felt like a grown up chomping at the bit, waiting to have my own apartment. childhood was all going through the motions of joining the brownies and being in awe of the girl scouts and their badges and green uniform. brown was the color of "not quite there, yet."
i never made it to green. by that time i was 10 years old, in massachusetts, wondering if i should learn to become a stripper and try on gloria's g-string. it terrified me. snapping the string between your butt cheeks was like jumping over the broom, inseminating the egg, or committing murder...
you'd be forever changed.
the reality of this life is that you also don't fit in and suicide seems like a reasonable option, because there's nowhere else to go, and you don't get the point of just sticking around to eat, shit, and suffer.
but sometimes you have these head splitting moments of connection and love and luminescence... yes, "luminescence"... i've never described it that way, but that is what comes to mind. not in the literal sense, but an everything sense. everything is so intense, it's like mango juice running down your chin on a sweaty summer day and the sugars take you out to the middle of the street and have their way with you... right there on the ground, and you LOVE it...
that's what it's like sometimes. the simplest things can leave you gutted and speechless.
and you want MORE.
and that's where the trouble starts.
because the world is numbed and hard and bitter and disappointed and so how do you seek the mango juice when someone's trying to run over you?
i don't know. i'm 43. more than halfway through my life if that palm reader was right in telling me i'd live to my 70s. i didn't want to know. in fact, i thought, "you've GOT to be kidding me." because when you're unemployable in america, life feels 50 times longer than it needs to feel. americans play with the poor like kittens playing with half-dead mice because it distracts them from their own shortcomings.
Bianca Laureano sent me christmas presents like it was 1979.
i stopped doing presents because i'd see it all end up at a garage sale or in someone's extra junk room. we all had everything we needed pretty much by 1988. everything else is just more landfill.
but i got a handmade card that she and ramon made, and i felt punched in the stomach and brought down to my brownie uniform's height. i forgot what it was to be on someone's mind for a week while they make something for you. i forgot!
and everything she wrote took the air out of me.
bianca comes off as a fighter, but she's all lover. it's a lie. we argued loud enough in the subway that people expected a big-titty fight, but that's how we simple say "good morning."
anyhow, i digress.
i used to love christmas when it was more about the stockings, and less about the apologetic stereo or TV i got because i wasn't able to live or visit home. extravagance became balm for being an asshole the rest of the year and i wasn't buying it. i wanted kindness and "good morning" over a TV set.
so i got a letter from a reader that brought me back to my brownie uniform self, and i realize that i actually get a lot of these moments. more than my fair share. and i want to thank those of you out there who buy our books, show up, or produce me, or simply write to me, and smile when i show up, i want to thank you for becoming my family.
i seem cavalier and like a natural asshole. i am that, but i am more brownie-like than you'd imagine. that's why i know we ALL are. and it breaks my heart when i have to end relationships, and partnerships because i have so much at stake.
i am here on this earth on some kind of journey, and i always think i know what it is, but then it evolves and changes and outruns me.
i have always believed the christmas stories. of rudolph being the ugly duckling and coming into his own and being needed and a precious part of his community. i have always taken it for granted that we all have roles and are needed.
but i have also lived as this rudolph that never quite knows how or when to use my red nose, because it gets harder and harder to practice. the rent on just standing still is horrendous, and god help you if you parked too far from the curb: that's a $75 ticket.
and i have a split personality where i believe we all find our place---that's the brownie in the second-hand brown uniform that is way too big, with pants rolled up because mom's too busy to hem them.
and the other side is this jaded girl scout with all the badges, but the green uniform has gotten tight, stained, and tattered. she believes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. especially if she wasn't born into wealth, or the royalty of the arts.
i've always believed that at some point, a girl's gonna have to get on her knees and take it in the face and the ass to get anywhere.
i've held out.
and then i got tired and saw how FAR it is to even get BACK to the lower middle class, so i figured i had maybe an hour left where i could pull the girl card.
but i realized, i couldn't even do it.
i've fucked and sucked for free but why not for work?
because in the end i really do believe in santa claus. maybe i've taken the quaker idea of god being inside us too far, but i believe we are the ones who make santa real or not. and i NEED santa to be real. i'm tired of having the edges of everything being sanded down until i don't realize what's really happening to me.
so fuck it. i miss saying "merry christmas" again. if anyone feels slighted, fuck you.
i'm tired of us all being touchy americans, but not being touchy over the right fucking things...
like rich people getting tax break extensions while libraries and schools are closing.
be touchy about that shit.
and i realized that in the way i loved my stocking presents, because they didn't require soooo much theatre of me, like the TVs did... i realize that i get to LIVE this way.
meaning that i find magic all around me for living this way. i have had to let all the women of my blood family go, so that i may be myself. freedom is painful. freedom may be said to cost a lot, but that's a lie when you win YOURSELF.
what else is there? sitting at the table and seething inside because you have to think before you talk?
spontaneity of emotions is real power and i'm buzzing so much of the time. i have NO idea what i'll say or what will happen. but i don't do it cavalierly. i think that when you really want to act out of love, then it's impossible to be truly evil.
that's another subject.
my point is that when i was so down a little over a couple of years ago, and wanted to truly curl up and die, i was so exhausted from life, i met a teacher. she's officially a therapist, but she became a spiritual teacher for me. just sitting in her room made me feel at peace and okay for how i was.
she said intensity was being fully alive. not a bad thing....
go figure...
anyhow, so we are friends even as she's moved to germany for an adventure. and a couple of the readers i've met through my work, and have yet to meet in person, are coming over for a sleep over and we'll do the show probably in the living room with some other friends.
a sleep over!
talk about rolled up brownie pants moments and opening christmas stockings that rival anything under a tree!
and so i get a beautiful fan letter from the midwest loving my book, and others are willing to travel to have a sleep over with little ol' crusty me! and dorothy, my teacher, she's game. never met these dames and she's down for it ALL.
and i'll meet alison penton harper. the woman who edited "The Girl Must Die." i adore her so much, i was on the phone asking her husband if she and i could have a non-threatening lesbian affair. but he wasn't any ordinary straight guy, and was hip to the reality of women-fucking-women. it's never like it is in the long-fingernail porn movies.
the man ceases to exist if you halfway know what you're doing. (which i can't even say i do)
so i am sorry for complaining about the state of the world. i will leave most of the world to the world, but i am going to focus on my own new growing, organic "family."
the queer community copped out of really creating any change when it caved and went for the marriage and babies in the 'burbs thang. a lot of us didn't even HAVE health insurance, so visiting rights were moot anyhow.
and now that racism is over and we have a black president who's giving wealthy people tax break extensions and forcing us to buy corporate insurance, i'm going back to believing in santa claus full time.
i had a crisis of conscience this weekend when i realized i didn't have it in me to do the "by any means necessary" thing about giving head for my dream. when i was much more feral, i used people and i'm still haunted by things i did that weren't right. when you've been evil, later on it's like that movie, "flatliners" in your head. i get why alcoholics make ammends. i just couldn't find anyone and don't want back into it, even if i could.
and i am an asshole and actually believe things like: "if you're pure of heart, you CAN'T get fucked over." i know that the whining woman who feeds her son so much he can't move, is actually a loud, evil monster. people with sweet voices are the ones to watch out for. and yeah, unfortunately many of them are our own mothers.
that's why i won't be under kamala's mother's thumb, or anyone's mother.
this individuality thing makes good copy, but up close it's very lonely. when you know the freedom of being able to truly be your good and complicated self, you can't go back and behave for anyone.
if gays can't even make a good go of recreating the concept of family without resorting to "father knows best" routines, then know it is truly hard.
so i get beat down at times and wonder what's the point.
then kamala's mother gives me that feeling of disgust and "not knowing my place" (i know that look all too well. it's a class and color thing), then it's either you or me.
and we're back to "Wild Kingdom."
people aren't bad. we're just animals. all jockeying for position.
anyhow, i want to thank you all again who are even still here with this rambling note. it's a hello. it's a thank you. it's a "good luck on the holidays" note.
and i'm announcing that i'm working to change my own inherent belief that because i wasn't born to the manor, or have the wealth, that i'd have to take it up the bum to be successful in the arts.
i'm looking to hip hop business for inspiration because i KNOW those boys ain't giving no one head for a record deal. sure, what's in common is they all have jews. i have jews, too. it seems every colored artist needs jews as emmissaries to make it in the business.
jews may look white, but they're still not quite white, so they get something. i'm not sure.
but do we need our own jews to make it?
i don't know.
but i am here to tell you that i'm ashamed that i even considered going gritty to make our monster girl dream come true. i don't want that to be our back story. i'd be truly ashamed.
besides, i totally remember the 80s era depression of opening extravagant gifts. my mother's girlfriend used to buy so much crap, there had to be two trees with crap under 'em (den and living room).
i missed the joy of a stocking and could turn a new nail polish or plastic necklace in my hands for hours. things i'd be too serious to buy for myself.
so i had to recommit to believing in santa claus and rudolph, and trust that if i stayed pure of heart, then i'd live like i had stockings all the time. i don't like the squalor of poverty and fear the cruelty of this country as i get older, but (shrug)... i can't be magical when i'm panicking about the future's possibilities when my PRESENT is so fucking amazing in reality.
i learned a few years ago that my whining life, was others' DREAM LIFE. that many live in so much bludgeoned cotton and disconnection and isolation, that even my terrors were more adventurous than their GOOD days.
i still forget that. my expectations for life have always been enormously high. i thought we were supposed to feel and love and have experiences. not have lots of crap and sit in a recliner and watch huge TVs. i thought we were supposed to live lives that rivaled anything we'd ever SEE on TV!
but no dice.
somehow we thought to be a successful american was to have a lot of crap and die in the recliner facing the largest TV. what the fuck, y'all?
i am still the whore on the other side of the world who sees people's real pain and desires.
i have been the dry concubine and heard the weeping hearts of successful and bored, passionless people who thought they finally had it all.
and i finally got it... i fucking had it all, already.
i had myself. my passion. my feelings. my spontaneity. and the courage to get up and leave when it was killing me.
that's everything to me.
i already have it ALL.
and i thank those of you who've had it all with me. and we who stick together, will continue to have it all together.
in fact, i like the new story idea, "The Revenge of the Starlets" (inspired by america's situation.. .it's my fantasy story), is going to be the collaboration with some of my girls i've met through my work and have wanted to share with the world for YEARS.
it won't be a traditional anthology. oh, heavens no!
it is a gang story i started while writing 'The Girl Must Die,' and a good section that got cut as it didn't fit.
but now it's alive, and i see how to use the character traits and stories of my other superfreak girls.
and we have already started to giggle, but i can't wait until we meet in germany and have a sleep over like brownies with our pants rolled up.
we're going to sleep on the floor and do our own show and pass the hat.
we don't need mac daddies or emissaries.
i am afraid because i have no idea how we will build our own structure ourselves,
but i suppose THAT is the real adventure, yes?
the getting there... the journey... the beauty of the christmas tree before you tear everything open and it's all over and a little melancholy. because it's never really about the stuff. it's what the stuff hints at. like a one night stand.
we want more....
ever more...
and when i stop complaining, i realize that i got everything i ever wanted. i have the "more" but sometimes it's terrifying. i suppose that's what makes me feel like i have everything. i know i can handle the adventure now. i don't need to rely on AAA to come out and save me on the train tracks of life.
my girls will do it. and we'll have a campfire and roast our own marshmallows. and we'll sing. and we'll roll up our brownie pants and paint our toenails.
merry christmas and thank you all for enabling me to exist. the solo thing is a lie. it's there, but we all need family of some sort.
and thank you for making me wealthy with love beyond my wildest dreams.
x
--erika pie
