Category: Sisterhood

When I Was Twelve, Part I.

When I was twelve, a drunk, older guy at a Jewel concert bumped into me and loudly exclaimed that I looked like Elizabeth Shue. I turned bright red and tried as hard as I could not to smile wide enough to reveal a mouth full of braces—I knew they’d undermine the intellectual, physical, and emotional maturity that he MUST have identified in me. (’Cuz nothing says maturity like scrawling “Eat Shit & Die” on your converse, stuffing your bra, and forcing your mother to sit ten rows behind you at The Wiltern and act like she doesn’t know you…but I digress.)

This man’s attention lit me up like a goddamn FEMA switchboard in a natural disaster, but he also made me feel so uncomfortable and so unsafe. This man didn’t see me. He couldn’t see me. And I knew it.

What I didn’t know and couldn’t have known at twelve was that this brand of cognitive dissonance—a paralyzing, simultaneous ignition of worthiness and worthlessness—would eventually become my emotional calling card. Welcome to womanhood, baby girl. Good luck making sense of anything that’s happening to you.

He asked for my [parents’ home] phone number; I gave it to him.

* * *

Today, as I pumped gas at the Monrovia Shell station, an embarrassingly bad, up-tempo Jewel tune of modest, early-2000s fame—God bless that woman’s second act—blared out of the speakers. And if Big Oil doesn’t believe we should occupy public spaces in silence, then neither do I, so I started singing along at full volume. Just as we hit the bridge (“…sell your sinnn; just cash innnn…”), I looked over my shoulder and caught the gaze of an older, mentally-disheveled lookin’ dude filling up his Mini Cooper.

He looked me up and down, hungrily licked his bottom lip, smiled approvingly, and said, “You remind me of Elizabeth Shue.” I immediately remembered that night in ’96 at the concert. Jewel! Elizabeth Shue! Creepy man! Same shit—how about that? I must have looked confused rather than surprised, because Mini Cooper man cackled—loudly enough to move him from the “mentally disheveled” to “mentally unhinged” category—and added, “Elizabeth Shue is from the 90s. Who knows what you were doing in the 90s.”

“This,” I said. “I was doing exactly this.”

Welcome to womanhood, baby girl. It only took twenty years to make sense of anything that’s happening to you.

He, too, asked for my phone number; I didn’t give it to him.

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Pavement Pantyliners + Other Garbage: A Meditation on Found Objects

trash

this trash is haunting me. I may forever regret leaving it behind, so I am gonna tell you about it instead. because…look at it. here we have the contents of some lady’s ladylife, strewn across a few square feet of my favorite residential block in northeast l.a., exposed for all to see. there is some kind of weird, silent aggression to this little object-collective. the personal nature of the objects forces the viewer to consider the implied vulnerability of their owner. forced intimacy. which is aggressive and, ultimately, uncomfortable. at the very least, it was uncomfortable enough for me (a snoopy, storytelling weirdo experienced in the dual realms of forced intimacy + hoarding) not to feel right about disturbing the scene and pocketing the evidence. so, instead, I give you this shitty, blown-out photo and the promise/threat of a forthcoming short story. artifacts pictured, clockwise from top: sd cards in pink carrying case, 35mm film in canister (used), pantyliners in factory sealed packaging (unused; 2 pkgs total), + 30 day chip from a 12-step fellowship, most likely the good ol’ A&A. hope you’re all right, baby girl. I bleed, too. a lot of us do. 

* * *

Getting Free, or: Why My Cellulite + I Got Naked + Went Swimming

blacks beach

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon alone at a nude beach, and I may never be the same. I’ve gotten pretty damn free in the last couple of years, but this was next-level. I’ll can get naked in front of most women fairly easily (thanks, Westridge School for Girls?), but this little bit of beach was populated almost entirely by men, which is a whole different psychological ballgame for me—pun semi-intended.

Anyone who has ever loved me knows that I adore sea-swimming. There are few activities that offer me the kind of simultaneous freedom and connection that being a tiny, splashing speck in ocean does. It’s the best. Just the best. And I almost didn’t swim today. Because…naked. Because…trotting to the shoreline naked!

Then, as barftastically cheesy it sounds, I remembered the woman who I want to be. I want to be a woman whose life reminds other women of their worth. I want to be a woman who doesn’t script vicious monologues about her own body in her head when she catches a stranger looking at her. I want to be a woman who knows that any man who gets this house of cellulite and stretch marks and softness (um, hi, you don’t lose 100 lbs. in a year and come out of it firm or perky…like, in any way whatsoever) is really lucky.

Not lucky because I have a “great personality” in spite of my body. And also not lucky because I think I’m better than any of my potential partners or better than any of the women whom they could have chosen to love instead. Just lucky because life is fragile, and connecting is beautiful. It’s everything.

Hate is obviously alive + breeding in our world (see: Orlando Nightclub Massacre, Donald Trump, the Stanford rape case, the countless police killings of unarmed black men nationwide, et al), so you might as well join me in throwing some love out into the universe.

Even if it’s love for your own, imperfect ass.

Why Beyoncé’s LEMONADE is Everything.

beyonce-lemonade

If you haven’t watched (and please watch it—don’t just listen to it) Beyoncé’s LEMONADE yet, read Bené Viera’s piece below first. If you have watched it, read it now.

This album is a big deal. And it’s not a big deal—or a bunch of consumers deluding ourselves into “thinking” it’s a big deal—just because it’s a Beyoncé album. Mark my words, this isn’t a case of an artist’s own hype duping the masses into false reverence.  If you’re convinced that this is only a big deal because its lyrics shovel a new heap of gasoline-soaked coal into the ol’ gossip furnace (“Did he really cheat?!”), you would also be wrong.

LEMONADE is a big deal because it is this exact album and because Beyoncé is the vehicle for it.  You cannot separate one from the other here; as McLuhan told us decades ago, the medium is the message.  It is an album rife with commentary about femininity, masculinity, blackness, betrayal, vulnerability, uncertainty, and spirituality as performed by an international megastar who happens to be as cross-culturally embraced for her beauty, poise, and total reserve as she is for her talent.

LEMONADE is a big deal because it marks a key cultural moment. It tells stories that have been told before, sure—but not told like this.  Not all at once.  Not by Beyoncé.  And, like it or not, this matters.  LEMONADE is pop art that reminds us that, in spite of ourselves, we are living through an important cultural shift.

I could write so much more, but even though I absolutely knew what “call Becky with the good hair” meant without Googling it, I’m gonna go ahead and put my pen down, per Ms. Viera’s request.

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