In Which I Embark On a Series of Essays

In another take on a writing/blogging experiment, I've decided, right now, at this very moment, to start an essay series on this blog. Just kidding. I actually put quite a bit of thought into this. 

So, since you're all DYING to know, here's the deal:

Rather than randomly posting my essays here and there as I have previously, I'd like to start using this blog more productively in the hope that I can ultimately piece these writings together as a collection. 

It's tentatively called: A Walking Contradiction.  And here is the first essay. 


A Walking Contradiction

 I. Kickball Days

When I was a kid, my closet was a crazy mishmash of hand-me-downs from my brother and new, “girly” clothes, typically from Kids-R-Us. I loved everything about Kids-R-Us—the shopping carts with colorful balls that slid back and forth across the handle, the “Girls” section, everything.

8th birthday, 1992

Maybe what I loved most about going to that store was that whatever outfit I found, it was all mine—the flowers, prints, purples, or otherwise girly aspects of it marked it as something special and new, that was mine, and only mine.

But this is contradictory, because I loved my hand-me-downs just as much, and wore them like a uniform as I played kickball with my classmates at recess. I played “like a boy” because unlike many of the girls who would sometimes join in, I did not wince as the ball came rolling toward me, nor whiff it and giggle; rather, I would kick it soundly, run as hard and madly as I could, and when on defense, throw it fiercely at a running player. I would do this, with my boy tennis shoes strapped to my feet, as I always favored the blacks and reds of the boy’s shoes over the annoying pinks and glitters marking all the girl’s shoes.

Even then, during those playground days, I was overcome by intense pride and shifting loyalties. When another girl would inadvertently prove the boys supposedly right, that “we,” the girls, weren’t good at sports, thanks to a high-pitched squeal as she missed the ball with a poorly placed kick from a pink-shoelaced foot, I would shudder with embarrassment and annoyance, but also yell at any boy that poked fun. I’d think how I’d dispel their notions with my next kick or great catch. Worse, though—or more confusing, perhaps—was my occasional anger when another girl, more like me, stepped up to the plate. I felt an unmistakable but disconcerting fury, rather than allegiance, to my fellow tomboys.

Damn right, World Cup 94 shirt

These confusing feelings, though nonsensical in many ways, aligned perfectly with the clothes in my closet. I wanted to be both things at once—the girl wearing purple prints with boy’s tennis shoes—and could not understand why no one else seemed to be like me. Instead, there seemed to be definite, concrete lines. Either I was supposed to be a girly girl who whiffed her kicks, or I had to be just like the boys. I felt myself pulled in both directions. By 5th grade, I felt unbearably left out that I was not only unable, but I was completely uninterested in, doing flips on the bars with the other girls, but at the same time, I felt a secret, but immense pride at being the only girl on the basketball court at recess. I missed out on the female bonding, but it was worth it, once I was standing in the line from recess back to class, sweating, beaming, and high-fiving my equally sweaty teammates, the boys.

But then came junior high. I didn’t want to admit that it was no longer simply “okay” to be the tomboy, the only girl on the court with a bunch of boys. Suddenly, everything had changed, and I didn’t like it one bit. The boy who had always been my indoor recess buddy and nemesis in checkers was now calling me the President of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee. And the boy I’d once traded Kirby Puckett cards with and fought viciously against in tetherball tournaments would no longer look me in the eye.


What happened? I thought. When did it all change?

 1997

Everyone was “going with” someone but me, and I felt like a freak. I was awkward, with thick hair that earned me the unfortunate nickname of “Bush,” paired with equally thick eyebrows. Suddenly, the boys no longer thought I was cool for having the newest Adidas or a new Umbro t-shirt. In fact, they barely talked to me at all, and usually it was to talk to my pretty, blonde friend instead.

I continued to be the prude of the group who had never made out with a boy or had a boyfriend. I hated how everyone referred to it as "Frenching" and "going with"—how do you French? where was everyone going?— and above all, I dreaded going to slumber parties where the other girls would share all their boy stories. Just as I could never do a roundoff or a backflip, I had no boy stories that didn’t involve tagging along with my older brother and his friends, and therefore nothing to contribute.

I was deemed safe, still just the tomboy kid sister whose boobs hadn’t come in yet, and maybe never would.

But then they came in. And everything was different, yet again. I lost my role as President of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee. (Yeah. Shut it, junior high boys!) The older girls who had once looked at me indifferently now eyed me as if I'd done something wrong. The boys who had once not looked at me at all now looked at me all the time.

I don’t know how I looked back at everyone, but I imagine it was a mishmash of wide-eyed stares and squinty, defensive glares. The only time it didn’t matter was when I was safely in a classroom seat, because though I might suddenly have boobs and yet still be awkward, I was also a smart kid, a straight-A student. But in the hallway, cafeteria, or bathroom, it was a different story, and I was terrified. I think I dreaded passing by the pretty older girls even more than the football players who’d whistle or yell as I walked through the gym. I couldn’t figure it out: Was I supposed to be a pretty girl, a smart girl, or a tomboy? Was I allowed to be all of these things?

All the pretty girls flirted easily with the boys, giggling and joking with them. I was alternately terrified of, and in utter disdain for, the boys though. When they’d whistle, I’d feel my body tense and my face flush, like in the old days on the playground when a girl would miss a kick and the boys would laugh it off as typical girl behavior. It didn’t feel like a compliment. It felt like an insult. So I looked straight ahead, head held high, and ignored them.

Again, the confusion. So I was pretty, then? But I couldn’t be, because the pretty girls felt like a breed I didn’t belong to. I hated and was fascinated by my new breasts and I hated and envied the cheerleaders and I just flat out hated the boys.

Suddenly, like loathing being unable to easily fit in with the other girls yet loving being the lone female on the court, like rocking both my Sambas and a pink flowered bag, my breasts had become both a source of power and my own worst enemy.

Kickball days were over.

    ***********************************************

Stay tuned for Part II, where I’ll probably talk more about boobs! Actually, I'm probably going to talk a little about boobs, and a lot about high school, and friends, and gossip.

No One Can Get to You Here

Hey Rainbow Groupies! It's a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Chi city, and seeing as how it's Labor Day weekend, and Obama's talking to us about jobs (or the lack thereof), I thought it was a good time to take another blast from the past.

I wrote this essay a little more than a year ago, right after moving back home to my dad's house. Nothing will kill a lady's self-esteem (and bank account) like not being able to find a job, and at the time when I wrote this, I was feeling pretty damn defeated. But at the same time, I was still clutching the last strings of hope. Barely, just barely. I also laid awake at night in my childhood bedroom, heart racing, worrying that I'd still be there when I was 40.

Maybe I'm still struggling to really be a "grownup," but I made it back to Chicago, and drove a new car here. I felt like total, complete shit when I got rejected from that job (and countless others). But the thing is, if I had gotten that job, I'd never have made it back to Chicago. Who knows what might have happened?

It's tough out there. But if I can do it, YOU can do it. uggh, that was cheesy, but whatever. I meant it from the bottom of my little heart.

So! Read this essay! (After the jump.)

Bridesmaid Panic Attack

Once upon a time, or in reality, five years ago, I had a borderline panic attack at a David's Bridal. The next day, I wrote about it.

I've been looking back through a lot of my old writings lately, thinking more about my plans for my book (you know, that one I talk about all the time), and although I'd like to say I would write this essay better now, I decided to share it here exactly as I wrote it that day five years ago.

Mostly because I hope, if you're reading this, and you're in the middle of this place I was in five years ago, missing someone you've lost, feeling alternately terrified and pissed off, to know this: It does get better. I promise. I also hope you have someone like my aunt to come rescue you.

with the beautiful bride

And the other good news—I managed to find a dress that fit.

But I still fucking hate David's Bridal.

Read the essay after the jump.

The Long Conversation of Friendship

Yesterday I was reading some of Phillip Lopate's essays from his collection Against Joie de Vivre. His essay about essays, "What Happened to the Personal Essay?" grated on my nerves a bit, mostly cause he's a little too critical of my man E.B., but mostly I really admire his style. He even manages to find deeper meaning in shaving off his beard. I dig it.

The excerpts below (all emphasis is mine) are from Lopate's essay, "Modern Friendships," and it's one of those essays that I keep flipping back to and reading again. Maybe because I've been thinking about friendship a lot lately, and more specifically, how to maintain friendships. I guess I used to think it would be easier as I got older. Turns out, it's not. It can be downright tricky, as a matter of fact. Like Lopate writes, "Though it is often said that with a true friend there is no need to hold anything back ... Certain words maybe be too cruel if spoken at the wrong moment ... I also find with each friend, as they must with me, that some initial resistance, restlessness, psychic weather must be overcome before that tender ideal attentiveness may be called forth."

Here are more of Lopate's thoughts on friendship, what he describes as "a long conversation":

"Since we cannot be polygamists in our conjugal life, at least we can do so with friendship. As it happens, the harem of friends, so tantalizing a notion, often translates into feeling pulled in a dozen different directions, with the guilty sense of having disappointed everyone a little. It is also a risky, contrived enterprise to try to make one's friends behave in a friendly manner toward each other: if the effort fails one feels obliged to mediate; if it succeeds too well, one is jealous."

"When I think about the qualities that characterize the best friendships I've known, I can identify five: rapport, affection, need, habit, and forgiveness. Rapport and affection can only take you so far; they may leave you at the formal , outer gate of goodwill, which is still not friendship. A persistent need for the other's company, for their interest, approval, opinion, will get you inside the gates, especially when it is reciprocated. In the end, however, there are no substitutes for habit and forgiveness. A friendship may travel for years on cozy habit. But it is a melancholy fact that unless you are a saint you are bound to offend every friend deeply at least once in the course of time. The friends I have kept the longest are those who forgave me for wronging them, unintentionally, intentionally, or by the plain catastrophe of my personality, time and again. There can be no friendship without forgiveness." 

"And the world whistled in his ears."

If you need me, I'll be reading essays the rest of the summer.

Yesterday my copy of The Best American Essays of the Century arrived. I read the first two last night after work—"Corn-pone Opinions," by Mark Twain, and "Of the Coming of John," by W.E.B. DuBois.

Wow. I read the DuBois one in college when we read The Souls of Black Folk, but I don't remember it knocking me out the way it did last night. I read the final sentence again and again: "And the world whistled in his ears."

It's almost too much! Mark Twain. Bam. DuBois. BAM. Both essays are so good I just had to force myself to stop afterward and go to sleep. I had been planning to write, but I can't follow that act.

Quit reading this silly blog and go read those essays!

The Essayist

My used copy of Essays of E.B. White came in the mail today. I don't know that I'd agree with Amazon Marketplace that its condition is "Used - Very Good," but for $3.61, I won't complain. Oddly enough, the book smells exactly like my grandparents' house. The scent is so exact that I'm a little freaked.

Do you think my grandparents are secretly Amazon Marketplace sellers? WHERE ARE THEY HIDING THEIR COMPUTER?

Anyway, we all know E.B. White, genius creator of Charlotte's Web and The Trumpet of the Swan. But did you know that Charlotte's Web was inspired by an essay he wrote, "Death of a Pig"? Maybe you did. I, however, was clueless until earlier this week.

From The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor on July 11:

It's the birthday of the essayist and children's writer E.B. White, (books by this author) born Elwin Brooks White in Mount Vernon, New York (1899). After a young pig he was raising got sick and he failed to save its life, he wrote one of his most famous essays, "Death of a Pig." Then he wrote a children's novel in which the pig doesn't have to die: Charlotte's Web (1952). It's the story of a runt pig named Wilbur who is saved the first time by a little girl and the second time by a wise spider. It is one of the best-selling children's books of all time.

I love it! I promptly went a little cuckoo on Amazon Marketplace and ordered said book, as well as Writings from the New Yorker 1927-1976. Then I figured I might as well go ahead and get The Best American Essays of the Century. It's all to help me with my craft, right? Whatever. I'm supporting my grandparents' secret business!

In the foreword for his collection of essays, White describes "the essayist" as "philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast"—basically, whatever the hell you want to be. You're an essayist!

I plan to devour everything Mr. White ever wrote now. No one else has put it in quite these terms for me. And after all, the book I want to write will be a collection of essays. Thanks to E.B. White, I have solid proof that my writing can be whatever I want (even if it means I'm self-absorbed):

The essayist, unlike the novelist, the poet, and the playwright, must be content in his self-imposed role of second-class citizen. A writer who has his sights trained on the Nobel Prize or other earthly triumphs had best write a novel, a poem, or a play, and leave the essayist to ramble about, content with living a free life and enjoying the satisfactions of a somewhat undisciplined existence...

I think some people find the essay the last resort of the egoist, a much too self-conscious and self-serving form for their taste; they feel that it is presumptuous of a writer to assume that his little excursions or his small observations will interest the reader. There is some justice in their complaint. I have always been aware that I am by nature self-absorbed and egoistical; to write of myself to the extent I have done indicates a too great attention to my own life, not enough to the lives of others. I have worn many shirts, and not all of them have been a good fit.

I have a blog, for chrissakes. Of course I'm self-absorbed! But apparently, so was E.B. White.

And he created Wilbur.

In Another Time

My mother loved Sade. When I was a kid, and she’d put on one of her Sade records during our Saturday afternoon cleaning ritual, my brother and I would groan and protest until she put on something else.

I have no idea why we hated Sade so much—all I know is that those records were equivalent to being stuck in a boring, grownup conversation without being allowed to go outside and play. Or maybe it was just one of our ways of teasing Mom. When we got a little older, we’d constantly quote movies and laugh hysterically as she looked at us, baffled. She'd always ask: “Are you quoting something again?” Or she'd laugh a little with us (even though I could tell she felt a little left out) and say, "Okay, what movie is that from?"

Either way, we hated Sade. We wanted nothing to do with those records. I wonder if Mom blasted those records when we were out of the house. I know I would have if I were her.

Because I have such vivid memories of protesting Sade constantly when I was a kid, I never even thought to give her a chance until much later. I’m so glad I did. I mean, have you heard Sade?



The last few days I’ve been missing my mom intensely. I have questions, and I don’t want to ask anyone but her. I can’t ask anyone but my mom. You know?

***

I was thinking about my mom today as I reread this piece I wrote about her a couple of years ago, a piece I submitted to The Sun and a couple of other publications. (It was rejected.) In retrospect, I understand why it was rejected, and I think I could write it better now. Yet I still wouldn’t change the ending, and since it’s all mine, and I don’t have an editor to answer to, I get to keep that privilege. I wouldn’t change it, because every time I read it, it brings me right back to this moment I had with my mother.