One mile up Graham Hill Road, just after the cemetery full of bones on Ocean Street Extension, there is a house that I would like to live in.
It is a very small house, the kind that fits all of its rooms into one rectangle and should not be dwarfed by any large furniture.
It is a wooden house: it smells of wood when the sun hits it in the morning and the tomatoes on the porch ripen to that sun.
It is a house where the window shades are made of thin white paper, rolled up into scrolls, and the walls are made of books.
This house, an A-frame of smooth redwood, lit by a single white lantern hanging from the hitch of the A, is a place I want to steal away to for days and months. I would like to live in this musty dollhouse on Graham Hill Road, and I think it is because I want something all my own.
When we drove up to the house I was still a bit drunk from the evening. I had been sucking on limes to cut the taste of things, so my teeth tasted like limes and I was laughing.
The white lantern was glowing in its hitch and we could have the house to ourselves tonight and there was a chair big enough for two people and two books and a blanket made of false velvet, like the in-between blanket in hotel rooms.
The little place felt orange and sweet and he said: "Have you read Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own?'" and I said I hadn't and he said I should because if I was going to get into the writers life it was a must-read and I would probably need a rich husband so I could afford a room all my own. Then I fell asleep in the big chair amidst the velvet.
He had given me a book before I had fallen asleep. Full of pictures and little "nuggets" he called them, of lusty Uruguayan prose. In the third story the book said: "If grapes are made of wine, then perhaps we are the words that tell who we are." I thought, yes. But aren't we also the mothers and fathers? And aren't we also the houses? Aren't we what we surround ourselves by? Or are we our innards, all the way out?
Even though it was just house-sitting, and even though I could only recognize a fraction of the books on those perfect shelves, I felt a sense of belonging to that little house. I was this house. It was as if it were a room all my own, and someone was paying the rent for me.
Someone was sending nine hundred dollars a month to a stuffy little landlord so that I would have time to read Virginia Woolf and the rest of the books in the world in my A frame abode on Graham Hill Road, just above the wicked of the cemetery with its graves like teeth in the dirt.
WAIT. HOLD ON.
I am scaring myself a bit here, even as I write. Am I seriously writing about wanting a home? Have I really been fantasizing about creating personalized space and sanctuary and comfort? Have I been thinking about vases and house plants? Have I legitimately been touching the fabrics of couches and throw pillows when I walk through department stores?! Have I been thinking about dog collars and entertaining the idea of actually LIKING animals?! (Sorry, Martha, I know this sounds like pure betrayl to our drunk alter-egos...)
I have been smiling at babies, for christ's sake!
I have been going to bed at nine thirty!
This tinge of a craving for domesticity is really starting to get to me. Why am I blogging about a fucking house? Why, when I am twenty three and soaring, do I feel something unsettling pulling at my feet, trying to settle me? Is this the biology of a female, this idea of creating a space for oneself and a home and a fucking basset hound or a bassinet? Did Virginia Woolf get off on having "a room of her own" simply so she could decorate it with the vases and throw pillows of her choice? Or is this a very Western ideal of personal space, of a customized comfort, of places ALL ONES OWN?
I am hoping to wrestle this craving to the bottom of my mind and heart, at least for a while, so I can see the world without being a marionette of some sort, with strings on all of my fingers, tying me to anywhere in particular. I hope to be homeless for a little bit longer, to careen around in airplanes and hostels and sleepingbags that tie to my backpack. To wear my hair short and dirty, to use foreign currencies for my exchanges, to dream in another language...
Because if I had a room of my own, custom made for my short frame and taste in lighting, with walls made of books and tulips sitting simple on the table, I am afraid I may never leave.
This way is better, you see.
This way, without being attached to anything, I can leave anything behind.
This way, I will never feel comfortable, and this will leave something to desire (satisfying a human need for personal turmoil).
Sorry, Virginia, but my room (with all the stability and reality that it will ensue) may have to wait.
And sorry, little A-frame, but I cannot stay inside of you, perched with a partner in your reading chair, because I have no rich lover to pay those nine hundred monthly dollars to your landlord, who I imagine is polishing his pennies in a dusty room somewhere. A room all his own.
Giant Squid
My New Yorker friend Rachel once told me that she thought that giant squid were going to be the "next humans."
She explained to me that squid had the physical capabilities (tentacles that can function like our arms, brains that rival our own in creative thinking, and the largest eyes in the animal kingdom that focus like telescopes) to be the next big things. (China is to the US as squids are to humans, sort of thing.)
This meant, Rachel told me, that squid were probably already using tools! They were most likely creating undersea villages and even cities that we humans (with our limited lung capacity and fear of dark depths) had not yet discovered! And they would soon, Rachel proclaimed as she licked homemade vodka sauce from a wooden spoon, take over as the dominant species on the planet!
(Rachel is super smart and knows every banal detail of the entire history of New York City and its subway system, so even though I found her squid theory a bit ridiculous, I eventually started to get into it.)
I was reminded of Rachel's obsession with marine cephalopods when I read that giant squid (and dangerous ones!) have made a cameo in usually benign waters of Santa Cruz.
Seven-foot squid lurking in my personal pocket of the Pacific? Oh no!
These things could squeeze the air out of a human (and that human could be me!) with a mere tightening of their tentacles!
They had beaks for flesh poking! (Many a dying WHALE were found with squid beaks lodged into their blubber.)
They had ink sacks for inking! (I've always fantasized about having a sack of ink all my own, readily available if I need to blind anyone, cover my tracks, or whet my quill for the signing of an important document...)
And the most intimidating squid fact of all: squids have THREE hearts! Did this mean that squid could not only overpower us physically but also emotionally? If I met face to face with a Giant Squid, would this mean I would be forced into a heart to heart?
And the Santa Cruz Sentinel had left me spellbound once more...
I started to imagine what a squid city might look like.
Would it be gloomy and maze-like, an under water Venice in the winter?
Would it be bubbly and effervescent, a Little Mermaid sing-song tale complete with crabs playing moroccas?
Would it be towering and translucent, a transparent version of Manhattan and its skyscrapers? (Would skyscrapers need a new name if they were built under water? Sea-scrapers? Would the underwater Manhattan be the coral jungle rather than the concrete?)
I imagined neighborhoods in a squid city:
The posh and pretentious Bush Club Squid, adorned in their finest tentacles, parading the streets of an under-sea Soho.
The rough and tumble Cuttlefish, their spear-heads ready for anything, in a blue version of Brooklyn.
The darling Jewel Squid out for a stroll in the deep waters of the Upper East Side.
The Colossal Squid making transactions on a wet Wall Street. The Hooked Squid shooting heroin in Harlem. The Inshore, the Calamari, the Grass Squid basking in groups of two and three on the Jersey Shore...
And if squid could already use tools, did that mean that they were on the road to as creative and destructive of a path as we humans? And if their brains were so big, and they each had EIGHT arms, would that mean they would move quickly past their cave-squid period and rapidly into an age of S-Pods and S-Macs that were faster and more reliable than our iPods and iMacs, and without the heavy exoskeletons?
Would squid like to get to know each other on Myspace? Poke each other on Facebook?
Or would those squid electrocute themselves with all those cords...that hair-dryer-in-the-sink, electricity-meets-water-and-you-die mumbo jumbo that our mothers always told us about?
Would they just not have the spine for all these complexities that we have come to relish?
I think I will call Rachel up today and ask her what she thinks of all of this. She will be in the kitchen in her underwear, pouring the vodka into her sauce, and she will laugh like a true youth when I ask about the squid. She will tell me that she has already done all the research there is to be done on squid, and did I know that they had the largest eyes in the animal kingdom? and that she still has the drawing of the squid on the refridgerator that she did in her math class when she already knew all the formulas and didn't have to pay attention, and that she misses me, come back to New York.
She explained to me that squid had the physical capabilities (tentacles that can function like our arms, brains that rival our own in creative thinking, and the largest eyes in the animal kingdom that focus like telescopes) to be the next big things. (China is to the US as squids are to humans, sort of thing.)
This meant, Rachel told me, that squid were probably already using tools! They were most likely creating undersea villages and even cities that we humans (with our limited lung capacity and fear of dark depths) had not yet discovered! And they would soon, Rachel proclaimed as she licked homemade vodka sauce from a wooden spoon, take over as the dominant species on the planet!
(Rachel is super smart and knows every banal detail of the entire history of New York City and its subway system, so even though I found her squid theory a bit ridiculous, I eventually started to get into it.)
I was reminded of Rachel's obsession with marine cephalopods when I read that giant squid (and dangerous ones!) have made a cameo in usually benign waters of Santa Cruz.
Seven-foot squid lurking in my personal pocket of the Pacific? Oh no!
These things could squeeze the air out of a human (and that human could be me!) with a mere tightening of their tentacles!
They had beaks for flesh poking! (Many a dying WHALE were found with squid beaks lodged into their blubber.)
They had ink sacks for inking! (I've always fantasized about having a sack of ink all my own, readily available if I need to blind anyone, cover my tracks, or whet my quill for the signing of an important document...)
And the most intimidating squid fact of all: squids have THREE hearts! Did this mean that squid could not only overpower us physically but also emotionally? If I met face to face with a Giant Squid, would this mean I would be forced into a heart to heart?
And the Santa Cruz Sentinel had left me spellbound once more...
I started to imagine what a squid city might look like.
Would it be gloomy and maze-like, an under water Venice in the winter?
Would it be bubbly and effervescent, a Little Mermaid sing-song tale complete with crabs playing moroccas?
Would it be towering and translucent, a transparent version of Manhattan and its skyscrapers? (Would skyscrapers need a new name if they were built under water? Sea-scrapers? Would the underwater Manhattan be the coral jungle rather than the concrete?)
I imagined neighborhoods in a squid city:
The posh and pretentious Bush Club Squid, adorned in their finest tentacles, parading the streets of an under-sea Soho.
The rough and tumble Cuttlefish, their spear-heads ready for anything, in a blue version of Brooklyn.
The darling Jewel Squid out for a stroll in the deep waters of the Upper East Side.
The Colossal Squid making transactions on a wet Wall Street. The Hooked Squid shooting heroin in Harlem. The Inshore, the Calamari, the Grass Squid basking in groups of two and three on the Jersey Shore...
And if squid could already use tools, did that mean that they were on the road to as creative and destructive of a path as we humans? And if their brains were so big, and they each had EIGHT arms, would that mean they would move quickly past their cave-squid period and rapidly into an age of S-Pods and S-Macs that were faster and more reliable than our iPods and iMacs, and without the heavy exoskeletons?
Would squid like to get to know each other on Myspace? Poke each other on Facebook?
Or would those squid electrocute themselves with all those cords...that hair-dryer-in-the-sink, electricity-meets-water-and-you-die mumbo jumbo that our mothers always told us about?
Would they just not have the spine for all these complexities that we have come to relish?
I think I will call Rachel up today and ask her what she thinks of all of this. She will be in the kitchen in her underwear, pouring the vodka into her sauce, and she will laugh like a true youth when I ask about the squid. She will tell me that she has already done all the research there is to be done on squid, and did I know that they had the largest eyes in the animal kingdom? and that she still has the drawing of the squid on the refridgerator that she did in her math class when she already knew all the formulas and didn't have to pay attention, and that she misses me, come back to New York.
Authentic
In the movie Factory Girl, which chronicles the tragedies and track marks of Edie Sedgwick and her sometimes lover sometimes obsessor Andy Warhol, there is a moment where she looks at an old photograph of herself and runs away from it, crying. She runs away because the photograph depicts her as a hopeful and innocent youth; now she has circles under her eyes and a terrible dependency on drugs and glorified fame. The moment is utterly wistful: Sienna Miller (as Edie Sedgewick) harbors a deep and saddening hatred for the way things used to be and the way they have become.
This moment was not unlike the moments that happen so often in films about women, the moments where leading ladies catch glimpses of themselves in the past. (Many happen with an an old tinted photgraph or the realization of their tattered souls in the mirror of a bar bathroom. Or perhaps they awake with the raw heartache of a hangover, anything to make them remember all of their life's mistakes.) But something about Sienna's performance must have resonated with me (maybe its her unflattering and boyish blonde haircut or her ridiculous fashion statements that made me think I was, in some form, her at that moment). Whatever it was, I experienced a Miller/Sedgwick wistful moment the day after I saw the movie.
My own wistful moment was also the photograph kind: I uncovered a photograph from years ago, while rummaging through my mother's things, that made my eyes well and my youth resurface. It is a photgraph of my little sister Grace and myself, sitting together on the stiff canvas of our swing, hanging from a strong branch of our oak.
The picture, where there is an obvious breeze through our hair and a fine morning light, struck me as particularly authentic. Perhaps this is due to the sure naïveté of our postures, or the fact that we wear overalls and have gaps between our teeth - things that now seem hilariously unacceptable but that also seemed the most real of things, the youngest of things. Perhaps it is because my wistful moment took place during a day that was ridden with the guilt and poison of nights prior (or months, years prior) where there had been too much to drink, too many games played, too little sleep: childhood seemed like something lost.
I thought: a child is the most authentic of things.
I thought: perhaps authenticity is lost, and attempted over and over again to be re-created, as we grow older and therefore further from it. Are the drinks we drink and the games we play and the things we buy all just stabbing attempts to make us feel younger again, less attached to ourselves, more authentic?
I wondered: what is authenticity? And how can it be measured?
I thought of all the authentic things I had come to know in my life:
Matchbooks, wooden floors, bowls of fruit, old dresses. The paintings my father makes, the sound of a rooster, nasturshums and their circle leaves, suculents seeping from the cement. Handwritten letters, cameras with real film, records, and my grandfather's thick glasses. Seed planting. Fortune cookies. The laugh that comes from deep inside my mother when she isn't putting anyone on.
These things: real, true, deeply authentic, and mostly good...
The problem: we often run from authenticity in order to try to recreate it. We drink to forget reality, hoping to become our true selves in the process (meaning our more carefree selves) when we are actually escaping the authenticity of sober existence. We alter our egos and our clothing and our tastes in things to become individual - this may in fact lead us astray from our own being. We buy things, read newspapers, travel to places far away: to become well rounded, to see whats real, to forge our own authenticty and to feel purposefully authentic. We may have been more so before we tried so hard...
While living in Brooklyn, I found that beaing undeniably authentic was the main way to be cool. Restaurants boasted chipped paint and foggy glass paned windows, served gormet macaroni and sat their guests at communal tables or low couches. Bars hung the antlers of dead deer above their laquered oak shelves and served Maker's Mark on the rocks. Young hipsters wore their grandmothers gold watches and their grandfathers sweaters, smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and made themselves appear frail and malnourished: they were both younger and older than themselves. This was all geared toward the goal of authenticity; one was to appear as if they were from another time or place, a time or place where things were harder, deeper, sadder, lovlier, and most importantly, more real.
In Brooklyn I wondered constantly: does the time and energy spent on this crafted authenticity mean that these people and places are actually the least authentic I have known? Can something truely real be created, sculpted, worn down purposefully by its user? Or must one have plucked their grandmother's watch from her coffin, waited for the paint to chip on their wooden doors, dusted off an old box of sepia photographs and found the perfect one for that vintage frame, in order to be true to the truth?
Perhaps I myself was guilty of all of this. Perhaps my matronly collection of sweaters, my pathetic collection of vintage books purchased solely as decorative pieces, and my suspiciously fast-paced, breakable series of romantic relationships showed that I was as inauthentic as they come. And there were the drinks, and the late nights, the text messages to unloved lovers: oh my goodness! Was I to die a drunken farse? Young, addicted, and faux-blonde like Edie Segewick?! I needed an authentic escape from these escapes!
Yesterday I decided to go for a hike in the wooded hills of my hometown. Here, I rediscovered the hopeful nature of the outdoors, unmeddled and honest. The way the leaves filtered sunshine into patchwork on the dust of the path. The drapery of the ivy, slouching between high branches. The audacity of the poison oak, the drama of the redwoods. Perfect and imperfect honesties, naturally so.
The ferns were hands, waiting to be kissed, falling into the dirt.
And when the path emerged onto a hillside, suddenly void of the shade of trees, there was an unexpected desert feeling: yellow dust, dry brush, and a view of the sea.
Perhaps it was all of the things I did to make my day seem old fashioned and real: wearing sepia tinted sunglasses to bring a golden feeling to the woods, playing Iron and Wine on my iPod for the simplicity of that guitar, purposefully taking uncharted trails for the freedom of being lost. Perhaps I created and sculpted my day of authenticity.
Perhaps my endorphins were high as I climbed to the top of something, making me feel quite assured and simple.
Or perhaps, I'd like to think, I felt the aching, ardent authenticity of being alone.
Alone, maybe, like a child feels, abandoned in a foreign marketplace.
This moment was not unlike the moments that happen so often in films about women, the moments where leading ladies catch glimpses of themselves in the past. (Many happen with an an old tinted photgraph or the realization of their tattered souls in the mirror of a bar bathroom. Or perhaps they awake with the raw heartache of a hangover, anything to make them remember all of their life's mistakes.) But something about Sienna's performance must have resonated with me (maybe its her unflattering and boyish blonde haircut or her ridiculous fashion statements that made me think I was, in some form, her at that moment). Whatever it was, I experienced a Miller/Sedgwick wistful moment the day after I saw the movie.
My own wistful moment was also the photograph kind: I uncovered a photograph from years ago, while rummaging through my mother's things, that made my eyes well and my youth resurface. It is a photgraph of my little sister Grace and myself, sitting together on the stiff canvas of our swing, hanging from a strong branch of our oak.
The picture, where there is an obvious breeze through our hair and a fine morning light, struck me as particularly authentic. Perhaps this is due to the sure naïveté of our postures, or the fact that we wear overalls and have gaps between our teeth - things that now seem hilariously unacceptable but that also seemed the most real of things, the youngest of things. Perhaps it is because my wistful moment took place during a day that was ridden with the guilt and poison of nights prior (or months, years prior) where there had been too much to drink, too many games played, too little sleep: childhood seemed like something lost.
I thought: a child is the most authentic of things.
I thought: perhaps authenticity is lost, and attempted over and over again to be re-created, as we grow older and therefore further from it. Are the drinks we drink and the games we play and the things we buy all just stabbing attempts to make us feel younger again, less attached to ourselves, more authentic?
I wondered: what is authenticity? And how can it be measured?
I thought of all the authentic things I had come to know in my life:
Matchbooks, wooden floors, bowls of fruit, old dresses. The paintings my father makes, the sound of a rooster, nasturshums and their circle leaves, suculents seeping from the cement. Handwritten letters, cameras with real film, records, and my grandfather's thick glasses. Seed planting. Fortune cookies. The laugh that comes from deep inside my mother when she isn't putting anyone on.
These things: real, true, deeply authentic, and mostly good...
The problem: we often run from authenticity in order to try to recreate it. We drink to forget reality, hoping to become our true selves in the process (meaning our more carefree selves) when we are actually escaping the authenticity of sober existence. We alter our egos and our clothing and our tastes in things to become individual - this may in fact lead us astray from our own being. We buy things, read newspapers, travel to places far away: to become well rounded, to see whats real, to forge our own authenticty and to feel purposefully authentic. We may have been more so before we tried so hard...
While living in Brooklyn, I found that beaing undeniably authentic was the main way to be cool. Restaurants boasted chipped paint and foggy glass paned windows, served gormet macaroni and sat their guests at communal tables or low couches. Bars hung the antlers of dead deer above their laquered oak shelves and served Maker's Mark on the rocks. Young hipsters wore their grandmothers gold watches and their grandfathers sweaters, smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and made themselves appear frail and malnourished: they were both younger and older than themselves. This was all geared toward the goal of authenticity; one was to appear as if they were from another time or place, a time or place where things were harder, deeper, sadder, lovlier, and most importantly, more real.
In Brooklyn I wondered constantly: does the time and energy spent on this crafted authenticity mean that these people and places are actually the least authentic I have known? Can something truely real be created, sculpted, worn down purposefully by its user? Or must one have plucked their grandmother's watch from her coffin, waited for the paint to chip on their wooden doors, dusted off an old box of sepia photographs and found the perfect one for that vintage frame, in order to be true to the truth?
Perhaps I myself was guilty of all of this. Perhaps my matronly collection of sweaters, my pathetic collection of vintage books purchased solely as decorative pieces, and my suspiciously fast-paced, breakable series of romantic relationships showed that I was as inauthentic as they come. And there were the drinks, and the late nights, the text messages to unloved lovers: oh my goodness! Was I to die a drunken farse? Young, addicted, and faux-blonde like Edie Segewick?! I needed an authentic escape from these escapes!
Yesterday I decided to go for a hike in the wooded hills of my hometown. Here, I rediscovered the hopeful nature of the outdoors, unmeddled and honest. The way the leaves filtered sunshine into patchwork on the dust of the path. The drapery of the ivy, slouching between high branches. The audacity of the poison oak, the drama of the redwoods. Perfect and imperfect honesties, naturally so.
The ferns were hands, waiting to be kissed, falling into the dirt.
And when the path emerged onto a hillside, suddenly void of the shade of trees, there was an unexpected desert feeling: yellow dust, dry brush, and a view of the sea.
Perhaps it was all of the things I did to make my day seem old fashioned and real: wearing sepia tinted sunglasses to bring a golden feeling to the woods, playing Iron and Wine on my iPod for the simplicity of that guitar, purposefully taking uncharted trails for the freedom of being lost. Perhaps I created and sculpted my day of authenticity.
Perhaps my endorphins were high as I climbed to the top of something, making me feel quite assured and simple.
Or perhaps, I'd like to think, I felt the aching, ardent authenticity of being alone.
Alone, maybe, like a child feels, abandoned in a foreign marketplace.
Crooked Teeth.
When I was small I had crooked, yellow teeth with jagged bottoms. First there was the inevitable loss of innocent baby teeth, the dollar bills under pillows, the cavernous hole in the front of my mouth to spit water through. In a small person’s world this hole was considered cool: the blank slate for the new beginning. The gap in my mouth was this great opportunity for growth and change, a bragging right -”I’ve lost six teeth! Thats way more than you, Maddy!” It was an ironic empty space that signified my worth as a gradeschooler.
But when the black hole in my mouth was filled, it was with two big, off colored, overlapping adult teeth; lemon flavored Chiclets, sawed off at the bottom. I felt betrayed and disappointed. As the huge teeth, the color of sweet tea left cold, inched their way into my mouth, they began to take over my life. Become my enemy. Ivory monstors, unwelcome, looming loudly in my face.
When I was small, a barefoot firecracker, crooked toothed, with no place to be, I made up games with my best friend Maddy. One of our favorite games was “Future Lives.” One of us would stand up in front of the other and recite lists, punctuated by giggles and hair tosses, of what we wanted in our futures. Our lists, for some reason, always kicked off with our dental history. “My name’s Chrissy, my boyfriend’s name is Chris (we loved variations on the extremely eighties name “Chrissy”), I’ve lost six teeth, I have braces, a retainer, and a head gear, and I have a black pony named Midnight.” The focus of our future was our mouths, their glitter, and their style. Among the strongest of our desires were brackets and colored rubberbands, a smile that said “I’m hip” with just a glint of the sun on our hardware. As small girls with skewed views, our love for all things that sparkled (and/ or was popular with the cast of the Mickey Mouse Club) was intense. We were so desperate for braces that we started faking it. We would wrap tinfoil around our big teeth to see how we would look in silver. We’d shove gum on our gums to see how the protrusion of our upper lip would affect our jaw lines. We’d talk with lisps to feign the presence of a retainer on the roof of our mouths. Braces were generational flair for the face. And for a small blonde in the eighties, they were a must-have.
I turned ten and I was finally carted in the mom minivan (seven seats and seven seatbelts!) to my first orthodontist appointment. All my worries, nightmares of the crooked, yellow jigsaw puzzle in my mouth, were to be taken care of here. Not to mention I would be living my own “Future Lives” silver-lined dream in the process. The resentment felt towards my parents for giving me the genes for these stained, off balanced teeth was to be counteracted by the thousands of dollars they would spend on my smile. I was little, tiny limbs, spread out on an orange dental chair blinded by yellow light. Staring up into the grey nose hairs of Doctor Matlack. Me: small and reluctant, letting him: powerful and relentless, drive sharp silver into the flesh on the sides of my mouth. I lay helpless as he adorned my pathetic excuse for adult teeth with metal.
Doctor Matlack was no traditional orthodontist. In the late seventies his office had been new and avant guarde, his tactics and theories about teeth had been stunningly different and hip. The far wall of this new wave office, for example, was a huge mosaic mural of orange, yellow, and brown. Each mosaic tile was a small box that I later found out was filled with one of his patients dental molds. All these fake teeth in boxes, shoved into a wall and disguised by retro art. It killed me. The box with my teeth in it was in the yellow section. Matlack would pull it out on occasion and show me my molds; attempting to define the progress my teeth had made since he had wired them straight. “Well just lookie here!” he would say with a drawl, “Just look at how you’ve come alawng! See how these two just used to overlap each other, right here in the front?! Look atcha now, Prentiss! Awwwl straightened out!” I cried in the orange chair, cursing my own fate as a dental victim, my own original yellow teeth hidden in his yellow box, being put on display as natural failures that required new fangled metal work to be fixed. Big, crooked failures shoved into a wall; mosaiced with the thousands of other crooked kids in the county.
Soon my braces (and the countless other appliances that forced themselves into my pre-pubescent jaw) became the enemy, rather than my original teeth. They were cruel and nasty little pieces of silver; constantly clawing at the flesh inside my lips, ruining school pictures and first kisses, destroying the sensation of candied apples or carrot sticks. I despised the metal in my mouth even more than the yellow blocks it was supported by; I began my orthodontic protest.
It began with pure physical resistance; squirming relentlessly when forced onto the squeaking plastic of the chair, locking my jaw shut when dental work was about to begin. I cried when they drilled, I cringed when they poked. Screaming, squeezing my eyes and fists in pain, begging. I became known as “difficult” and red stars were drawn next to my name to indicate that I would be a “tough one” and that numerous dental assistants may be needed to hold me down or hold my hand during drilling. Yet somehow, despite my resistance, my mouth still ended up jam packed and swollen after my visits, my little existence still punctuated by those agonizing appointments every two weeks. My teeth remained a row of heinous telephone poles, electric wires stringing them together.
I wanted to take further action. For a third grade letter writing project I wrote to Doctor Matlack himself, informing him of his cruelty and lack of compassion for small children. I started a thesis which pointed out the unfair nature of orthodontics, highlighting the fact that Dr. Matlack had just taken a trip to Hawaii and bought a new Porche, probably with my parents money. Orthodontists, I found out, make an average 133 thousand a year. (Distrubingly higher than my father’s annual income as an artist, which at age 10 could not comprehend; when did teeth become more important than art?) And they had been pulling this shit since the 1880’s. I was enraged by the fact that Matlack would attain pleasurable objects and benefits due to my physical suffering. I started petitions in the classroom, collecting signatures from the other poor, young, brace-faced souls in my grade who were happy to fight against the man who made them floss with a special looped string to fit between wires, the man who banned popcorn and Now and Laters and playing soccer without a mouth guard. I stood at the front of a pack of angry eleven year olds, raising our fists in opposition to Matlack and his crew of swindling metal workers.
Maturity got the best of me. Everyone settles down with age. I became limp and forgiving, lying reposed on the orange plastic, realizing that Matlack was a person, too and maybe he just didn’t have the time to clip his nose hairs with all those teeth to be straightened out and trips to be taken. I tried my hardest not to scream, kick, or cry during my visits and even tried to be civil to Brittany, Stacy, or CoCo (whoever was holding me down that day) when they had to re-glue a bracket I had broken on a Skittle. I even tried to enjoy my visits, making good use out of the free Nintendo and killer collection of Betty and Veronica. I prayed for laughing gas before every visit. My teeth grew straighter as my temper softened; the reckless fire deep within me died out as the reckless placement of my teeth reversed under the weight of wires. I became more and more normal, more subdued, straighter. My teeth fell into their perfect, normal places as I sought out my own perfect, normal place among my peers.
My braces were removed when I entered high school. Without them, I was suddenly noticed. I was normal, evened out, and that made me fair game for boys and kisses. (When Zack Parker acknowledged that I looked “hot” in my black pants, I knew I had really made it.) I laughed a lot, and opened my mouth more. Confidence crept into the corners of my mouth when it would curl into a smile. And suddenly everything was straight. I no longer kicked or bit. I no longer wrestled with the wires that draped from tooth to tooth. I no longer fought against my own tangled jaw. I no longer fought against anything, really. I just lay there, letting boys kiss my teeth, wanting to laugh when they said they liked my smile.
I wonder now, after the painful years of orthodontic terror, how braces, the dental version of straight jackets, could have at one point been considered desirable. It is something that plagues me still, the idea that this gaudy metal that has haunted me for so much of my adolescent life, could be attractive or enviable to anyone. I started to wonder if the craving for metal filled mouths still existed, or if it was a short lived phenomenon that lasted only from the years 1987-92, disappearing into the vortex of fashion with jean jackets and scrunchies. Were there dates which bracketed the bracket trend? Or are brackets idealized by certain age brackets? Or has it always been a hoax, a fashion statement cultivated by orthodontists in order to lure the bracket hungry into their plastic covered recliners so they could put a down payment on their summer home on Stinson Beach? When did teeth become so important, when people didn’t even start brushing until World War II soldiers brought strict dental hygene enforcement back from the barraks? What was this obsession, this passion, for the ethnic cleansing of the crooked toothed?
I feel about braces the way I feel about expensive jeans: they are probably worth it, but they still piss me off.
My Citizens (the only expensive jeans I ever bought) have holes in the ass.
My teeth (the three thousand dollar bones in my face) are already crooked again.
My money (or my parents, rather) is gone.
My pride (ever-thinning) has diminished.
But I have been a part of it all, at least.
I have had everyone telling me for years to fix things about myself.
And I know exactly how I am supposed to be.
Straight. Like the back of a chair or a stiff redwood, only less natural.
Yes, less natural.
But when the black hole in my mouth was filled, it was with two big, off colored, overlapping adult teeth; lemon flavored Chiclets, sawed off at the bottom. I felt betrayed and disappointed. As the huge teeth, the color of sweet tea left cold, inched their way into my mouth, they began to take over my life. Become my enemy. Ivory monstors, unwelcome, looming loudly in my face.
When I was small, a barefoot firecracker, crooked toothed, with no place to be, I made up games with my best friend Maddy. One of our favorite games was “Future Lives.” One of us would stand up in front of the other and recite lists, punctuated by giggles and hair tosses, of what we wanted in our futures. Our lists, for some reason, always kicked off with our dental history. “My name’s Chrissy, my boyfriend’s name is Chris (we loved variations on the extremely eighties name “Chrissy”), I’ve lost six teeth, I have braces, a retainer, and a head gear, and I have a black pony named Midnight.” The focus of our future was our mouths, their glitter, and their style. Among the strongest of our desires were brackets and colored rubberbands, a smile that said “I’m hip” with just a glint of the sun on our hardware. As small girls with skewed views, our love for all things that sparkled (and/ or was popular with the cast of the Mickey Mouse Club) was intense. We were so desperate for braces that we started faking it. We would wrap tinfoil around our big teeth to see how we would look in silver. We’d shove gum on our gums to see how the protrusion of our upper lip would affect our jaw lines. We’d talk with lisps to feign the presence of a retainer on the roof of our mouths. Braces were generational flair for the face. And for a small blonde in the eighties, they were a must-have.
I turned ten and I was finally carted in the mom minivan (seven seats and seven seatbelts!) to my first orthodontist appointment. All my worries, nightmares of the crooked, yellow jigsaw puzzle in my mouth, were to be taken care of here. Not to mention I would be living my own “Future Lives” silver-lined dream in the process. The resentment felt towards my parents for giving me the genes for these stained, off balanced teeth was to be counteracted by the thousands of dollars they would spend on my smile. I was little, tiny limbs, spread out on an orange dental chair blinded by yellow light. Staring up into the grey nose hairs of Doctor Matlack. Me: small and reluctant, letting him: powerful and relentless, drive sharp silver into the flesh on the sides of my mouth. I lay helpless as he adorned my pathetic excuse for adult teeth with metal.
Doctor Matlack was no traditional orthodontist. In the late seventies his office had been new and avant guarde, his tactics and theories about teeth had been stunningly different and hip. The far wall of this new wave office, for example, was a huge mosaic mural of orange, yellow, and brown. Each mosaic tile was a small box that I later found out was filled with one of his patients dental molds. All these fake teeth in boxes, shoved into a wall and disguised by retro art. It killed me. The box with my teeth in it was in the yellow section. Matlack would pull it out on occasion and show me my molds; attempting to define the progress my teeth had made since he had wired them straight. “Well just lookie here!” he would say with a drawl, “Just look at how you’ve come alawng! See how these two just used to overlap each other, right here in the front?! Look atcha now, Prentiss! Awwwl straightened out!” I cried in the orange chair, cursing my own fate as a dental victim, my own original yellow teeth hidden in his yellow box, being put on display as natural failures that required new fangled metal work to be fixed. Big, crooked failures shoved into a wall; mosaiced with the thousands of other crooked kids in the county.
Soon my braces (and the countless other appliances that forced themselves into my pre-pubescent jaw) became the enemy, rather than my original teeth. They were cruel and nasty little pieces of silver; constantly clawing at the flesh inside my lips, ruining school pictures and first kisses, destroying the sensation of candied apples or carrot sticks. I despised the metal in my mouth even more than the yellow blocks it was supported by; I began my orthodontic protest.
It began with pure physical resistance; squirming relentlessly when forced onto the squeaking plastic of the chair, locking my jaw shut when dental work was about to begin. I cried when they drilled, I cringed when they poked. Screaming, squeezing my eyes and fists in pain, begging. I became known as “difficult” and red stars were drawn next to my name to indicate that I would be a “tough one” and that numerous dental assistants may be needed to hold me down or hold my hand during drilling. Yet somehow, despite my resistance, my mouth still ended up jam packed and swollen after my visits, my little existence still punctuated by those agonizing appointments every two weeks. My teeth remained a row of heinous telephone poles, electric wires stringing them together.
I wanted to take further action. For a third grade letter writing project I wrote to Doctor Matlack himself, informing him of his cruelty and lack of compassion for small children. I started a thesis which pointed out the unfair nature of orthodontics, highlighting the fact that Dr. Matlack had just taken a trip to Hawaii and bought a new Porche, probably with my parents money. Orthodontists, I found out, make an average 133 thousand a year. (Distrubingly higher than my father’s annual income as an artist, which at age 10 could not comprehend; when did teeth become more important than art?) And they had been pulling this shit since the 1880’s. I was enraged by the fact that Matlack would attain pleasurable objects and benefits due to my physical suffering. I started petitions in the classroom, collecting signatures from the other poor, young, brace-faced souls in my grade who were happy to fight against the man who made them floss with a special looped string to fit between wires, the man who banned popcorn and Now and Laters and playing soccer without a mouth guard. I stood at the front of a pack of angry eleven year olds, raising our fists in opposition to Matlack and his crew of swindling metal workers.
Maturity got the best of me. Everyone settles down with age. I became limp and forgiving, lying reposed on the orange plastic, realizing that Matlack was a person, too and maybe he just didn’t have the time to clip his nose hairs with all those teeth to be straightened out and trips to be taken. I tried my hardest not to scream, kick, or cry during my visits and even tried to be civil to Brittany, Stacy, or CoCo (whoever was holding me down that day) when they had to re-glue a bracket I had broken on a Skittle. I even tried to enjoy my visits, making good use out of the free Nintendo and killer collection of Betty and Veronica. I prayed for laughing gas before every visit. My teeth grew straighter as my temper softened; the reckless fire deep within me died out as the reckless placement of my teeth reversed under the weight of wires. I became more and more normal, more subdued, straighter. My teeth fell into their perfect, normal places as I sought out my own perfect, normal place among my peers.
My braces were removed when I entered high school. Without them, I was suddenly noticed. I was normal, evened out, and that made me fair game for boys and kisses. (When Zack Parker acknowledged that I looked “hot” in my black pants, I knew I had really made it.) I laughed a lot, and opened my mouth more. Confidence crept into the corners of my mouth when it would curl into a smile. And suddenly everything was straight. I no longer kicked or bit. I no longer wrestled with the wires that draped from tooth to tooth. I no longer fought against my own tangled jaw. I no longer fought against anything, really. I just lay there, letting boys kiss my teeth, wanting to laugh when they said they liked my smile.
I wonder now, after the painful years of orthodontic terror, how braces, the dental version of straight jackets, could have at one point been considered desirable. It is something that plagues me still, the idea that this gaudy metal that has haunted me for so much of my adolescent life, could be attractive or enviable to anyone. I started to wonder if the craving for metal filled mouths still existed, or if it was a short lived phenomenon that lasted only from the years 1987-92, disappearing into the vortex of fashion with jean jackets and scrunchies. Were there dates which bracketed the bracket trend? Or are brackets idealized by certain age brackets? Or has it always been a hoax, a fashion statement cultivated by orthodontists in order to lure the bracket hungry into their plastic covered recliners so they could put a down payment on their summer home on Stinson Beach? When did teeth become so important, when people didn’t even start brushing until World War II soldiers brought strict dental hygene enforcement back from the barraks? What was this obsession, this passion, for the ethnic cleansing of the crooked toothed?
I feel about braces the way I feel about expensive jeans: they are probably worth it, but they still piss me off.
My Citizens (the only expensive jeans I ever bought) have holes in the ass.
My teeth (the three thousand dollar bones in my face) are already crooked again.
My money (or my parents, rather) is gone.
My pride (ever-thinning) has diminished.
But I have been a part of it all, at least.
I have had everyone telling me for years to fix things about myself.
And I know exactly how I am supposed to be.
Straight. Like the back of a chair or a stiff redwood, only less natural.
Yes, less natural.
Exotic Fantasies
This morning is foggy, so I feel alright about sitting at my desk inside and opening and closing books and magazines, fantasizing about other parts of the world.
I open a National Geographic and read up on the green pastures of a Hanseatic town in Germany and the sheeps wool and candle wax that has been made there for centuries; the article explains that these are now dwindling industries in our ever-globalizing system of buying and selling around the world.
I glance through a book of maps. One, drawn by a Uruguayan modern artist named Joaquin Torres Garcia, is a black ink drawing of South America, only it is upside down. The South faces North and the North faces South. The skinny tip of Chile/Argentina looks like it is pointing right up towards the USA! Que loco! Garcia writes about his drawing: "There will be no North for us, except in opposition to our South." The point is that South America can exist in terms of itself, rather than in its relationship to all those English speaking countries: the North and the West.
I also flip through "Dubliners," by James Joyce, (only because my favorite bar is named after James Joyce and they give away free peanuts in a barrel and you can throw the shells on the floor so I figure I should read something he wrote.) He writes using the lingo and street slang of Dublin in the early 1900's. And he doesn't give a shit if you can't understand him. The language simply exists, for the reader to figure out.
All these random things I am reading this morning seem to share something: they are exotic in their foriegnness and proud in their place. They say fuck you to people who don't live in that place, to people who are trying to change that place, to people who don't understand that place. (Here I mean mainly Americans, you know, for we wear the dunce caps of either attempted homoginization or ego-centric comparison.)
I, being an American, choose comparison, which leads to fantasies.
We rich kids love a good fantasy.
How glorious! I think to myself, to be a sheep hearder in the grand folds of those German hillsides, Bo-Peeping my way around in the green of that grass! Ah, to dip my wicks in yellow wax to create candles for light! To push and pull the wood slats of my loom to create blankets for warmth! Oh the rustic simplicity of National Geographic Germany!
And how exotic! I imagine, to be a modern artist in the Southern pebble of Uruguay, making line drawings of upturned contintents! Perhaps a studio in the urban thicket of Montevido! With glass paned windows and walls covered in paint! A Spanish speaking spouse who could tackle the torrmented soul of an artist! (I cannot help but envision some sort of ethnic berret in this fantasy, a more brightly colored, worn version of the European artist attire, resting atop my head as I create works of genius.)
And how dreamy! I dream, to be drinking dark beer in Dublin in days past! To clank on those cobble stones! To dance merry jigs and chant merry drinking songs with bar ladies and jolly mates! An oh, to be Joyce himself! To be twenty three with all of these words inside of you! To have your words suppressed by Irish printing houses and then glorified world wide when you are old and dead! To have a bar in downtown Santa Barbara with peanut shells and drunken college students named for you and your three tedious great works!
Oh, these exotic global fantasies!
Why do I dwell on them?
Is it because I am unsatisfied here, in the land of the free? Do I truely crave these other parts of the world, with their strange languages and backwards customs, to round me out in a worldly fashion? Is it that I really wish to live the life of a farmer? A painter? A drinker? A writer? And if so, why does location matter in the least? Aren't we all connected now anyways?
I moved to Santa Barbara for the beach. To be beachy.
I moved to Italy for the wine and food and art. To be cultured.
I moved to New York for the pace and the people. To be grown up.
I will move to South America for the colors.
All this moving around, and it doesn't even matter where you live anymore.
We have the internet now.
And Skype.
And satellites in the sky that connect all of these continents.
I wonder about our fantasies, if they are up there with the satellites, bouncing off of each other in the newly globalized and undivided sky.
I open a National Geographic and read up on the green pastures of a Hanseatic town in Germany and the sheeps wool and candle wax that has been made there for centuries; the article explains that these are now dwindling industries in our ever-globalizing system of buying and selling around the world.
I glance through a book of maps. One, drawn by a Uruguayan modern artist named Joaquin Torres Garcia, is a black ink drawing of South America, only it is upside down. The South faces North and the North faces South. The skinny tip of Chile/Argentina looks like it is pointing right up towards the USA! Que loco! Garcia writes about his drawing: "There will be no North for us, except in opposition to our South." The point is that South America can exist in terms of itself, rather than in its relationship to all those English speaking countries: the North and the West.
I also flip through "Dubliners," by James Joyce, (only because my favorite bar is named after James Joyce and they give away free peanuts in a barrel and you can throw the shells on the floor so I figure I should read something he wrote.) He writes using the lingo and street slang of Dublin in the early 1900's. And he doesn't give a shit if you can't understand him. The language simply exists, for the reader to figure out.
All these random things I am reading this morning seem to share something: they are exotic in their foriegnness and proud in their place. They say fuck you to people who don't live in that place, to people who are trying to change that place, to people who don't understand that place. (Here I mean mainly Americans, you know, for we wear the dunce caps of either attempted homoginization or ego-centric comparison.)
I, being an American, choose comparison, which leads to fantasies.
We rich kids love a good fantasy.
How glorious! I think to myself, to be a sheep hearder in the grand folds of those German hillsides, Bo-Peeping my way around in the green of that grass! Ah, to dip my wicks in yellow wax to create candles for light! To push and pull the wood slats of my loom to create blankets for warmth! Oh the rustic simplicity of National Geographic Germany!
And how exotic! I imagine, to be a modern artist in the Southern pebble of Uruguay, making line drawings of upturned contintents! Perhaps a studio in the urban thicket of Montevido! With glass paned windows and walls covered in paint! A Spanish speaking spouse who could tackle the torrmented soul of an artist! (I cannot help but envision some sort of ethnic berret in this fantasy, a more brightly colored, worn version of the European artist attire, resting atop my head as I create works of genius.)
And how dreamy! I dream, to be drinking dark beer in Dublin in days past! To clank on those cobble stones! To dance merry jigs and chant merry drinking songs with bar ladies and jolly mates! An oh, to be Joyce himself! To be twenty three with all of these words inside of you! To have your words suppressed by Irish printing houses and then glorified world wide when you are old and dead! To have a bar in downtown Santa Barbara with peanut shells and drunken college students named for you and your three tedious great works!
Oh, these exotic global fantasies!
Why do I dwell on them?
Is it because I am unsatisfied here, in the land of the free? Do I truely crave these other parts of the world, with their strange languages and backwards customs, to round me out in a worldly fashion? Is it that I really wish to live the life of a farmer? A painter? A drinker? A writer? And if so, why does location matter in the least? Aren't we all connected now anyways?
I moved to Santa Barbara for the beach. To be beachy.
I moved to Italy for the wine and food and art. To be cultured.
I moved to New York for the pace and the people. To be grown up.
I will move to South America for the colors.
All this moving around, and it doesn't even matter where you live anymore.
We have the internet now.
And Skype.
And satellites in the sky that connect all of these continents.
I wonder about our fantasies, if they are up there with the satellites, bouncing off of each other in the newly globalized and undivided sky.
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
