When I was sixteen I took a road trip to Kelowna to visit a friend. It was a gorgeous week in August and the young people of the Okanagan Valley wore golden tans and cut off jean shorts. Being a good girl from Victoria BC I had no idea the corruption I was in for, but very soon I found myself buck naked at midnight, singing at the top of my lungs in Lake Okanagan. Something stirred me from my impassioned performance of, well, I think it was ‘That’s Amore’. I heard sounds approaching…. All at once a barrage of lights flashed across the white slickness of my wet, naked body, and, blinded, I clutched my bottle of Wiser’s closer to me. “Put your hands up!” I heard. Terrified, sure I was about to be beamed up to the mother ship, I obliged. The next thing I knew my friend was in the water next to me, shielding me, shouting to stop pointing flashlights at me. She wrapped me in a towel and dragged me to shore, and with the lights lowered I could see a half dozen thick thighed, crew cut, bike mounted lesbian cops watching me pass with hungry eyes.
That was the summer I was busted for skinny dipping by the Kelowna Beach Patrol.
This is how I feel now, naked, frightened, ….maybe a little turned on. Putting my writing out there for the world to see like so many nipply bits. Can what I have to contribute to the information superhighway really compete with say, this, or this, or possibly this?? Will my friends laugh at me, pity me??
I’m not sure right now is even the best time to start a blog; I’m at a strange place in my life. I’m lifting roots from my childhood home and about to make the move to a metropolis. I’m in the middle of an end. What’s more I’m working a hard hat construction job that’s a million miles from my usual schtick.
But this happens to be one of the very reasons I’ve been itching to start this blog. The construction industry’s cultural osmosis has left me, well, less than articulate. That isn’t to say that my time in the trades hasn’t enriched my vocabulary, but in the end, how many words does one really need to describe a homosexual? When the f word made the leap from every third to every second word in my daily speech, I knew it was time to blow the dust off my lexicon and do something that would awaken all the dormant polysyllabic terms in my repertoire.
I hope if anything this blog helps to defibrillate my intellect, pump some juices back into the organ of my imagination! I haven’t done anything creative in ages….
And I used to be a such a creative person…. Summer vacation meant handing in a math text book brimming with Narutos and Sponge Bobs. I used to be in choir and write and draw, and, you know, make stuff with out of pipe cleaners and googly eyes and glitter…. I used to have my fingers in a dozen different projects at once.
But a few months ago when I laid on my bed, twiddling a pen in my fingers and reading aloud my application for Emily Carr University of Art and Design to my sisters, I reached the question “What are your hobbies?” and a knowing look crossed all of our faces. How does one euphamize the fact that they spend every last spare moment out partying? I’d replaced art with adventure, portraits with people, water colours with ecstasy, and pastels with wild crazy group sex. We settled on what we felt was an adequate non-answer to the question; practical anthropology, gardening.
The reason for my upcoming move is to attend Emily Carr in Vancouver. Iknowright? Global economic recession, why not go to art school? It’s so near suicide they could write a My Chemical Romance song and name it Pandora. Alas, I’ll be attending art school, but I haven’t drawn or written for almost a year! I feel like a fake….
It was this time last year that my life began to change. I was miserable. I hated my life and myself. I’d just hit the 200lb mark and had graduated to the extra, extra large stretch pants at Le Chateau. (Thanks, btw, Le Chateau, for kicking fat chicks when they’re already down with your fucked up, arbitrary sizing system. Go die.) Every attempt I made to lose weight resulted in a gaining of about ten more pounds; this had happened three times in a row. I remember describing to someone the prospect of weight loss for me being akin to two little hobbits crossing Mordor to return the one ring to Mount Doom from whence it came…..
I worked for a bloodless, soul sucking corporation. Ok, Starbucks may be the cuddliest of the evil corporations, but evil none the less. I stank like coffee all the time, it wouldn’t wash off. My job was a joke, and I was the punch line.
School? Well, let’s just say if I wasn’t afraid of guns and authority and find the idea of killing living things reprehensible, I was damn near pulling a Columbine.
Worst of all I was on a stint of involuntary celibacy verging on the two year mark. If I rubbed against the corner of a table the wrong way I had to go into another room and calm down.
I was bored. All my friends ever did was play Guitar Hero in somebody’s basement. There was a wildness, an applied creativity that needed to break free. I felt dead inside.
I was sarcastic. I was jaded. The only colour Starbucks would let me wear was black. Ironically, it was at this time that someone told me I they thought I was incredibly glamourous.
That person was Paul.
Paul was a beautiful young gay man with a taste for cocaine to whom I was briefly facebook married.
The day I met Paul I arrived for my shift Starbucks to see a tall blonde boy there at the bar. I told some dirty joke and was taken by surprise when he let out a hearty squeal of delight. If you knew Paul you’d know the laugh I’m talking about. I’d long since gotten used to having my jet black humour ignored by my sweet, sparkly eyed, sixteen year old coworkers. “So,” I thought, “someone is listening.” I don’t know how we got on the subject, but he pulled up his pant let to show me his tattoo. “Andy’s banana!” I said, recognising Warhol’s Velvet Underground cover. “Yea!” he replied, “Almost no one gets that!” There was a spark. I didn’t know it, but my life was about to change.
The first night we went out together we found ourselves running around naked on a beach at 4am. Through my crippling cynicism he brought a little fun into my life. He taught me to say yes to everything. I came to feel alive again.
He was an artist too, and try as we might to make art together we’d always wind up having an adventure instead. Most nights by the time I’d lay myself to sleep I had a disbelieving grin on my face, amazed by what I’d seen and done just by saying “Why the fuck not?”
Living his lifestyle I lost 65lbs. 50lb in four months. You do the math. All I can say to Weight Watchers, on which I wasted months of my life, is to eat your heart out. You’ve eaten everything else.
I told Starbucks I was sick of the sadomasochistic nature of working for them -in those words, it was a world class resignation!- and I started working new and exciting colours into my wardrobe! First ash grey, then midnight blue, then dark brown!
I dropped out of my dead end major to do a little living, and in that time have done a great many highly recommendable recreational drugs.
And the celibacy? Well, I shook that inch by inch, which is a long and winding story I’ll need a glass or several of wine for.
My life is made of beach fires and hippy circles and bathing with ten of my closest friends at once and running all over hell’s half acre till 5am getting up to anything and everything. With all the fun I’ve been having my pen and pad lay forgotten in the drawer. There’s been nothing to vent through art.
I’m happy now. I have a body that will let me run around and play and, hell, even get laid once in a while. I get a lot of fresh air and sun. I have more friends than I can keep track of. But I don’t create. Will creation only ever serve as as escape from misery? Do I really have to get obese and depressed again before get back into it? Maybe creativity was only ever a side effect from a wretched existence of unhappiness.
I’m happy now, but can I be happy if I don’t create?
Is god just a bitch?
Can the once glamourous Pandora be glamourous once more?
Will Michaela reach the burning barn in time to rescue Beau? Find out on the next exciting episode of Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman!
Whatever the results, I suppose it’s time to take a deep breath and strip down. Here goes.