4:26, last friday afternoon

Posted on by

(1 march 2011)

identifying a biographical subject is like falling in love.

not the easy head over heels at first sight business that always happened at sweet valley high. it’s more like when you’ve been around and you’re damaged and you’re very much not at your best and you know that and you meet someone and you run and you hide and you play coy and be awkward- but at the same time, you can tell. on some level, you just know- you’re going to let them have you in the end. you don’t know what that’ll look like and you don’t know what it means and you’re pretty sure it’ll make you question everything you’ve ever known but, nonetheless, you know they’re gonna get you.

that was jackie. there has only ever been jackie. there was never another.

i didn’t always want her, i wasn’t always ready for her, but she was always there.

a few weeks ago, a friend leaned against the brick wall outside debonair, took a drag on my cigar, looked me in the eye and asked, are you ever going to write about anyone else?

i said i honestly did not know. because i honestly do not know.

jackie’s is the story that’s going to dominate my biographical life. it’s probably safe to assume that, but i’ve always left room for others. there’d just never been any.

it’s funny. the longer you live, the more sensitive you become to small events, little twists. things that never play out exactly as they did before, but they’re similar enough that you recognize the emotions, the tug of the heart, and you can guess what that pull means. you know enough to go ahead and attribute to it an importance it may or may not ultimately assume, and to make it a part of the story now, even if it falls by the wayside later on.

it had always been jackie. there was never anyone else.

at 4:26 on last friday afternoon, i found her. she is not jackie. she is a total stranger and yet i knew. i just knew, with the total conviction and deep satisfaction of one clicking a last puzzle piece in place.

i wish there were more words for it. i wish there were any words for it. i wish i could explain the inexplicable clinch of the heart that happened then because then everyone would understand once and for all why anyone would ever be compelled to do what it is that i want to do.

all i can say is that it was 4:26, and it was love at first sight.

a reaction of such visceral strength that it seemed important to document the time. as though we would one day divide the epochs based on this, with a clearcut delineation of the before and after.

i greet my father in the train station, flushed from excitement and waving a sheaf of printed obituaries above my head like a flag of surrender. i am wild. he is cautious.

i call my mother and say, i felt it. mummy, i felt it, and she gets it instantly without my saying anything else. she knows this is big. she knows that when i cannot find the words, we’re in for something monumental.

i’m reluctant to write about any of this, because, odds are, nothing will come of it. odds are that it’ll be like that epic civil war novel that never was that i set out to write the summer i turned ten.

it may very well just be proof that i’m not confined to jackie after all. that i’ve been dreaming in a tiny box when, in reality, this is a magic without limits.

but i’ve been recording a process here. the process of writing a book about jackie in paris and the million unexpected directions that leads. i’ve been banking on the notion that even if there is, in fact, no there there, the story of getting to the there that didn’t exist will be just as interesting. i don’t know yet if that’s going to hold true.

what i do know is that this story of that moment, of 4:26 on last friday afternoon, cannot be left out. because i felt it. i felt IT. i cannot find the words, but it’s big. and, come what may, we are in for something monumental.

 

speak!

Posted on by

(22 february 2011)

at the suggestion of my father, i have enrolled in a speech class. because things are happening and the sex toboggans are rolling into various towns around the world and it would be useful, as i roll into various towns around the world with them, to be able to discuss the sex toboggans in a somewhat captivating way.

as most always happens, i set out to do things- big things! adventures!- and there is this vision in my head of how they will happen- flawlessly! gloriously! with much applause!- and then… everything is absurd.

i went to speech class. actually, first, i took a scenic tour of the emergency room of the masonic medical center looking for a 7th floor auditorium that did not exist. then i went to a speech class.

and after my encounter with a one-legged man lying near death on a stretcher, speech class didn’t seem so scary.

people always suggest that you imagine your audience in their underwear. i’ve never found that helpful.

it is somehow much more helpful to operate under threat. to think that if i do not get up there, if i do not push myself and speak, then i’ll be forced to take another tour of the masonic medical center emergency room. and made to look the one-legged man in the eye.

money makes the world go round

Posted on by

(18 february 2011)

if it is challenging to explain why one is good at what one does, it’s nearly impossible to put a price on it.

i have been asked to establish my fee.

this is a process enormously complicated by the fact that my fee has, thus far, been in the very wee digits. but i’m trying to be a biographer. like, for real. and i know the very wee digits do not help me do that.

so i am sitting on the fainting couch that is symbolic of my adulthood trying to solve a problem i’ve wrestled with since i began baby-sitting in middle school, when i took whatever they gave me at the end of the night and sacrificed many a friday evening for $5.95.

please note: the national minimum wage was $4.75 per hour. mine was $1.98.

that’s a monumental gap. as is the distance between $13.75 per hour and $75.

and while i know, in reality, i’m just determining the financial value of my hours, it feels like i’m being called upon to do so much more than that.

i’ve been asked to establish my fee. in doing so, i’m defining my value.

i’m sitting on the fainting couch that symbolizes my adulthood facing that girl who gave up her friday nights for $5.95.

it takes tremendous effort to not sell myself short. to admit what i think i’m worth.

adventureland

Posted on by

(16 february 2011)

we have reached a point where i am, for the first time, facing the very great financial cost of what i want to do.

in a perfect world, jackie would pay for herself. in reality, it is unlikely she ever will.

this isn’t entirely unexpected. you don’t spend a small fortune to get a degree in writing and imagine yourself rolling in millions. so long as i can afford a bottle of andré and the occasional betsy johnson from the resale shop, i’m truly more than pleased.

but this goes against pretty much most everything everyone will ever tell you. this idea that it is better to do what you love than what you should and what is safe. in talking about jackie with people, i am repeatedly reminded that, despite my “romantic” notions of being a writer, i still have to eat. and have a home. and “settle down.”

i had a friend once, who began nearly every discussion we ever had with the question, where do you see yourself in five years?

at the time, i found this terribly daunting. i think it downright foolish now.

we, as a culture, put so much stock in having an end point- some mystical time in which our lives will fall together and look exactly as we want them to be. i detest this. i struggle with it daily, but i detest it all the same.

because there is no end point. no job or marriage or baby or home that’s going to make you a better you. there is simply life. we none of us know where we’re going and, in thinking we do, we miss so very much along the way.

i am writing a jackie book about the jackie book that i am trying to write but likely never will because it is becoming increasingly apparent that there is simply no there there.

which brings us to my mother. who, in the middle of a prolonged discussion of the benefits of organic, grass-fed meats, says the most maudlin thing ever, which is, nonetheless, the exact thing i needed to hear. she pauses, inhales and says: you know something’s going to come of this right? this jackie stuff? you’ll get there when you get there, but until then, God, what an adventure you’ve got.

faith caroline feminism

Posted on by

(4 february 2011)

i am keeping crazy hours.

going to sleep at midnight. waking up at two. working with jackie until 7 a.m.

it isn’t intentional and it isn’t ideal, nor is it as bad as it sounds. as onassis himself said once: “jackie is a pleasure in the morning.”

i’m working on something new. well, in truth, it’s old. but now it’s new. ish.

if that makes any sense.

much of what i’m doing right now does not make sense. i am often talking of things i know nothing about.

it would’ve been wise to have taken a feminist theory class somewhere along the line, because i am making a point that, i see now, is deeply feminist. it is the sensation of pulling a hot pan from the oven only to discover you’ve no surface on which to set it.

i don’t know that i want to be a feminist, i just really need to borrow their theories.

and so, as though it qualifies as a legitimate theoretical work, i’ve thrown gloria steinem’s marilyn book into a pile of reading that was already verging on schizophrenic. she looks awkward there. gloria. sandwiched between kierkegaard and sweet valley high #17. too awkward. i throw mercy onto the pile too because, clearly, dworkin makes good company.

i don’t know that i want to be a feminist, but maybe it’s too late for that? maybe i’m fleeing an inevitability? maybe i’m running from what i already am?

but then i’ve been on the run for awhile. because it’s difficult to face what i’m doing.

i am using biography to argue the validity of fiction. i am writing the real life of a fictional version of a real woman. i am using that fictional version to argue that the real woman- who has been marginalized by the feminist movement- was, in fact, one of its central players.

i am holding one idea and a million fictions.

i have no surface on which to set them.

but then every once in awhile there’s a glimmer. a good sentence. a good paragraph. an early morning hour of writing where three pages come easily. and, every once in awhile, there comes a moment, a moment almost too fluttering sweet to be substantial, where those three pages are enough.

the sexpert

Posted on by

(7 january 2011)

i may or may not be delivering a paper at a conference.

i say may or may not because my acceptance to deliver said paper at said conference was conveyed through a forwarded email from the biography, autobiography, memoir, personal essay area chair that mentioned nothing of my paper but simply stated that i had been “approved” and that she looks forward to seeing me there. since this echoes the sentiments of all people everywhere half-heartedly welcoming visitors whom they do not want, i take it with equal parts salt and hope.

so i may or may not be delivering a paper. a state of circumstances that i am nearly entirely certain is due solely to the fact that the paper i may or may not be delivering has the unlikely phrase “sex toboggan” in its title.

much like my uneasy worldwide affiliation with michael landon’s loins, i do not know if the sex toboggan is something for which i want to be known. principly, i do not know what one wears when positioning oneself as an expert in sex toboggans. and that seems somehow monumentally more important than the fact that i’m not even entirely certain what a sex toboggan is.

we real cool

Posted on by

(1 november 2010)

the pile of important papers that i keep less than six inches away from the liter box is the organizational equivalent of my physical response to being a biographer.

a friend pointed this out the other day. look at you, trying to play it cool, she said.

i’m pretty sure it’s a bad act. i’m pretty sure she could see. i was totally busting out on the inside.

the problem is that while i know that what i’m trying to do is cool, and while most everyone i know who knows what i’m doing knows it’s cool, i don’t want everyone else knowing i know, because then they’ll know and i’d rather they not know in case it doesn’t pan out. if only i know i know how cool it is, only i will know how badly it blew up. you know?

you may have noticed how cool i was up there. in my use of the intransitive verb. my stubborn refusal to admit that i’m actually already doing this thing i say i’m trying to do.

it’s hard. being this cool.

way back in the early spring, when i was working for a fellow biographer, i went strolling down dearborn with a friend. i told him about her excitement. about how she was so enthusiastic about this project. about how she said i had to do it. NOW. when he eagerly assented, i recoiled as though he’d turned the cupcakes in my hand to snakes. much to my horror (and slight amusement), months later this is still my first response.

for the last eight years i’ve wrestled with the notion of how one becomes a biographer. now i’ve reconciled myself to the idea that maybe that’s what i should be- really, what i’ve been all along- i’m having the damnedest time owning it. and i’m discovering that my unwillingness to take myself seriously has an ocular manifestation involving, quite possibly, the most devastating eye-roll of all time.

an eye-roll so spectacular that it undercuts 15 years of study, a thesis, a $64,000 education, an archive of 379 magazines plus a 242 page book to make me look like an ungracious teen.

awesome.

i do not know why i do this. i do not know why i can’t stop. maybe because i am not a proper adult or because i’m a silly girl. maybe because sincerity is fearsome and failure is worse. maybe because i cannot take risks without first elegantly draping them in the fiercest possible sarcasm. or maybe i’m just being ridiculous. it could well be that simple. i really don’t know.

in the meantime, i play it cool. i keep moving forward. i try to exert facial control.

and, as though letters from the daughters of iconic american women came rolling into my house every day, i toss everything onto the pile on the floor, approximately six inches from the liter box. the pile that the cat has taken to sitting on as though it weren’t a book in the making but, rather, a throne.

2 words, 15 letters, 6 vowels

Posted on by

(21 october 2010)

mail from famous people is impossibly scary to open. the simple fact that it might have been caressed by famous hands or licked by famous lips (or more likely the hands and lips of those in their employ) lends such missives a distinctive fragility. as though they were highly bruiseable, like an infant or a thin-skinned fruit.

as the recent recipient of celebrated correspondence, i’ve observed that, when given the opportunity, people exhibit an extraordinary reluctance to handle said correspondence themselves.

i should be more clear. the correspondence they will handle. it is the envelop they fear.

thus, time and again as i’ve handed a letter over for perusal, it comes sailing back to me just as quick, with a brusque no, no, you do it- as though i am somehow more adept at these matters.

i’m trying to maintain a balance here, dancing on the fine line of being overwhelmed by the awesomeness of what i’m doing and underwhelmed by its actually happening. to this end, i’ve taken to storing the really really important things in a pile of papers on the floor located approximately six inches from the litter box.

so when a friend asks to see, i shove the cat from the paper pile by her bathroom and fish out the letter that has been requested. blowing off the litter dust that has lent it an antique aspect rarely found in mail less than three days old, i anticipate the no, no, you do it and slip the letter from its sheath.

i find i can only feel this- the excitement, the immediacy, the sense that things are really happening- through other people. i do not know what to make of the fact that there is so little wonder in it for me now.

and so i toss the thing to her as though it were a month-old us weekly and smile as her cupped hands catch it like a semi-precious gem.

and i watch her fingers run gently, reverently over the 15 letter name written in 11 pt., bookman old style, pantone 287 at the top.

no, no, you do it. yes, yes, i will.

deaf day

Posted on by

(16 august 2010)

bad ears run in my family. on both sides. so it’s not surprising that i was very close to my otolaryngologist as a kid.

thanks to the blood leaking from my eardrum, my right ear had to be perpetually plugged with a cotton ball which, despite repeated reminders from my parents, i always failed to remove during photo-taking so this time in our lives has gone down in family history as my “cotton ball years.”

1990 was especially rough. my mother and i went traipsing across memphis nearly every week so doctor franco could poke about in my head and ponder what he wanted to do.

i don’t remember much about these visits, except that- with the advent of lasers and modern medicine and whatnot- the methods seem severely primitive now. the anesthesia unnecessarily brutal. the recovery surprisingly difficult. and o the tools! they were like something from a museum devoted to Medicine Of The Frontier.

whenever doctor franco put his instruments in my ear, i would look plaintively at my mother, who sat in the corner of the room calmly smiling in a power suit. presumably this was meant to be reassuring but, in my characteristically melodramatic way, i interpreted her smiles as a failure to fully appreciate my pain. in retrospect, the process was as torturous for her as for me and the sad cow eyes i cast in her direction every time the otoscope nicked my inflamed ear canal undoubtedly did not make it easier.

this was back when the nerves still worked. when i could feel things. (it is, at times, a small mercy to be numb.)

several months into all of this, after an aggressive surgery followed by my stunningly poor performance on a particular hearing test, doctor franco took my mother aside and quietly warned her that there might be nothing more he could do.

my mother nodded curtly, gathered our things and shoved the cotton ball back in my dud ear. she put us both in the car and drove us one parking lot over to target, where she marched to the music section and fished a cassette out of the bargain bin.

this was presented as my great reward. for what, exactly, i did not know since i was well aware that in a test involving tones i had heard none.

that this cassette was composed of visibly cheap gray plastic only further lessened its value in my eyes.

but my mother said we had had a hard day and we did not know what the future held. and she put that tape into the tape deck of the mini-van she’d made my dad buy her only to realize she did not want to drive a van, and turned up the volume higher than i’d ever known her to turn up the volume on anything before.

and that is how i met elvis. on a day when, faced with the prospect of her daughter going deaf, my mother bought burning love & hits from his movies, vol. 2.

photographers snip, snap

Posted on by

(10 november 2006)

today, i gave my first autograph.

but let me begin at the beginning.

i hate umbrellas. almost as much as i hate birds.

but, no. i should go back further.

i should go back to my irrational fear of electrocution. yes, that’s the beginning. i used to have this irrational fear of electrocution. every doorknob held the threat of a shocking death. static cling left me quaking in my zippered boots. a logical hysteric, i developed a slew of preventative measures to delay my inevitable death by doorknob shock.

at some point, i wised up and transfered the irrationality to the more obvious threat: umbrellas. because, by God, umbrellas are frightful. as does most everything else, this comes back to my loathing of eyeballs. umbrellas have spikes. eyeballs-on-spikes. horror.

because i hate umbrellas, i ventured out into the icky chicago blustery rain this afternoon bundled in the green coat, the yellow scarf and the blue hat, and wearing the HUGE sunglasses because waterproof eyeliner has yet to be invented. (ed. note: it now has.)

walking down clark street, i was innocently bopping to brian eno’s “baby’s on fire,” savoring the dramatic irony that baby’s firey plight was unfolding while i was being drenched, when suddenly a hand clasped my arm.

fearful of an umbrella encounter, i lept back, only to see a benign kid. a girl of maybe 15 or 16 (i’m old. ages blur. she could’ve easily been 22.). this girl, wearing those pants where you can tell- even from the front- that there’s writing on the butt, stood there clutching my arm.

i looked for weaponry. because the sidewalk in front of The Weiner’s Circle seemed as good a place as any to be assaulted by a teenybopper with HOTT STUFF written on her ass. but no. hott stuff brandished nothing but a pen.

hot stuff seemed short of breath. she seemed to have a desperate need to speak to me. i shut up the eno and looked at her.

DAMN. NICK. hott stuff exclaimed, spitting the words as though she couldn’t get them out fast enough. both syllables dripping with unmitigated hate.

obviously, hott stuff had been electrocuted by the doorknob at The Weiner’s Circle and what i was witnessing were the residual twitches of the electrical currents combined with a mild case of tourettes.

hott stuff reached to pull something out of her bag. an umbrella?! i wondered, with furrowed, fearful brow. when  a battered back issue of STAR emerged, my relief was visible.

still recovering from the stress of her recent electrical shock, hott stuff fumbled through the magazine, increasingly frantic as the raindrops dashed across the glossy pages. finally, she heaved a sigh of content and thrust the open page toward me, pointing at the headline, Jess To Nick: You’re a Girlie Man!

hott stuff leaned closer. she offered me the pen, which i took for fear she might activate a button, upon which the harmless-looking pink sparkly writing utensil would explode into one of those umbrellas for cocktail drinks. eyeballs-on-balsa. ouch.

hott stuff thrust the magazine at me and leaned in, as though she were confessing a deep secret for which she had spent weeks ratchetting up the courage. hott stuff looked deep into my sunglasses.

she looked deep into my sunglasses and said, i just love your sister.