That Girl

One of the things I'm (secretly) hoping to get out of doing the AW this time around is to reconnect with 'the funny.' I'm a funny girl, or at least I used to be. The quiet, unassuming one in the corner with the razor-sharp wit and dripping sarcasm? That was me...and still is, in certain moments. But I feel like that part of me is quite atrophied at this point. Those five years in the tropics took a toll. It was so isolating and lonely and I didn't have anyone (except Jeffrey) to be funny with. I missed that sort of face-to-face interaction. Believe me, there was some funny-ass shit that went on down there, but sometimes you don't want to just write about it in emails and letters and blog posts. Sometimes, at least for me, there's a need to say the stuff. To inject it with your own inflection. That's a big part of comedy--it's not just what you say, it's also how you say it.

When I was a little girl, I desperately wanted to be a stand-up comic. Although in the 60's we didn't call them that--they were called comedians--and mostly you just saw them on The Ed Sullivan Show. All those old school comedians. I used to stand in the middle of my Italian grandmother's living room and do routines for her--jokes I'd heard, really bad impressions. And she'd laugh like it was the funniest damn shit she'd ever seen (even if I did the same routine 20 times). I've always been drawn to the funny. Need to choreograph a piece for my modern dance class? You can be sure there's gonna be at least one or two comical movements in there. That's why I worship at the altar of Albert Brooks--comedy gold.

[SIDEBAR: I also wanted to be (in no particular order) a stewardess (it was the 60's, that's what we called them), runway model, Broadway dancer, magazine writer (didn't Marlo Thomas work for a magazine on "That Girl?"...I used to fantasize about having That Girl's life), world traveler, publisher (I wanted to have a newsletter as a kid but thought I'd be laughed at if I did...so imagine my glee at self-publishing every day via blog posts), photographer, beach dweller, Fifth Avenue resident (I was sure there'd been some tragic mix-up in the delivery room)...as you can see, nowhere along the line did I fantasize about growing up to become...an office worker.]

The book inscription posted above suddenly came to mind this morning when I read the word "Merrill" somewhere. It says, "Marilyn, I believe you are the most impressive person here and I believe you know it. Love, Merrill Markoe" I thought I'd post it not so you'd think I'm cool, but to remind myself that there have been moments in my life when people who didn't even know me saw my potential. I don't know HOW they saw it, since I've gone to such great lengths to camouflage it, thinking that was what others preferred. (Could you just tone it down, please? Could you maybe go from a 100 watt bulb to, say, a 40?)

In this instance, I saw her at a book reading at Borders in Portland. It was a Friday evening, I think, because when I left the bookstore, I hopped on Max and rode the few stops to Jeffrey's gig at Key Largo. What astounded me about her inscription was that there were a lot of people there--it was very crowded--and I was standing at the back of the group. When I handed her my book, I don't recall saying anything other than "Hi." So when I read what she wrote, I thought: what the hell?? Granted, I was in sort of my hipster fashion mode. (Hard to imagine now, nearly a decade later, but yes, I used to have cute clothes.) But surely it had to be more than that--she didn't seem like the kind of fluffy person who would make that assumption based on clothes. I believe she saw something else. She saw a woman who was confident and comfortable in who she was. Shy, maybe, but confident. I miss her. I want That Girl back.