Category: life

Let’s do the time warp again

Oh lord, I have become too old for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We watched it on DVD recently and didn’t finish it. That might be because I was bone-tired from a screenplay deadline (ten or so in a row of those 4 AM days…). But I think it was because it’s a 33-year-old movie, and it shows. And I just couldn’t get past that.

But between September 1978 and May 1979, I bet I went to midnight showings of Rocky Horror at the Biograph in Chicago at least 20 times. Maybe more…

I was a freshman at Northwestern University, a thoroughly miserable experience made bearable by the friendship of Sudi Khosropur. She was awesome — and we bonded over trash TV, Rocky Horror and a mutual crush on Tim Curry. Very often on a Friday or Saturday night, we’d get dressed up in full Rocky Horror audience participation splendor and take the El down to the Biograph. I wore a black leotard, an unbuttoned white man’s shirt, a black bow tie, fishnet stockings, boots, and a black fedora. Sudi wore fishnets and heels and short skirts. We’d join the line of hundreds of people waiting to get into the midnight show. People had beer and boom boxes playing the music. We did the Time Warp out on Lincoln Ave. more times than I can remember.

And then we were in, and seated, and the crowd would buzz with adrenaline like a jet engine… and then the movie would start. And we’d yell the lines, throw the rice, hold up the newspapers, squirt the water, throw the confetti and the cards… we did it all. It was fantastic.

Tim Curry had a career as a rock musician, along with his stage and screen career, and I had all three of his albums. So you may imagine our excitement when he came through Chicago on tour. He played at the Park West. You had to be 21 to get in. We were 18. But we were determined…and not just to see the show. Sudi, who had way more guts than I did, called the venue the afternoon of the show, when we knew the band would be loading in and sound-checking, and asked for Tim Curry. She got his manager, and she told the manager that we wanted to take Tim Curry to dinner after the show.

The manager said no very nicely, as I recall.

So off we went to the show. This was in the days before the obsessive checking of ID’s, so you just had to have enough brass to act as if. I looked about 16, but I was good at appearing absolutely comfortable — and Sudi looked 21 and was very good at distracting the guy at the door while I breezed through.

We had a great time at the show, and we got to meet Tim Curry. I was appalled to see a whole contingent of people at the meet-and-greet who were dressed up in RH gear… it seemed so tacky. Sudi told Tim Curry how much she had enjoyed his performance as William Shakespeare. She got the best smile of the night.

And then the two of us went out for a 2 AM breakfast and splurged on steak and eggs. That was fantastic too.

I left Northwestern at the end of that year. And Rocky Horror was never the same for me again.

Sudi, if you’re out there, never mind about the last time we saw each other when you probably thought I was too fucking weird for words. I would love to hear from you.

Kelley and Sudi, 1979

Dance to the music

So I did my dancing thing last night and had a blast.

The club was packed, the dance floor was heaving, and people were having a great time. DJ Stacey played Frankie Goes To Hollywood just for me. In my two sets, I got everything from “We Are Family” to “Sexyback.”

My mother was there. With her video camera and her tiger t-shirt. She got an unexpected treat when one of the other dancers dropped into her lap and started to wiggle… It was wonderful to see her smile and laugh and move to the music. She remarked on how much she loved seeing an entire room full of women who all looked so happy — and for me, the gift is that she was one of them.

And Nicola was there, which made it all the more special. She looked gorgeous, she told me I was fantastic, and she didn’t blink when other women stuffed dollar bills down my bra. (Is she a keeper, or what?) I feel very lucky indeed (no pun intended) to have such unconditional, confident love.

And good friends came to cheer me on. Thank you, thank you to Sue, Vicki, Alsia, Elbereth, Kate, Liz, and Luey for being there. Thanks for dancing (you all looked beautiful!). And thank you especially for the goodwill, and for letting me share with you some of the particular joy that dancing is for me.

Story is real

True confession time: although I’m often billed as a science fiction writer, there’s actually very little science that engages me beyond either the practical (Does it make my life better? Or If it’s broken, how do I fix it?) or the aesthetic (Meteor showers are pretty!). I have never been fascinated by science for its own sake. It is human experience that interests me, and it’s true that much of human experience is grounded in, or informed by, science — in particular, how we respond to our own biology (gender, sex, illness, dying, fear, memory…). Each practically-identical biological human mechanism — and in spite of our individual genome patterns we are 99.9% the same — is also a particular person with our own thoughts and feelings and responses, our own unique set of experiences. We are essentially the same, and a huge part of that sameness is that we hunger to be different and are yet so often terrified by difference in others. We are souls who drive, and driven by, the most complex wetware that we know of in the universe… now that’s interesting.

And so in spite of my general disregard for scientific discoveries, I am in love with the idea of mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons fire in our brains when we perform an action or when we see someone else performing an action. Mirror neurons help us assign meaning to other people’s behavior. I see you and I know what your actions mean, because in my brain there is no neuronal difference between you doing a thing and me doing it myself. It feels the same to my brain.

I know what it means when you look at me with rage or hurt or bedroom eyes — because the same neurons fire when I look that way at you. I know that look. I see you pick up a baseball bat and shift your grip, heft it in that certain way, and I know the only thing you’re planning to knock out of the park is me. I know when a baseball bat turns into a weapon — and there, you know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? Because even reading a description of an action, if it is accurately and specific, fires your mirror neurons.

There are lots of theories now that mirror neurons are the basis of empathy, and that they are instrumental in acquiring language. But what they mean to me as a storyteller is that I really can show you what’s happening instead of having to always tell you.

And now I know why story works. I know why words on a page or pixels on a screen can make me feel such deep joy or sadness, can make me tremble with fear or wonder. Because when story in any medium is done right, it really does come to life inside us. For an instant, we live the story. It’s real.

And I know something else: I know why I am a writer. I know why I took an acting degree that I was so clearly at the time unsuited for. I know why I dance. I know why I sing along with U2 at the concerts.

Because story is real. When I write, when I act, when I sing in the car, when I am brave or stubborn enough to keep at it until I have been as specific and honest as I can be in the creation — when I get the story right — it fires all those fabulous mirror neurons, and those moments of story are just as real to my brain as if I were actually doing them. I am watching my life drop down an elevator shaft; I am a rock star; I am fighting for my life or struggling with love or having amazing sex or holding my breath at the immensity of some moment of everyday life in which, suddenly, everything has changed…

In his blurb for Dangerous Space, Matt Ruff refers to “emotions this raw.” I’ve always liked (and been grateful for) that, because it comes closest to my own ideas about what I love in story, and what I strive for in the stories I tell. I don’t give a fuck about Big Ideas. I am all about Big Feelings. Not necessarily big experiences — although I like those too — but the way that the large and the small of life can make us feel, and what we do because of or in spite of those feelings.

I’ve said that I write because I want to make people feel those things. To make difference accessible to readers — behavior and feelings that they might not otherwise choose in their own lives. To open a mainline into someone else’s personal truth. But that’s not it, or at least not the most important part. I do it because I want (or need) to feel those things myself, in ways that don’t necessarily involve actual experience. I won’t ever be a rock star, but I want the physical and psychic blast of 20,000 people singing my song to me. I don’t want people I love to die, but I respond so violently to grief in stories that it’s like I am practicing or preparing as best I can for the day when it will grab me by the throat and shake me. I can’t be an astronaut (that science thing…) but I want to see my world suspended in a deep dark universe of wonders.

And I can. We all can. We’re not limited by our own lives, by our own choices. We can live other lives and other choices too, and that’s not just an intellectual concept. It’s real. It’s as real to your brain as your last banana muffin on a warm Sunday morning, or how your sunglasses make you feel hip even when you’re just pumping gas, or the smile yesterday from that beautiful stranger on the train, or the heartstopping second before you say I love you to someone new.

And there. I just told you four little stories, and perhaps one of them was real to you. Perhaps for a second you were there. Really there.

Story is real. It makes me want to shout or dance or cry or go hug someone from the sheer joy of being human. Every story you love, whether it’s Frodo and Sam, or Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, or Buffy, whether it’s Shakespeare or Calvin and Hobbes, is alive and real in the amazing space inside you.

Torture is wrong

Yesterday, President Shrub vetoed an intelligence authorization bill because it prevents the CIA from torturing people. The bill would have banned waterboarding, stripping people naked, forcing them to engage in or simulate sexual acts, subjecting them to extreme temperatures, and making them stand up until they fall down. It would still be okay to hurt interrogate them in lots of other ways.

I’m not a Christian, and I have a hard time turning the other cheek — and I still know that torture is wrong. GWB, on the other hand, does profess to be Christian, and I have to wonder why he thinks that waterboarding is what Jesus would do. And even if he thinks it’s morally okay, I can’t believe he’s stupid enough to think it really makes enough of a difference to the overall goal of national security to justify the damage it does to us as a people. Torture does not consistently produce reliable information and it does not build the long-term goodwill of the world community towards America. All it reliably does is reduce human beings to bags of suffering, or the monsters that cause it.

I am ashamed of the president of my country, and all the politicians who have participated in and supported the misery he has inflicted on people here and abroad.

I do not often engage in political discussion, even with members of my own family, because usually people just stake out positions and pound on each other. Everyone wants to be “right.” Everyone wants to win. Kind of like elections. Kind of like war. People want to win, hey, I get it. But we don’t have the right to win at any cost. We don’t. We have, or used to have, the right to speak freely, to move freely, to be in general treated equally under the law, to dissent without fear. We’ve given up a lot of that to our leaders’ need to win.

And for what? Does this feel like winning to you?

Edited to add: At the risk of seeming to diminish my own outrage, here’s a funny take on the absolute seriousness of where we are right now.

DST sucks

I hate Daylight Savings Time with a savage passion. Hate hate hate hate hate it. It is deeply stupid, hard on my body and my psyche, and not even fuel efficient, people! Stop messing with my time!

Grump.

Edited to add: I just read this post which ends with this:

I just realized it’s time to turn the clocks ahead. Thank God — I actually thought I blacked out for an hour. — Erik Davis, with whom I sympathize completely.

You see? DST is baaaaad…..

What’s your story?

Have you heard of six-word memoirs? They’re in full swing over at SMITH Magazine (which is, by the way, a pretty cool site in general — wow, the human impulse to tell stories…). You can find out more in this New Yorker article, a brilliant marriage of information and demonstration.

I keep trying to come up with my own six-word memoir, but… can’t tell me in six words.

However, today I stumbled across this, and thought, But here I am in 20…

“I am always doing that which I can not do,
in order that I may learn how to do it.” — Pablo Picasso

What’s your story? (And if it’s six words, go tell it to SMITH too!)

My new job!

I am a go-go dancer in a lesbian nightclub.

Seriously.

A 47-year-old go-go dancer in a lesbian nightclub. The dances are for women over 35, so I don’t look like someone’s granny who wandered onstage by mistake and started shaking it at the young people. Although we did have a grandmother on stage last night, and she was hot.

Last night was my audition. I danced my ass off for two half-hour sets, with a clothing change between. Afterwards, the owner told me, “I like the way you dance! You’re not a… classically good dancer, but wow, you have so much fun up there. It’s great.” And so I was hired.

I’m not sure if this makes me the Bold New Wave of club dancing, or the Novelty Act. I guess either is fine, as long as the crowd enjoys it. They were certainly watching, with what I interpreted as a mix of amusement and approval. From the stage, I can see the entire crowd; I can chart the conversations and read the body language when they watch me for a measure and then lean in to talk to each other. Oh my god, she’s wild up there! is followed either by the raised eyebrow of Seems a little extreme or the grin of How cool is that?

And that’s fine. I don’t need to be the sexiest thing on stage. I want to be the one who makes you want to dance a little harder, loosen up a little more. I want to show you the joy of giving your body to music without regard for how it looks. Because you know what? I am having fun up there. And you, on the left side of the floor, I saw you busting some of my moves. Looked great on you. You go, girl.

Certainly, I had to go for it. I decided I would rather have the story to tell of how I tried out to be a dancer and didn’t make it, than the story of how I almost… And here we come right back around to the possibilities conversation.

Oh, and I have a stage name! You can call me Lucky. I get paid, I get tips (well, we’ll see — none of us made decent tips last night, what’s up with Seattle women? Put some money in the jar, people! Baby needs shoes.)

Kelley Eskridge: Executive. Novelist. Screenwriter. Go-go girl. I think it has a certain ring, don’t you?

If you are a woman, come see me dance. (All women and trans people are welcome. Go check out the FAQ.) I’ll dance one show a month, and will post my schedule when I get it.

Sorry, guys. Or maybe not — I love to dance for/with men, but I wouldn’t get two steps onto your stage before being told to make room for the 20-somethings. It’s your loss. I like men enormously, but I think many of y’all have some wacky ideas about what’s hot.

Wild and precious life

What will you do with your one wild and precious life? — Mary Oliver

There are moments like being brushed with a feathertip, a soft fleeting understanding that so many things are so much more possible than I let myself believe. That it doesn’t matter whether I get everything I want, but rather that I want things so fiercely that I try to get them. Against the odds. In spite of my limitations. With disregard for what I know to be possible or, gods help me, appropriate. I want to look at my life and constantly marvel at how wild and precious it is, and the only thing appropriate to that is to love and dance and work and live as well as I can in the face of all my private triumphs and despair.

No, I haven’t been drinking. I’ve been feeling.