On Being Other People
and the wrenching, amorphous process of self-acceptance
I think I was 17 or 18 when I walked into a mask shop in the French Quarter — this was, of course, almost a decade before Katrina — and looked around at the walls’ lively offerings, becoming especially enamored with a golden cat mask. The proprietrix was an elderly woman, who began with an unusually greeting: “You’re from here originally, aren’t you?” It was a declaration, not a question.
I said yes, I was. She said, “I could tell. Because you seem to be really comfortable around masks. All the tourists walk in here and freak out.” Few complete strangers have ever had my number like that observant elderly woman. I am very, very, very comfortable around masks. What Oscar Wilde said about us telling the truth the minute we’re gazing out of a false glamor, yeah. I get that one. (I fell in love with Oscar Wilde when I was 14 and announced to my uncle that I was going to marry him. My uncle evenly replied, “…I can think of two problems with that plan.”)
I won’t discount the native New Orleanian’s understanding of performance and masquerade as sacred practices: of course that’s at play here. But so is a life in a body that I was always longing to escape. Growing up, it came naturally to say, “I’m her!” when watching any kind of movie that featured a character we admired. Some of this was a genuine exploration of values and possibility early in life. Some of it was pathological longing. And of course, a fair bit of it was also the denial of queerness: if you wanted to be a certain female character than you couldn’t want her the way you want boys, right?
But before we untangle this mix, if it can even be untangled, here is a list of everyone I have ever pretended I was, in chronological order:
Ariel from Disney’s The Little Mermaid
The prince from Snow White. On our frequent visits to City Park when I was back in New Orleans to see my family, 6-8-year-old me’s would always, without fail, stop at the statue of Snow White: she’s sleeping, the once-bitten apple nearly falling out of her hand, and I always bent down and kissed her stone lips, determined to wake her up. (My family has a lot of photographic evidence, but they never said anything to me about it.)
Clarissa from Nickeloden’s Clarissa Explains it All, fashion maven for everyone with cable under a certain age.
Stacey McGill from the cultural-phenomenon book series The Babysitter’s Club, because she was from New York, like every cool person, and she was “sophisticated” and also “boy crazy,” which, to my mind, amounted to the same thing
Shirley Manson from Garbage (who was also a queer crush, but that came later) because I was convinced that she rocked red hair harder than I possibly could
Pandora, piercingly intellectual and assertive Greek vampire and eternal lover of Marius de Romanus, from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles
Jessie Reeves, the redheaded niece of the redheaded witches Maharet and Mekare, from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles
A radiant musician and performer I went to college with. When I cut my hair short, took the name Sebastian, and bought all the skinny ties, dress slacks, and button-down shirts I could carry out of Iowa City’s premiere thrift shop, Ragstock, I would picture myself as this particular boy and feel more confident than I had ever experienced.
Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Lydia Bennet from Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, if friskiness is taking over intellectualism
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but only when I’m pushing myself mid-workout
Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, because sometimes we come full circle
That’s a lot of people who aren’t me. Which is fine. What are fictional characters and come on let’s be real hot actual people out there in the world for if not to open portals to more ecstatic or otherwise rich ways of being? The problem is — using “problem” here as shorthand for something more complicated — ten years ago I committed my life to a person who, though a magnificently talented performer himself, is not one for masks. He has no use for the personas I’m so adept at adopting, and that could be vindicating, that could be liberating, but I have issues, so it isn’t. Loving me for who I am under all the layers I like does not register to me as an act of devotion, just an act of insanity. The aspects of my mess that I can’t shape to fit the Drew-Barrymore-in-the-’90’s definition of “craaaaaaaaazy” is not a mess I want anyone sitting around being okay with. I am not okay with it. And I’m not okay with my partner being okay with it, not really.
I’m okay with your mess, I can promise you that. I can prove a steadfast inclination to come for the shimmer and stay for the ashes. But I can’t afford to let these ashes out. Because my entire fucking body is just ashes. Or so I truly, truly thought for a long, long time. Like a long long time. Like…like I think I only really started to get over it this morning?!?! It’s been a very strange morning of a week that feels like it’s been going for days. Not even in a bad way, the way we usually mean when we say “It’s been a long week,” just a full day, too full. And, to harp on an earlier theme, I would have splattered the energy behind these thoughts all over twitter in blurts, in time’s past (the past, here, meaning a month ago). Now I have to just sit here overflowing with whatever the hell this is, and trust that I’ve got the ability to turn it into something, something more enduring than a Substack post, although as you too well know by now this is where I start. I start here because you’ve shown me that this is a welcoming place to start, and I don’t know if I’ll ever find words for the relief it’s become that people are sticking around. Laying out these proto-transformations in this forum feels like setting the groundwork for something that I might try to stop from happening if I didn’t have a place to express the initial stages. Don’t ask me stages of what, because I have no idea.
We’ll find out, though, most likely together, and I really, really, really, really, really appreciate that.
