Going Through the Scraps with Jem
Piecing my memoir into threaded vignettes to answer: "Why am I the way I am?"
An update of sorts. I’ve been writing my memoir but mostly toying with questions:
Why am I so sexual? I blame listening to Color Me Badd on my Sony Walkman while riding my kick-ass bike with streamers and almost getting run over by cars making u-turns on our cul-de-sac. Miami, 1991 or 1992. I’m 8 years old (or 91).
Why do I have a tendency to embrace the sensual? Because it makes me feel powerful after evangelicalism brought shame to my provocative bent. I was really pushing it that one day in eighth grade (or ninth grade?) by wearing a bright teal crushed velvet dress with my sparkly baby purse from RAVE to church.
Why am I so dramatic? No one listened to me as a kid, so I made intricate worlds in my head. These worlds came out when I talked to myself in the mirror pretending, for example, I was being interviewed for a competition similar to The Hunger Games. (Suzanne Collins stole my idea. I bet she was also obsessed with Lord of the Flies, too.)
Am I narcissistic? “They” say the fact I ask means probably not, but I do have a Loki complex. Hero or villain? Easily both. If I met my doppleganger, I would have an intense need to defeat and make out with him/her/them.
What do I crave? Flesh, in-person connection. I want to pinch and pull cheeks and share an umbrella with someone who is just like me, a lonely pervert.
Just some of the questions I’m asking as I piece together my life with my sensuality and sexual discovery as the focal theme.
I started this project last summer in very long chapters, just spitting it all out. This spring I hesitantly took a story from my introduction and used it as a submitted piece I’m waiting on from two outlets. I paused this spring and summer and did the 9-5 (8-4, really) work thing until I figured vignettes were the way to go.
They’re concise, keep me focused on the theme (my story includes me being a mom but my story is not about motherhood), and come with more accomplishment associated with finishing a vignette. And that’s what I’m doing, sewing remnants together to make sense of it all. Not because it sounds cool. It’s agony.
My mind is soup:
I’m desperate for insight into an experience I sometimes feel like I’m vicariously living through. Who is this shy girl? How did she get so bold and sexy? Where did her power come from and does she truly know how to wield it?
And then there are boring writer questions/demands: Tighten up your narrative arc. We’re going somewhere, and we want hearts to filet at a specific point or climax. Do you know the point? Wait, how many points do you have? Stop asking questions and just keep weaving the remnants, these funky quilter squares that pop up from thin air. Use your timeline as a guide. Maybe we should work on a third outline, so we avoid writing.
Then I get lost in the remnants. Images seared into my head such as playing with my Jem doll when I was maybe four and then thinking about Jem kissing her purple-haired boyfriend during the theme song, making me tingle now and then.
And that’s what I’m dealing with. A highly observant dissection of memories. Just the Jem theme song, for example:
Jem (Jem is excitement)
Ooh, Jem (Jem is adventure)
Boyfriend grabs her chivalrously. (Did she need rescuing? Is it hot to be rescued? At what point is it hot when I’m doing the rescuing?)
The little sparkle at their momentous kiss. (You gasped, but why, Grown-Up Desiree?)
I will be like Jem and not have an annoying voice like the Misfits. (I like how my voice sounds. Check it out.)
Maybe A.I. isn’t so bad. I could have used a mentor like Synergy.
I remember having the Jem doll WITH light-up earrings2 and rubbing her chest over and over when kids my age soothed with “loveys” and blankies.
Why am I the way I am?
And this is just one small memory, and I just keep picking up pieces and sometimes startling myself.
I don’t know what I’ll find as I get closer to the present. Hopefully, appreciation and destiny, but I feel something happening on the horizon3. I have a feeling my narrative arc, a surprising climax, will sling-shot me into an unknown.
Will I be ready for it?
My daughter’s age. Weird. Her favorite song is Bruno Mars “Count on Me.”
So my son’s teacher owns an antique store. He mentioned he had a Jem doll but not the one with light-up earrings. I need the one with light-up earrings. In the box, it’s rather pricey. I would probably rub its boobs off… out of nostalgia and research.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done fun photos. That’s coming up during a fun getaway later in August. Taking sexy selfies is like therapy outside of actual therapy. (I should make a coffee table book of these.) But I’m talking about something else on the horizon, like emotionally eruptive. The harbinger slivers down my back and whispers in my ear.