I Am So Popular: Lead Me Not Into the Pig Wrestlin' Ring
I’ve been a loudmouth for a very long time. As with other dominant traits, I trace this one straight back to my childhood where, having to compete with eight siblings for food, clothing, and parental attention, I instinctively knew I had to differentiate myself somehow. The quest for attention was, quite possibly, also fed by the fact that I was born at the tippy tail end of the Baby Boom. It is precisely my age group that seized upon Punk Rock, shaved our heads, and lashed out in our own fashion back in the late seventies and early eighties.
By the time I made it to the University of South Florida in the early eighties, I was an expert at leading with my chin and, not long into my stint at that place, I was afforded a weekly opportunity to spout my thoughts via a column, dubbed Bloody Monday, that ran in the student daily, The Oracle. I wielded my pen mightily, taking on the frats, the Catholic Church, and any other organization that spurred my ire. Letters poured in, in response—some supported me, many condemned me, and at least once someone said I was being prayed for. I left that beloved writing gig in a huff, after an editor refused to run a particular column he deemed inappropriate.
My chip on my shoulder and I graduated and moved on and eventually I put all that behind me. Maybe a decade or so after the fact, courtesy of the magic of the Internet—you can run but you can’t hide—that editor tracked me down and apologized for what he’d done. Interesting moment.
I mention all this because I was recently made aware that, twenty-four years after that act of censorship at my college paper, once again there has been another incident involving my words and my alma mater. A few years ago I’d been tracked down to be part of a project USF was doing, in which they gathered stories from alumni about their experience at the school. I partook in a phone interview that lasted perhaps an hour, in which I recounted everything from my Shakespeare professor smoking in the front of the classroom while reciting passages from Hamlet to smuggling my boyfriend into my dorm room night after night, an act made more taboo since I was the resident assistant. There’s lots of cussing in my interview, accounts of getting drunk at the college bar (yes, we had an on-campus bar, named The Empty Keg—I love that) and sordid tales of the variety that probably would not fall in the “positive PR” category.
I forgot all about that interview until a couple of weeks ago when I heard that pieces of the story had gone missing. Apparently, a conservative woman working on the project heard the recording, disapproved of my ribald adventures, and took it upon herself to edit out the parts she didn’t like. This was outside her realm of duty but, when caught and confronted, she made no excuses for her behavior, self-righteously explaining that my stories had no place in the archives.
Was I outraged? Nah. I was actually pretty amused. I went back and listened to the recording myself—the original, full-length version—and I, too, agreed they should be trimmed. Not for content, but for length. Good god I just go on and on and on. Somebody should tighten that puppy, I thought.
Okay, seriously? She had no right to do that and it was wrong. I have no interest in fighting it though. Because while my own self-righteous streak is old enough and deep enough to disallow me from ceasing battles altogether, I have, at least a little, gotten the hang of being more selective regarding which battles are worth fighting. And I know that I’ll continue being a bigmouth probably until the day I die and, as a result, others will probably continue to try to get me to shut up.
Which calls to mind another story that happened right here in Austin. It was 2004 and the librarian of Highland Park Elementary School invited me to head up a little book club at the school. At the time I was speaking on a regular basis to school kids, sometimes just a one day visit as an author encouraging aspiring young writers, other times signing up for weeks-long book clubs where I would lead a discussion with the young’uns on juvenile literature.
Just before the Highland Park book club meetings were to commence, I got an abrupt notice from the librarian informing me that a parent had complained about my reputation, stated I was an inappropriate choice, and suggested that if I was not immediately uninvited, she would take her case to the superintendent and make a big stink. It was as if she thought I had a plan to come in and read the kids The Story of O.
I dug around a little—because I Am So Popular I have sources all over town—and in no time at all, I was able to learn the full contents of the letter this parent had written to the librarian. It was a doozy. Apparently she had spent a good chunk of time surfing the Internet, tracking down “scandalous” things I’d written—like a fictional ode to blowjobs I published in the Chronicle—and composed an epistle that sounded a little something like this:
Read this!!! [Insert url to offending passage] And if that’s not bad enough, Read this!! [again, a url]. Etc.
I had this great vision of the woman doing a one-handed net surfing session, beating off to my sex writing much the way homo-bashing evangelicals get caught butt fucking boy toys in seedy hotels. I took a break from this fantasy long enough to let some reporter friends know what was up, doubting they would care. But it was a slow news day, and before you know it, there I was on the front page of the Statesman, in an article about this censorship. The principal reinstated me and more kids showed up for those sessions than any other clubs I led.
I also learned that the daughter of the angry parent joined us, which thrilled me to no end. And I discovered that another parent, who’d written a letter of support for me to the Statesman, had received an anonymous, typewritten postcard threatening him. Donning my Sherlock Holmes cape, I speculated that the angry parent—who volunteered at the library—had used the library’s typewriter to compose that missive. Such excitement!
Though technically I won that battle, I mostly lost the war, and my gigs in AISD dried up after that. Officially blacklisted? Who knows? As with my college newspaper experience, I moved on.
Just last night, I ran into a distant acquaintance, someone I’ve met two or three times over my eighteen years in Austin. This person made an aside to me that really chapped my ass, a false allegation about my private life (believe it or not, I have one) offered in a conspiratorial tone. When I realized what was happening, the wrongness of what was being said, I corrected the speaker. Later, deducing the source of the speaker’s misinformation, I fantasized about offering a grander correction, an ass-ripping riposte to the primary source that would, once and for all, set the record straight regarding a series of rumors on a particular topic that have been swirling around me for a couple of years now.
But there’s this French saying—I don’t know French so I can’t remember how to say it—about “your moment on the stairs.” It refers to how you think of what you should’ve said after the fact, your opportunity for a fitting smackdown forever gone. I’ve already tried, any number of times, to stanch the false and filthy flow of the bullshit in real time and after the fact. French, English, Pig Latin. Written, spoken, interpretively danced. There’s no stopping it so I might as well save my ink, my breath, my energy.
Never wrestle with the pigs, another saying goes. Because you both get dirty and the pigs love it. But oh, how tempting that cool, wet mud looks in the searing heat of some outrageous moments, when the old urge to get down and dirty screams out, beckoning me to take the fuckers down.
Spike Gillespie thanks you for not getting her started. She blogs at www.spikeg.com, www.knitbuzz.blogspot.com and she's offering a writing workshop in May. You should sign up for it.
