Dear Kookoo Kiki
When a solitary woman in the middle of the ocean is frantically waving her arms, don’t bother to ask her if she’s waving or drowning, just help her. In her poem, Stevie Smith — of the wonderful name and lifelong depression — never bothered with a follow up question: what if she’s doing both?
How Medium first got on my radar I can’t recall, but I reluctantly clicked to the site and prepared to eye roll because yet another amateur writers site is the last thing I’m interested in. “Writers write,” they say, right? Well, yes and no, waving and drowning: there are those who can write and they write, but many more who can’t and do it anyway, and at this point my attention span is so limited and precious that I will not waste time forcing myself to wade through a quagmire of overwrought prose sprinkled with bad grammar and cliches. I wasn’t planning on staying, but before too long I was creating a profile and signing up with actual money, and that was 100% because of this funny, friendly, sassy, completely original Kiki. She was hilarious, with a Cheryl Strayed / Glennon Doyle / Elizabeth Gilbert vibe that tickled my funny brain and made me want to stay.
As an expert self-saboteur, I made it a point to not reach out and introduce myself to this talented Queen because that would have shifted everything. Suddenly she would be aware that I was a person out there worshipping her, literally fantasizing about hanging out with her and that sounds creepy af and next-level stalker. Also, I’m lazy. Also, the lockdown really fucked me up. Also, I use that as an excuse a lot because it’s true, and also because I probably wouldn’t have introduced myself even before March 2020 because I’m simply not worthy.
I also realized that one of my favorite things about her is how uncommonly syncopated we are, starting with Mommie Dearest. I am a gay man trapped in a cis-woman’s body and have spent years laughing at and creating tropes and memes with Mommie and her dearest CHRISTINA!
We even share parallel paths: I was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed goofy, giggly theater kid, but I repped West Coast. Growing up in Southern California during the same decades, acting, writing rage poetry, and being happier on stage than in any other place, I related to this woman more than 95% of the people I knew and loved. And Sadaris and Parker, the Oxford comma, and texting not talking? This was my girl, and I was going to let her know how much I appreciated everything about her, especially her writing, and maybe get a peek at the human behind the writer’s voice. She’s the effortless charm-monger at the dullest party; the queen of gays that even Trixie bows down to, but her flaws keep her sane and humble, which makes her even more intimidating! She’s my gal pal from another dimension, my bestie who’s yet to meet me, and oh, look what’s on YouTube! It’s a cop getting his comeuppance from someone who knows the law! And next up is that mommy influencer in jail … as is typical, all my best intentions lay in a ditch off the side of Productive Road.
CRAZY DOES IT ALL EXCEPT THE ONE BIG THING
Waving or drowning, whatever this is, it sure is one hell of a shame spiral, and I see where it’s going. This road is a dead end, and I’ve got the box in my closet to prove it. But first: a little bobo. Bet she knows that joke, too.
- Crazy CAN write: [insert long, depressing list of brilliant, crazy writers] Leading with this because the foundation of your argument is just plain wrong, bitch! Okay, it’s true that by the time we hit the short list that most of them died by their own hand, but they left a hell of a good-looking legacy! The ol’ standards like Virginia Woolf (did anyone call her Ginny?) Hemingway, and of course Sylvia was downright Plathological [rim shot]. I’ll never claim to have read a word of Tolstoy, but he was apparently crazy as a soup sandwich, the great writer and crazy angry Harlan Ellison once told me. (That may be the only name I drop here; it’s distracting). But the point is, you can google it yourself: crazy can write like a muthafukka.
- Crazy CAN talk: and boy howdy (what the fuck is that?) do you prove it. Your inner monologue, which your higher, healthy self demanded you share, is talking up a storm. Yes, most of it’s bullshit, but the feelings aren’t. Those are real and scary, and you were holding them so tight because they were all you had in that moment. The monologue that you courageously shared with us is not just the template we all use in our dark moments, but it’s also, ironically, stunningly well-written! That’s what was laughing in your face, not the folly of your writing, you dingbat! It was the effortless energy and singular creative voice that was muffled by that dastardly trickster, the evil saboteur I unaffectionately refer to as The Weasel.
It’s pretty clear that at the time of writing, The Weasel had gotten ahold of your brain and was nibbling on your amygdala. That’s the part that regulates your emotions and decision-making behaviors, which is kinda really super scary when it’s being gnawed on by an evil interloper that sits, herpes like, at the base of your spine just waiting to use that backbone as a super highway to snack time.
So if crazy CAN write AND talk, what can’t it do?
It can’t think clearly.
That’s what makes it so scary.
We know it when we interact with the crazy ones. Not the good crazy like Kerouac wrote about, but the DON’T TOUCH MY SHOPPING CART crazy and the WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT crazy and the ELECTION WAS STOLEN crazy, but let’s stay on point: you can write, you can talk, you just can’t think clearly, and you can fix that.
First: how’s your baby-maker, Hon? You all done down there? Shop closed? For good? When? The craziest many of us ever get is during the “EVERYTHING MUST GO!” store closing of our human production business, which, (you are way too sophisticated not to know), has branches all over our miraculous bodies and affects every single aspect of ALL our systems for years and years and years. Sometimes. My own sweet mum suffered hot flashes for the last two decades of her way-too-short life, turning bright pink and drippy at random moments, but she refused to take meds. Me? I take ’em cuz I need ’em, and if you ask my child about “that summer,” you may trigger some PTSD because it was right before I got myself on meds and I was a CRAZY BITCH and didn’t even give a shit because I was so MAD ALL the time.
- MEDS STOP WORKING
- (SO DOES DRINKING)
So? What’s the fix?
Tackling this requires UGH action. I know: SHADDAP. I hear ya, I get ya, I been ya, I’m not ya, BUT: the checklist, which you started and then farted on, is where you start: Is it your meds? Dose needs adjustment? Lack of the right ones? Ineffectiveness of the current ones?
Find a doctor WHO LISTENS and talk about your lady bits, but don’t call them lady bits. Every fuckin year a new red wave of menopausal women rattles the media with cries of WHY DOESN’T ANYONE TALK ABOUT THIS? Huh? They’ve been screeching since the 70’s, but until it hits you, you can’t possibly care less. Maybe go there? I tried to find any mention of your sitch in your glorious writing, but I’ve chained myself to this open tab because otherwise I’ll head over to YouTube and watch more cops go insane when they get pushback, which is a hugely satisfying way to spend otherwise productive time: https://youtu.be/v88s8tWgCIU?si=qlAaRMhij2Jl1chB (you have to fast forward through a lot of the legal mumbo, but it’s so worth it).
It could be your hormones, but there’s also the drinking. Or more accurately, the non-drinking, if you’re still in that space. If you aren’t, you can be again. Falling off the wagon doesn’t have to be your Lost Weekend, though it can be. Sobriety is a long and winding road. I won’t waste your time with another [insert list of writers who married their scotch] since obviously that list is way too long, but I will eventually post about the alcoholic writer who is in a FedEx box in my closet and turned me into a widow when he was 65. But not now. As Christina as Antigone droned in her bedsheet toga, “they’ll be plenty of time… but not now… oh no, not now…”
In the end (if you don’t think about it too much) everything we do in life, at least the hard stuff, is a matter of give and take, and I don’t mean the cliche. When you’re burnt to a charred log by That Which Has Been Your Life up until THE Moment when you look at it and see it doesn’t fit anymore? Give yourself a break and take some time off from writing and do whatever the fuck you want — except maybe drink or use. It may not matter at all that you are not just loved but beloved, not just admired but worshipped, and held nosebleed high in the esteem of others. When we feel as crappy as you do, it often doesn’t. And that’s okay. What matters is what matters to you, and right now, when you’re going through intense pain, that matters, and during this struggle it doesn’t matter if there are thousands on the other side or if there is no one waiting and wanting and praying for you to get there. And this is when life microscopically narrows its focus all the way down down, deepest into one thing: to get to the other side, even when you’d bet your life there is no other side. And god no it’s not about faith, because if we ever had any it’s certainly not helping now; it’s having no faith at all and pushing through to get to the other side.
And if you never hit another key or write another word, the world will be diminished, but you’ll be on the other side of this particular bout with despair, ready for a whole new round of crazy-inducing crap. Because that’s what life is, drunk, sober, high or low, and whether you use your gifts or not, they’ll be there, waiting for you, along with us, on the other side.
Dear KiKi~
Life is a walking contradiction:
Don’t be chicken, be a chicken.
This is peppered with graphics most of which have not been properly licenced. Contact my lawyer: (718) 762–6570.
