Saturday, July 25, 2009

Detour to the Present

I finally, finally, finally ... after two years of fruitless job searching ... have a new job. And this new job represents a new chapter in my life. It closes the books on what has been a difficult, dull five-year stretch that felt like it would stretch on into infinity.

It started in 2004 when I left my first real job as a marketing writer. I worked with a great group of people who are still my friends to this day ... but five years ago, all I wanted was out. I was tired of writing about software; tired of writing lame executive memos about why the last round of layoffs was good for business; and most importantly, just plain tired from working all day, then doing acting classes and rehearsals until late in the night.

I thought that when I got my much-kicked-for-and-screamed-for severance check, I'd finally be free to become the great actress I'd always dreamed of being.

I spent three years chasing down every silly, insulting black character girl role in Hollywood, no matter how small, no matter how no-paying, no matter how unfulfilling.

As the time and the money ran out, I started freelance-writing from home. I got paid once a month ... whenever the guy's wife felt like cutting checks ... and they were constantly trying to nickel and dime me and squeeze me to write for free. I was making less than I made 10 years ago, back when I was a secretary.

It was time to do the unthinkable, go back to work. Put acting aside for a paycheck. Again.

So I took the first job smoking, working full-time from home for one of my former freelance clients.

The last two years can be summed up as ... writing boring copy ... watching Oprah ... procrastinating writing boring copy ... eating chocolate ... lamenting the fact that I was stuck writing boring copy ... more chocolate ... going to church and praying for an end to writing boring copy ... more chocolate ... no jobs to apply to ... reality TV ... big, hiccupy crying jags ... more chocolate ...

It was a life lived alone in sweat pants with holes in the thigh seams. I almost died of boredom and bitterness, not to mention the shame of gaining back the 90 pounds I worked so hard to lose in my early thirties.

And then, finally, on my birthday, a ray of hope. In the form of a Monster ad that sounded like it was written expressly for me. I dashed off a cover note and a resume and hoped for the best. Two weeks later, I donned pantyhose for the first of three rounds of interviews. Two weeks after that, a job offer. And finally, next week, I begin my new life.

Back in an office. In real clothes with buttons and zippers. Around people. Engaged in challenging tasks.

It's the end of Five Years of Sloth, and I couldn't be more excited about the possibilities.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Dark College Years

Academically, I was 100% prepared for college. Emotionally, I was not.

So the first thing that happened when Daddy transported me from my newly ghetto lifestyle with Foster Mama to the hallowed halls of Yale University was that I broke out in fever blisters and sank into a deep depression.

I'd applied to Yale for one very superficial reason: my senior year in high school, U.S. News and World Report ranked it as the #1 undergraduate school in the country. And I wanted to be #1.

Yale was actually my second choice.

My first choice was New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. I was accepted into NYU's playwrighting program ... but I didn't want to spend four years chained to a typewriter. I was given a partial scholarship ... but Yale's package was $1,175 better. I liked the idea of living in New York City ... but the endless concrete and subway piss completely overwhelmed me.

Throw in the fact that Yale's minimum wage was 35 cents an hour higher, their campus was greener and they put on a spring visit geared toward minority students, and the scales tipped in Yale's favor.

I chose Yale, and I pretty much regret that choice even to this day.

I more or less hated everything about it, starting with the gargoyles that leered at me from the top of every building. While my classmates chirped happily about how much they loved the Gothic architecture, I felt like I was living in a horror movie. I was afraid to go into the stacks by myself, because I was convinced that a serial killer would emerge from a dark, musty bookshelf and stab me, or one of the supposedly harmless bats would turn into Dracula and bite my neck.

But my dislike of the gray, stony atmosphere was nothing compared to my barely suppressed hatred of my classmates.

Most of my classmates were well-to-do, and many were filthy rich. That included the black students, most of whom were decidedly middle-class. My welfare-to-Yale mindset didn't know the difference. To me, anyone who hadn't endured welfare cheese, free lunch, ugly hand-me-down clothes and bus tickets was rich. I couldn't relate to my suitemates' tales of European vacations, and they had no concept of what it meant to work 20 hours a week at a crappy on-campus job only to turn over 1/4 of my pitiful check to Yale to pay for the "family contribution" portion of my tuition.

I chafed at the experience of being a "black girl" instead of a "smart girl." In Detroit, a city that was 75% black, I wasn't judged based on race, except when dealing with Arab store owners and the occasional white suburbanite.

I was judged based on my individual personality quirks.

At Yale, my primary personality quirk was my skin tone. My white classmates, and even some of my professors, couldn't tell one black girl from another. They used our names interchangeably and skimmed over us in conversations, but felt threatened and baffled when black students huddled together at "the black table" in the large, dark, dismally ornate dining hall.

I quickly discovered that college wouldn't live up to my fantasy of what I thought it would be.

I thought that college would mean fun, friends, and most importantly, my first real boyfriend.

I hadn't dated in high school, except for my tawdry sexual experimentation with 40-something Johnnie Walker and a brief demonstration of my new-found oral-sex skills on a boy from down the street.

Yale brought no increase in my dating activity. None of the black boys expressed any interest. Few of the white boys registered me as a distinct entity, let alone a potential mate.

So I threw myself into my books, joined a theater group and wondered how I would possibly make it through a full four years.

By the middle of my sophomore year, I was dating local jailbirds and dreaming of dropping out.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The Passing of Foster Mama

I moved in with Foster Mama two months shy of my 18th birthday, and I stayed in touch with her for the rest of her life, which turned out to be only eight more years.

As I mentioned, Foster Mama had a con for every situation ... so it was only a matter of time before she conned me. In my case, a credit-card company was kind enough to issue a credit card in my name, but foolish enough to send it to her address in Detroit while I was off at school.

One of my foster sisters called me on the phone: "Girl, Mama got a hold of one of your credit cards, and she is going to town!"

I dismissed her warning as a jealous lie. Foster Mama wouldn't do that to me.

But sure enough, a few months later, I learned I had bad credit and a delinquent, $1,200 Visa bill. With a few persistent phone calls, I was able to prove to Visa that I was away at school when the card arrived in Detroit, and ultimately I wasn't held responsible for the charges.

The incident damaged, but didn't destroy, my relationship with Foster Mama.

I saw her about a month before she died. I was living with Great Aunt at the time and had temporarily escaped the hell of Los Angeles for a quick Detroit visit. I sat in Foster Mama's basement beauty salon and sang her a sad song about my hard-knock life. Her last act of kindness was to hand me a sorely needed $50 bill.

A few weeks later, I learned that a tornado had touched down in Highland Park, just a few miles from Foster Mama's home. I called to find out how she was doing.

She replied, "I heard they was looting in Highland Park."

Before I could express my disapproval, she added, "Sure coulda used me a new TV set."

That was our last conversation.

I didn't attend her funeral.

Not because I didn't care enough to pay my respects, but because I didn't find out in time.

You see, my foster sister – the same one who'd warned me years earlier about the credit card – didn't have my personal phone number. For whatever reason, she only had my 90-year-old Great Aunt's phone number.

And Great Aunt, bless her heart, would talk to my frantic foster sister, then toddle into my room and say sorrowfully, "I'm so sorry about your mother." This happened two or three times, but since I had no idea what she was talking about, I didn't give Great Aunt's strange words of comfort much thought.

Finally, about a week after the funeral, my foster sister found a letter I'd written to Foster Mama that had my real phone number on it.

That's when I learned Foster Mama was gone.

It was a shock, but not a surprise, even though Foster Mama was only in her early fifties.

Foster Mama was morbidly obese, around 5'5" and a size 26. She smoked, even while wearing the nicotine patch that's supposed to help you quit. She was a diabetic with a two-liter-a-day Pepsi habit. And when her doctor yelled at her for drinking Pepsi, her health-conscious solution was to switch to 7-Up.

Regular 7-Up, not diet.

As I get back to the story of my life as a slut, Foster Mama will make the occasional guest appearance. But before I relegate her to a supporting role in my stories of boyfriends past, I wanted to acknowledge the starring role she will always have in my heart.