You know that you’re making some questionable choices when you’re unphased at a dance club on a Thursday night when a young man lifts his shirt (displaying a tattoo on his stomach that says “Lizard”) to pull a gun out of his underpants and point it directly at your very drunk friend who (despite wearing a bright red cocktail dress and six inches stilettos) has her fists balled up and is stalking towards him with hellfire in her eyes. It happened in Utah, which is in the United States, so the fact that someone pulled a gun out is unfortunately not as shocking as my reaction, which was to roll my eyes at the time and yell, “punch him.” While I stepped out of my heels and prowled towards him without a fuck to give, riding the tide of grief, my head swimming with apathy and an idiotic twenty-something-year-old idea that I was somehow immortal. Even if my brother, four years younger than me, who had just died, was not.
I wanted to write something like, “this was a weird time in my life,” but honestly, all times have been weird. I have always been a walking contradiction and well-managed chaos. Intelligent and educated but from a world of poverty and generational trauma. By the age of five, I’d read a hundred books by myself and witnessed enough fucked up shit to last a lifetime or two (read the dingo story, seriously, who lets a child’s dead dog rot by the side of the road?). For forever, I’ve been ambitious and independent but insecure and afraid.
At this time in my life, in my twenties, I knew in my heart and bones that I wanted to be a writer. Stories called to me. And the lifestyle suited me. I figured it out around the time I finished my degree in English, but my fear of failure and vulnerability undermined my dreams. I was too afraid to submit my work or let anyone else read it for years. Eventually, I opened up enough to go to writing groups and workshop pieces that folks occasionally told me were good, publishable, even. I’d frown at my hands and shrug and think, I need to find a group of better writers if they think this bullshit is “good.” So I worked a string of utterly fucked up jobs, including gigs at doggie daycares, as a pimp (ha!), in Bosnian bars, or as a freelance copywriter. I told myself these jobs would “inspire short stories,” like David Sedaris’ jobs had once. I hunched over my laptop in random cafes around Salt Lake and kept it all to myself. When I wasn’t doing this, I threw myself into philanthropy and money-raising for non-profits. I partied A LOT. And I dated, mostly, so I didn’t have to be alone. I tried to fill a void in my soul with pointless relationships and random dick (which, for the record, did not work). For stability, I mostly dated preppy guys who were the opposite of my motley crew of friends because as much as I loved my wild tribe, I also needed someone to ground me. I needed someone to give me a side-eye and tell me that maaaaybe I should chill a little and not charge someone holding a gun pointed directly at my friend’s face.
At the club, gun in her face, my friend pushed her chin up towards the barrel and, with reckless fury, growled, “do it, you piece of shit,” as I trolled towards him. Then, when I was still a few feet away, the lizard thought about it, no doubt noticing the zero fucks she seemed to give, shook his head, tucked the metal back into his pants, and walked towards the parking lot with his buddy patting him on the back in approval. I reached my friend and grabbed her around the waist to hold her before she could fling herself after him.
To this day, I don’t even remember what started the conflict at the club. And the fact that it wasn’t even important enough for me to file away says a lot about how I grew up and just screamed, honey, for the love of the Gods, get your ass to therapy, please.
Another distraction of mine in my twenties involved school. I got a degree. Then another. Then started searching for another. My love of learning fueled part of it, but most of what drove me was a thrum of desperation to seek approval from who, I don’t know, but I have my theories that mainly involve my neverending daddy issues. I wanted to be “good enough” to rise like a Pheonix out of the housing projects I’d grown up in. It’s like I believed that every fact I memorized, every concept, put my childhood further in the past (and maybe that would be true if the things I committed to memory weren’t things like The Many Ways That Orcas Communicate or stuff like, How Capybaras Eat, or How to Use the Kinsey Scale).
My drive to learn all things, to experience all things, to escape, led me to a school in Italy. The school no longer exists. It didn’t make it through the pandemic. But over a decade ago, in 2009, it was a place of magic, endless creativity, and growth. The graduate program housed a diverse group of misfits of folks of many backgrounds, searching deep inside themselves and the world for a new path forward. It was the best year of my life. It was the beginning of my healing and my ruin.
It all started when I, at twenty-eight years old, stepped off of a plane at dusk into the humid warmth of the Tuscan sun and the unknown.
