THE UNWITTING MEMOIRIST
September 25, 2022
Gonzo
Long before I watched Louis Theroux jail documentaries, I watched a snippet of Hunter S. Thompson—you know, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in a 1967 CBC interview with a Hell’s Angel.* I didn’t know it at the time, but when I found Louis Theroux and his prison documentaries, he introduced me to this term of what I saw Hunter S. Thompson doing: gonzo journalism.
Gonzo journalism is when the journalist becomes a part of the story he’s journalizing. It’s not just Louis Theroux reporting on prison or “hospital“ conditions in Coalinga or San Quentin, but he’s in the cell. He’s not a prisoner—perhaps something like a simulation—but this is life. Where all the world’s a reporter, journalizing his or her life. Reporting live from the outside. Reporting live from the inside. Reporting live from my life.
“Gonzo” journalism is said to have been popularized by Hunter S. Thompson in the 70s, the style anyway. Gonzo was a character in the Muppet Babies though if you were an 80s baby like me. He had a long hooked nose, and he was blue and one of the craziest looking muppets even though they all looked crazy. GJ doesn’t make any claims to sanity either, or objectivity: The experience of the author comes center stage, the ground floor of facts drops away, and there is only what’s left of hyperbole and satiric bitterness and equal LSD-like insanity.
Ever since I’ve come into God and come out into the world this is what it feels like; gonzo journalism, only you’re in the world, not of it.* You bear witness only as a detached journalist, but you are still the main character of the story but the spirit of God is translating the story for you. You can say, today I went to prison, or got a job or went to a wedding or slept in a homeless shelter and have no real ideas about it. You’re just takin’ field notes on it. Reporting live from your life. To you, you’re a part of the story, but not the story. Not the whole story. You can’t know it, you can’t know that. It’s endless, it’s God, it’s a whole story I can’t see.
Gonzo. Totally f**king gonzo. You become life.
—
*“Hunter S. Thompson meets a Hell’s Angel”
*John 17:11-17 Jesus Prays for His Disciples
I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. […] I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
July 4, 2022
WIPE OUT
Modes of Destruction Part I
At one point, Wipe Out was one of my favorite TV shows. So much so that I set about applying as a contestant, only I didn’t live in California (you had to be a California resident). Something about making a fool of myself on national television really appealed to me. Bouncing off big gigantic red balls into the water, being punched in the face back into the mud at the sucker punch wall, being spun around like a whirligig several times on the Dizzy Dummy before having to stumble and find my way to the next challenge made me squeal with delight. That contestant Ariel Tweto from Alaska who couldn’t find the 20-foot vaulting pole that was right in front of her face was my favorite contestant. I wanted to be just like her. She looked so stupid.
Oblique Strategies
I pulled an oblique strategies card once that told me to destroy everything. It was years before that I stood in the video shop my ex-boyfriend worked in and asked him if it was Ok to just totally destroy the store. Knock all the damn videos off the shelves and completely decimate the place; I really wanted to do that. Like that cockeyed black guy who went similarly batshit in a local Texas library when we went off his meds and then tried to blame avenging the black ghost of Emmett Till when he was just really batshit and off his meds. Anyway, my boyfriend told me no and I was sad.
Modes of Destruction Part II
I was never obsessed with Big Bird or anything, just sad Big Bird. I looked at the picture one time and shouted, That’s me! I love it. I wanted to dress up like Big Bird, put on the costume. I wanted to be a mascot more specifically. More specifically I wanted to put a big fat costume on and just do crazy things inside the costume. Be who I wanted to be. One time when I was coming into the subway at Times Square I saw a group of Mexicans changing into Minnie Mouse and Elmo costumes, and I think that’s when my dream died. “You gotta tips?” One Elmo asked me one time as I took a picture with him.
Grandma out the window
One time one of my younger cousins opened the window, as the story goes. My grandma was down below. My grandpa, smart, always wise, in the car several feet away outside of the project housing. My grandma was looking up, I picture, when my cousin told her that if she needed anything else, she’d throw it out the window to her. Then slammed the window shut. When I heard the story, I mouthed, wow, and she became my hero. Out in the street, my grandfather shook his head and wisely told my grandma, I told you to leave that girl alone. My little cousin had defeated the gorgon.
Night Modes Part III
One time the guy who was staying at my apartment and I went outside in the night with my football. It was about 1am and we were playing toss-catch before I got beaned right in the eye and we had to go right back upstairs. He apologized profusely, it was the worst pain I ever felt in life because it was a pigskin and not a nerf. Plus it was the black of night so I couldn’t see where the football was coming from.
Swing low, sweet chariot…
I used to love the swings. Swinging. Soaring high then my stomach plummeting swinging back down low. And because I was ghetto and a tomboy, we’d swing until the whole frame thumped, and the chains rattled. Then we’d jump ship, vertically, from the chains straight through the middle passage and the rubber seat from our ass where the rubber meets the road, and go wildly swinging careening, jumping high out from the swing on our feet, on our heads, on our hands. Sometimes you’d underdog someone and grab ahold of each side of the seat, push them forward, run slingshot them back, then rush forward, releasing them and running under them and forward, and sometimes flat if they lost control and fell on you. It was great.
Modes
I got in a shootout at the O.K. Corral, and jumped freights as a hobo in OK City. I got my eyebrow pierced where the hole is still there in my head today. I started with a sewing needle and pen ink and homemade tattoos before getting my first official at 18. I scratched the faces off girlfriends in photos I hated now like lottery tickets and wrote letters to men in prison that said I’d wait, I’d visit. I got an abortion and blew big bubbles from condoms and my bubblegum. I had sex like I was riding at a rodeo and shooting with my sharpshooter in the air. Woo doggy, pow! Pow! I got arrested and they threw me in the paddy, then in the cell. I washed dishes and threw pots and pans, painted walls and punched holes. I shook hands and threatened co-workers with violence after work. I threw my aunt across a fucking table, the fucking bitch. I got beat up and vomited in immigrant bathtubs and flew out of windows, back doors ejected from rollercoasters and the sky on a parachute. I beat my baby doll with a belt. I took off my Barbie’s arms and legs and her clothing went missing forevermore; I made her bury Ken in the trunk of the Ferrari and shaved off my eyebrows, my hair, dyed it red midnight black who the fuckamI, they never told me to forgive my father whereishe. They’re searching for me because I never showed back up to work, and I’m just searching, from city to city, state to state from job to job, credit to credit, major to major—I visited my parents at the zoo and smoked Lucky Strikes like I was in some fucking war. I drank coffee and rolled Zig Zags, rolled Drum, rolled Tops to stave off the hunger, popped pills and forgot about the hunger, ate carrots and pizza sauce the only things left besides the hoar frost and ice cubes in the fridge. I had long conversations with people who didn’t speak my language, agreed to marry a Romanian dentist for money, and tried to give away my eggs from my ovaries like an Easter basket. I punched the air in my dreams and cried on trains, bought hematite and dreamcatchers and didgeridoos and pocket saxophones. I went swimming in the bathtub, threw mattresses out of the window and drank E & J, the Erk and Jerk, the Easy Jesus and fell through a table and went to the hospital; I collapsed and went to the ER. I rolled big Bob Marley joints and did all those medical studies to avoid a job and owned all those pets, Rico and Chico, two chihuahuas, moved from A to B, from B to Z, some of it true, some if it not, untrue untrue. It was a wild ride until I came into God and found the true freedom I was always looking for. I lit quarter sticks of dynamite in the hood to celebrate a degrading culture, and had jumpers explode in my hand from not throwing fast enough. I exploded, I lived, I died; I just always wanted to be free but didn’t know how. I got a tattoo my fading glory now, Amor Vincit Omnia wrapped around my arm long before I knew God, having never known love but somehow understanding that Love Conquers All, and only in true Love is freedom.
Happy 4th,
Sincerely,
The Unwitting Memoirist
June 1, 2022
Paper Towels & Abortions
I’ve never lived a time when there wasn’t paper towels or abortions. But I guess you can say that it’s easier for me not to get an abortion than it is for me to try not to use paper towels. So here we are.
I’ve been rearing up for this day. I’m 40 now, and I’m planning very soon not to use paper towels so much anymore. My hands are shaking like how I picture those Gen Zers who’ve never lived without cellphones even though they’ve only been around since the 70s. Cell phones I mean.
I’m all into these “un-paper towels”; they’re all the craze. I’m aware that I could market my dish rag or my body rag as an “un-paper towel” too, or cut a square of flannel for the cotton-flannel ones and call them the same. I’m aware of marketing and “re-branding“ like “reproductive health”—they mean abortions—but I want to give these un-paper towels a try anyway. It’d be better than a real “paper towel” anyway, right?
“Paper towels” have only been around since like the late 1800s-early 20th century, way after when women were making do boiling their rags after hurling themselves down flights of stairs or taking wire coat hangers to their privates and not hanging up coats. Can we get a clean-up on aisle 3? She’ll manage, federal abortions have only been around since the 70s.
Anyway, even though paper towels have always been around since I’ve been alive, I know that I don’t need them because plenty of times when I was penniless and I was using toilet paper to wipe the counters or rationing my 1 last paper towel square for two weeks like I was living during WWII or something. All these fake emergencies. Close your legs and zip up your fly and maybe you wouldn’t need paper towels to clean up the mess. We’d save a lot of un-babies.
Sincerely,
The Unwitting Memoirist
PS It seems the 70s were just bad for inventions all around: the awful clothes, tinted glasses, abortions and cell phones. But thank goodness the Post-It Note and Rubik’s Cube were also there to remind us how stupid we are.
April 23, 2022
Where Does the Money Go? An Indie Ghost Mystery.
I’m writing an indie Mystery. And it’s called Where Does the Money Go? I’m particularly interested in the magical phenomena of money vanishing into thin air. This is a false lead, but I recently watched the Thai movie Chocolate (Magnolia), which is absolute insanity (and one of my favorite movies). It’s about a teenaged autistic girl that develops some sort of savant-like propensity for kicking ass from watching martial arts movies. Like osmosis. She then goes on to harass Thai gangsters all over the city for money they owed her mother who’s been in the hospital and needs special medicine because her hair’s falling out. Mama money! She yells. Going to each gangster’s office with her hand out and no eye contact. Mommy hospital, need mama money! And this is another story about how money seems to appear out of thin air when you start kicking ass, but that’s for another indie mystery.
Anyway, I remember reading a particular awesome short story awhile back called “Mountain Man” by Robert E. Howard, the guy who wrote the Conan the Barbarian series. Anyway, I knew the date for it was still too early for public domain so I started snooping around for the copyright and found it via WATCH, a database of artists and their copyright holders. I was particularly horrified I think the word is by the seemingly baseball card trading of copyrights, and the singular journey of 1 dead writer’s estate. Turns out the courts gave Howard’s father his estate who gave it to his friend, his friend giving it to his wife and daughter, and his daughter giving it to the widow of her cousin who gave it to her children, who then sold it to the Swedish now US company Paradox Entertainment. Ironic. And this is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
So if Jack is dead, where does his house go? I mean this is the stuff that knock out drag down funeral family fights are made of so I think it’s safe to say that nobody ever really cared about Jack. Jack gets lost in artistic integrity soon as his paintings or essays on Capitalism are exchanged for more groceries or a bigger house than the one that Jack built.
What’s the problem of taking a dead artist’s video free on YouTube and converting it to an mp3 instead of paying for it? Where would the money go? Jack isn’t technically on Bandcamp or Amazon anymore, but maybe his widow or children are, but maybe they’re not because they’re a company. What’s the value of paying for a dead man’s art? This is another false lead but I once saw an interview with Randy Quaid and his wife talking about “Star Whackers“, people paid to kill celebrities they’ve built up just so they can make more money from their deaths, and I believed him, because I believe in the devil that he exists. After all, it’s not hard to see that we live in a world where people are unforgiving and hate the living but revere them as soon as they’re dead. Chaka Khan said awhile back in an interview that they as artists were worth more dead than alive. To who? What’s the value of paying for art of big business? Where does a dead man’s money go?
Hm. Weird Tales. And a most auspicious indie mystery.
