West Coast
Thursday, April 4
DeeDee,
Following an after-hours party at the office just last week, a fellow reveler decided to share his evaluation of my “demeanor” in the going-down elevator. Its current incarnation (in his estimation): a cross between “intimidating and folksy.” Either because I was drunk or irritated or irritated and drunk, I replied: “One or the other: intimidating or folksy. Can’t be both.” Odds are, my critique-er left the elevator unconvinced. Pertinence: as early as can be managed, give up the dream of controlling what anyone thinks (or says) about you. It’s a fool’s errand. If you consult your grandmother, she’ll disagree because 1) she’s put countless hours into the task and 2) thus far she hasn’t been cornered in an elevator and disabused of what she takes to be her success. Since chances are slim you’ll chose to live in a community as (publicly) polite as your grandmother’s, I’m trying to save you both time and grief. It’s never too early for a female to assume a love-me-or-get-out-of-my-face stance. Until the age of twenty-seven, your aunt (fruitlessly) worked to “present” less eccentric than she incorrigibly is. At twenty-eight, she belatedly recalibrated. A fancy way of saying I came round to: fuck that shit.
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Monday, April 8
DeeDee,
If you’ve got to stomp through mud and muck, why not stomp in utilitarian black boots? And yet when the Brontë sisters stomped into the Haworth stationery to load up on writing supplies, their unladylike footwear offended the proprietor. My bet: Emily B. couldn’t have cared less what the town’s stationer or any other citizen thought, but Charlotte would have been stung by such criticism. An advantage to being sister-less? Neither you nor I got sent out into “society” dressed as one of a matching pair. And yet duplication dilemmas will crop up. When Sharon S. and I fixated on the same two-piece bathing suit at the Galleon in Nags Head, we had to negotiate (strenuously) who bought the blue version and who the green. We’d go as far as appearing in the same style, but the very same suit? Ixnay to that. Similarly, during a wet Vineyard June, a sister chambermaid and I fancied the identical yellow rain slicker. I left the shop wearing neon green—a sacrifice in the name of friendship but also a good call in other respects. As rainy seasons came and went, I became more and more enamored of my green slicker. Wore that thing till it lost all capacity to repulse water.
Still dry in California,
Aunt K
West Coast
Wednesday, April 10
DeeDee,
Do females make and discard friends with greater ease and swiftness than their male counterparts? (Possibly.) Are we that confident of our charming ways and boundless capacity for instant intimacy? (Rash conceit.) Do we imagine there’s a limitless supply of gal buddies out there? (That one I can conclusively answer: there’s not.) The blunt fact of the matter: being “dropped” by a girlfriend always caused your aunt more heartache than any boyfriend loss. And then there was the domino effect: the next friendship entered into with greater caution, me a less candid/more tentative companion, the new connection compromised from the start, a cool-down anticipated before the relationship had fully warmed. Past and present, would I prefer to proceed less warily? Most definitely I would. But that outlook seems to demand more optimism than our bloodline supplies.
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Saturday, July 20
DeeDee,
Thumbtack-ed to the corkboard directly across from where I type: xeroxed images of Anna Akhmatova, George Eliot, Mary Tormented Lincoln, Cindy Sherman as Lucille Ball, Wallis from Baltimore Simpson. Surrounding those visuals, word thefts: “That plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.” (Raymond Chandler) “It is awfully hard for anyone to go on doing anything because everybody is troubled by everything.” (Gertrude Stein) “I wanted to jump, but I did not jump.” (Angela Carter) “Hanging on to dreams is like trying to eat a smell.” (Robert Coover) “Yes, always someone dies.” (Stevie Smith). A collection of sad-eyed portraits—even Lucy, even Wallis—and declarations tinged with melancholia. Was it always so of your aunt’s bulletin board selections? Probably. Would such flashpoints stashed away in a file or cabinet drawer indicate improved mental equilibrium? Probably not. The out of sight/out of mind argument doesn’t hold water for farmers’ daughters.
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Tuesday, Sept. 3
DeeDee,
In an interview conducted after Bill’s demise, Estelle Faulkner, regaling the reporter with tales of Oxford, Mississippi wooing customs, described one of her friends as having been “courted to death” by an admirer. Your grandmother and great-aunts used the very same expression. Eavesdropping, why hadn’t my always alarmable self become alarmed by the description? I can only conclude that any burgeoning horror on my part was nipped in the bud by my elders’ cheerful delivery of that word salad. I’m also (fairly) certain that they, along with Mrs. Faulkner, were referencing a suitor’s commendable persistence versus the terrorizing tactics of a stalker. Still: the phrase itself. Too similar to “hounded to death” for your aunt’s liking or comfort. The Estelle Faulkner link isn’t helping, either. To postpone indefinitely her first-round nuptials, Estelle took various evasive actions, none ultimately successful. And then, successfully divorced, came her no-picnic union with Bill.
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Thursday, Sept. 12
DeeDee,
Your au courant mother spared you any number of misapprehensions surrounding what your grandmother referred to as “the monthly flow.” In your case: menstruation was discussed (before the event) with neither sighs nor lamentations, proving (yet again) that frank discussion versus terse allusion benefits most of us, including your thirteen-year-old self. As it happened, I was four years short of thirteen the day I breezily returned from school to find your grandmother examining my yesterday’s underwear with consternation. “The bleeding” had started and continued, in copious amounts, for 10 days straight, which led to pelvic exams and hormone shots on a bi-weekly basis to regulate my rambunctious “flow.” The stereotype of country-girl-early-developers notwithstanding, I was the only one of my friends who had to lug around sanitary pads in her book bag. Not fun. Ever so fondly do I remember the teacher (a woman, mind you!) who pulled me aside, fifth grade, to rebuke me for piling books in my lap (the counter pressure helped with cramps) because “the boys are wondering why.” The boys are wondering why. Are you bark-laughing, niece? Are you?
Love,
Aunt K
Kat Meads's most recent chapbook, Ladies First (sonnets-of-a-sort about America's First Ladies), was published last year by dancing girl press. Her short plays have been produced in NYC, Los Angeles and elsewhere.