De Ce Monde Secret de l’ Amelie Americaine

I’ve been working on a certain Video Awards Show, for a certain Music Network since Saturday. They give out statues the shape of Neil Armstrong…the first astronaut to walk on the moon. “The Moonman” is one of those coveted prizes of pop stardom. Since I stopped watching this particular channel sometime in my early twenties…I could of cared less, until today.

For those of you who read my blog across the pond, and have wondered to yourself what it is that American Amelie does for a living, let’s just say I “hurry up and wait.” This is a common production saying that describes how we “techs” push ourselves manically to solve technical issues and then sit on our asses for ten hours waiting for producers, talent and directors to make up their minds. Usually I’m the girl in the back row of the auditorium who is caught up on her own imagination, trying to ignore the fact that someone else is living my dream.

For the first three days of this show, I was most grateful for that the audio tech had given me the more expensive “noise reduction” cans or headsets, to shield my ears against music so loud, that it literally vibrated off of my chest. I didn’t really care which well known celebrity was rehearsing on stage. They were all the same to me. They all lip synced their songs to the same ear piercing tempo. Whatever.

Then a pretty boy band took the stage called Panic at the Disco.

I blame it on Nick Rhodes but I loved straight men who dress in a more sexually ambiguous way. Maybe this is why I fell in love with the sweet theater majors in college who always turned out to be gay.

These well coifed musicians were delightful look at AND listen to. Surrounded by a circle of dancers wearing 19th century corsets and dresses, with painted faces like gothic princesses, suddenly I found myself standing up from my seat, wishing that I was one of them. I felt like a teenager again. I was reminded of a time when I first moved to New York and I had a job as a coat check in the East Village. I wore fake pink eye lashes, stark white makeup and dark red lip stick. It was all very fun, and very fabulous.

My heart will always skip a beat when I hear a song by Siouxsie and the Banshees or the Pet Shop Boys. I’ve always been stuck in the eighties, and now my favorite decade has come back to invite me to relive the anthems of my childhood. Of course, I’m not really sold on the whole idea of men wearing tight “hot pants” again. Yes many of the male performers you will see on this show will be wearing pants tight enough to be mistaken for exercise spandex. But today, for once, I felt like maybe the era of my youth has actually begun.

 Standard Podcast [3:35m]: Download

Listen to this podcast

During my second year at college I roomed with a Japanese major who sold Mary Kay cosmetics. I came back to our dorm room one afternoon to find her giving free facials and makeovers to three Japanese exchange students. They brought her gifts wrapped in silk, as was custom, and she demonstrated her latest product. They were trying to make new friends and she was trying to supplement her allowance.

I was determined to not fall prey to her machinations. She had already lured two of my friends into buying fifty dollars of makeup, and six weeks later, she still had not delivered. They were livid. Although she did study ever night until the wee hours, I also think she was hiding out in our dorm room to avoid them.

We loved poking fun at Jill…criticising her every move and snubbing her when we went out to eat. The peril of living in an all girl’s dorm is that it becomes a very caddy and cliquish place. Jill studied more than any of us, and on some level she was desperate to be our friend. She had tracked me down the previous year and all but begged me to be her roommate so that she wouldn’t be stuck with another unbearable stranger. My best friend at the time was already roomming with her sister, so I finally agreed.

Then one day in the fall semester of our sophomore year, I was stuck in our dorm room. Jill sat quietly at her desk, her head face down in a book. It was close to mid-terms and everyone was squirrelled away in their hiding places trying to catch up before their tests.

I couldn’t focus as usual. Jill stopped asking me why night after night I would leave my bed and end up asleep on the couch in the commons room with the television on. I’d return to our room before everyone awoke, no one the wiser. I looked tired and it wasn’t for the usual reasons.

“I don’t know how you do it.” I finally said, breaking the silence.

“Do what?” She asked.

“Study like you do and have no bags under your eyes.” I replied.

“My mother taught me how to take care of my skin.” She said. Her words hit a tender place. I imagined a middle aged woman in West Virginia with bleach blonde hair and Jill’s features, gayly teaching her how to properly wash her face.

She added,”And when that isn’t enough, I know how to put on makeup to hide it.”

Her words caused a small knot in my throat. Applying makeup properly was one of those corny rites of passage between mother and daughter that I missed out on. And I felt it all too acutely.

“I can show you.” She said cautiously. This wasn’t a sales pitch.

“Okay.” I gave in.

Over the next hour Jill showed me how to apply makeup, to bring out my eyes, cover the spots and bags, and yes, how to properly wash my face. I looked in the mirror. I didn’t recognize the old me. Instead I looked like another well put together co-ed from a proper family. What I saw brought tears to my eyes.

Jill asked, “Didn’t your mother teach you how to do this?” I shook my head no.

“I didn’t grow up with my mother.” I confided. This was true. My mother had left when I was eight years old. Since then no adult female in my life had ever been interested in showing me how to present myself as a woman. I had to figure these things out for myself with trial and lots of error. I dyed my haired, curled it to extremes, applied thick eye liner, ripped up my t-shirts, applied false nails, all in an attempt to find some definition of femininity that was my own. It was all guess work. I had no role model to work from.

“Why? Where is your mother?” She asked with genuine confusion. While I was very grateful for what she had given me, I was getting annoyed with her again.

I changed the subject. “Let’s go have dinner. I want to show off my face.”

That night at the pizza parlor, instead of averting my gaze, I looked directly into the eyes of the guy behind the counter. Jill noticed and smiled. Although I was a long way from feeling completely normal, it was a small start in the right direction.

Listen to this podcast

I looked for the last time through the window of my apartment in Los Angeles. I had finished repainting the walls back to their original hospital white. Only two months earlier I painted my bedroom magenta. I blew glitter from my hand on to the wet paint so that the walls would sparkle. Like every other noble effort of mine, the intensity overwhelmed me. I had to shut my eyes every time I walked into the room.

It was 80 degrees in December, hot and stagnant. The seasons were not going to change, my family would not change, my life would not change, unless I changed.

In my dreams I couldn’t breathe. My dead grandmother came inside my head while I slept and push down on my chest so that I couldn’t move. She forced to me to listen to the same song over and over again that said “You have to go and leave me.” I had to scratch her to move. I had to betray what I was conditioned to believe was right, so that I might have a chance at a real life.

I had always done what I was told, so I didn’t know how to move forward at first on my own. I was spinning in the same routine, with no where to go, adrift in my own rut. Despite the quests I made for physical and spiritual perfection, everything I did turned out wrong and ineffective.

I’d spend hours meditating, hoping that enlightenment would float down on me at last and that all would be healed. I opened my eyes and looked at the copper budda statue that I used to hold my burning incense. It was laughing at me. It said, “Little girl, this changes nothing.”

My grandmother kept a miniature budda on her desk, that she bought on a trip to Asia. She taught me to make a wish and rub the budda’s tummy. If the budda granted wishes for a good daughter, then my life would have already been a panacea. No such luck.

On this day I prepared myself for another journey. If I was going to fail at life then I might as well fail at something that meant something real to me. I was moving to New York. I had loaded my car, my cats, and whatever could fit into two suitcases. The rest was given away.

I had bought some small gifts at the health food store: scented candles, soap, flashes cards with positive slogans written on them like, “Be the change you want to see in the world” and “carpe diem.”

I didn’t know what else to do. There was no appropriate gift or card suited to this moment. My birth mom didn’t know it, but I was about to say goodbye.

Listen to this podcast

What I can not say out loud seems to come out in other ways, usually with clever vitriol, written about non-scandalous topics that will not arouse the suspicions of friend or foe alike. But even as I manage to blow off steam, rarely do I find the full release associated with intense and complete honesty. I don’t lie. I just leave out good stuff.

Then my cousin Erin said to me a month ago, “You were more scandalous when you were twelve.” She was right. I use to wear thick black eye liner, torn t-shirts and mini-skirts. And now…let’s just say, I’m an average girl who sits in the subway each morning doing crosswords. There is nothing wrong with the naturally quiet, introspective person I’ve become. I just think that perhaps I’d say a lot more if I wasn’t scared.

Twenty years later what I see in the mirror is someone who has hidden herself pretty well, seeking the safety she couldn’t find as a child, but finding no real security when she made those compromises. I’m like the lion in the Wizard of Oz, courage has to be thrust upon me, rarely do I seek it.

It’s time for change. However since I’m neither ready to be shunned by my friends and family, nor be dooced by my employers, I’m going to institute a policy of password protecting some of my forth-coming posts. If you want to read them, then send me a quick email via the “About American Amelie” page, or write a comment with your ip address (preferably one outside the United States), or a link to your own blog site. I don’t trust everyone, but I do trust other bloggers.

Listen to this podcast