I’m reading this book right now.
…Because she got famous doing what I wanna do, which is essentially to turn this whole blog thing into my main income. Or at least a decent supplemental one.
It’s first week out, the book was on the NY Times Bestseller List…which I think we can all agree is amazing…and she now travels the country on her publisher’s dime, to sit at tables and sign her name inside book covers, while reaping real-world scenario materials for her next Top Seller.
I could handle this kind of life, if it accidentally on purpose happened to me, is what I’m saying.
…Of course, it never would happen.
…Because what I have discovered while reading her words out loud, (in-between the times I can’t, because I’m crying too hard in hysteria and peeing my pants a little), is that ultimately, I just did not have a fucked-up enough childhood to qualify the kind of success she so rightly deserves.
My Dad never ONCE stuck his finger up the butt of a dead rat, thus transforming it into a very disturbing puppet.
I may NOT have had a lot of money growing up, but Mom never rubberbanded bread sacks to my feet in lieu of snow boots and sent me off to school that way.
…I never lived in an asbestos lean-to, connected to my Father’s taxidermy shop…found dead carcases with their entrails taking up the whole bathtub, or helped run a transient hotel for orphaned and wounded wild animals that at any second could turn and rip my face off. Just “because.”
…People like David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs and this chick, are almost guaranteed book sellers, on account of their totally unbelievable upbringing and various proceeding mental breakdowns and coping mechanisms. They are like the Royalty of making the best out of really screwed up and scarring childhood situations. In this kingdom, I’m but a mere Pageboy or Scullery Maid in comparison.
Not that “competing” against these people, is the goal…but there is definitely a “niche-following” involved in Memoir Essaying and I think I lack the total package deal to fit in properly. I can certainly go off on sick and dark circumstances, while generously peppering my personal philosophies on the proper shelving of movie collections, and organizing of junk drawers…but I don’t think that’s quite enough meat in the stew of requirement. The best ammo I have to use in this case, involves The Brothel here…and unless I want to get my ass sued off (which is no small feat with the podonkodonk that I’m sportin’) …it’s pretty much off the board when I go public with who I really am.
…Which is too bad, really.
It all comes down to the fact that I was horribly abused, neglected, warped, and fucked with by the wrong people. If it was my PARENTS, I could write it all out and make a mint, (with the understanding that at least part of the sales of said book would go toward keeping them in a manner to which they would become “accustomed.”) But it wasn’t. It was my JOB that did it.
…There is no dotted line of permission, or amount of pay-out, that will allow me to pass onto the next round of using what I have been forced into while working here. Unless said book is a total unqualified success equal to Jenny Lawson’s Freshman work…I will be immediately fired and totally unemployable for the rest of my life…due to the fact that (apparently), I spend all my down time dissing my place of business surreptitiously with wild abandon. Even if it’s true.
…I mean, I’d get fired even if the book was a giant success, true…but I would care a lot less in that instance. Until the legal paperwork would start flying in, and I’d find myself being sued for roughly the exact amount of money which the book would have accrued, thus leaving me pretty much where I’m sitting right now, only not literally, and maybe a little more famous for it.
…Like Donald Trump every time he goes bankrupt again.
I don’t think I could handle that level of almostness in making something of myself, then lose it all.
…But then, if it spiralled me into some great, mistrustful, fist-shaking-at-fate rebellion over the whole ordeal…I could write a Memoir about that.
…Maybe I should look into it.
~D