What is fun and how to fun and why fun

Which paragraph did I sob while writing?

Alongside the daily fight against facist dictatorship in which my child’s rights are used as a political tool, I have been trying to figure out what I think is fun — besides my work. I feel a little like an olympic athlete who has been training since they were a teenager and knows nothing except her sport. The hardest part is being whole-hearted about fun, not seeing it as a break from work but rather as something important unto itself, like a spiritual practice. This quickly gets into deep shit for me. Last night I was laying in bed trying to remember what was going on in my life at the time when I began being rigorous about making things. It was the year that my best friend, Jo, moved away, my parents were very busy with relationship experimentation and I had a boyfriend who was 27 (I was 17). That year I wrote and directed a play based on my correspondence with a prisoner serving a sentence for murder.

It starred actors who responded to a casting call I placed in the East Bay Express. 924 Gilman is an all-ages punk club.

The pressure of making The Lifers was so beyond me that I had a total breakdown right before “opening night” (May 2.) I did some crazy stuff that is described in this book but one thing that is not mentioned, that I just remembered, is that I didn’t talk for a couple days. I could only communicate by writing on little scraps of paper. That classic teenage matrix: am I crazy or am I playing a trick on everyone to get their attention. At 17 you’ve just discovered that no one can really control or save you and now you’re wondering if you can control or save yourself.

What I’m thinking now is that part of me never really moved past this point. Doing the play was so intense, so vivid (total hell…then…applause) that I decided right then and there to make this sort of thing the focus of my life, forever.

Now I have a teenager of my own, and I’m trying remember what it felt like before my best friend moved away. All the fun and cozy and experimental things we did together. We watched Annie Hall and SNL in her parents little tv room. We sliced up and fried carrots as a snack (Berkeley girls), we joined CISPES and protested, we went to punk shows at Gilman, we listened to The Velvet Underground and The Pixies and The Talking Heads. We decided to get cooler by cutting our hair — me trying to look like Edie Sedgewick, her trying to look like Blondie. We started a fanzine and didn’t sign our work so that no one knew who had made what. She wrote stories about two women named Ida and July; I changed my last name to July. We made each other elaborate gifts, homages to our friendship. We slept in her twin bed together. We put vitamin D on our pimples. We decorated the covers of our journals and sat in cafes, writing . We tried on clothes at Wasteland. We took BART to San Francisco and went to Epicenter, a record store, then ate bagels and took BART home.

That Edie Sedgewick haircut

I have an appointment with a new therapist (thank you to the reader who suggested her). This therpist does parts work, but the appointment isn’t for a couple more weeks so I’m on my own trying to figure this out for now. I guess, according to this type of therapy (which Harrell explained to me) when my friend moved away and I was left in a kind of gnarly home situation, I made a new part that helped me get through my final year of high school. This part of me is forever 17 and her whole job is to make me feel seen and understood and make my life life feel full and important and meaningful – the way it is when you have a best friend. This part is also angry and wants teenage-level dramatic revenge: I’ll show them. Them being everyone I was left with who didn’t really get me: my parents, my classmates, my too-old boyfriend. In parts work you thank the part for their service and gently let them know it’s not needed anymore and that they can chill now. You’re supposed to actually send them off to do something else instead.

You did a really great job, 17 year-old hard-worker. You really made me feel special and seen and powerful at a time when I needed all of that so badly. You kept me absorbed in a world I could control. But I have shocking news for you. I’m 51 now. Yeah, I know. It’s crazy. And all the things you wanted for me? I have those times a million now. Like, really actually a bonkers amount – you’d be amazed. Your job is done. Thank you for your service; you did so good. But I’m totally fine now, so you can go back to what you really actually loved doing, which was hanging out with Jo. You can just go have fun. Eat bagels, decorate your journal, sing along to The Pixes for all the rest of your days

love,

mj

PS: This was actually just going to be a simple, easy post of me trying on that yellow dress I got on Etsy the other week, but the intro ate the post. Here’s the video anyway. Good luck this weekend everyone, maybe have some fun.

(The dress looks foolish enough that part is for paid subscribers only.)