But I am the god of hellfire, honest.

A couple of times a month, I receive a plus-size clothing catalog that I will leaf through quickly, so fast the pages snap, scanning the items on offer. Tee shirts emblazoned with “inspirational” or “funny” quotes (“it’s wine o’clock” or “hang in there, Friday’s comin’” or “I am the god of hellfire” – actually, I might buy a nightshirt that said that), shirts with cutouts and “ruching” (whatever the hell “ruching” is), jeans touted as having “tummy-flattening technology” and pre-ripped for your convenience. My jeans aren’t generally ripped across my thigh unless I’ve gotten into a knife fight, which happens more than you might expect (I am brandishing a machete as I type this). Everything’s outrageously overpriced and every model looks nothing like me. They fit into the very small box allowed for fat women, the one where you’re “okay” as long as you’ve got an hourglass shape with a great rack and a generous behind, and they’re all stunningly beautiful. Objectively, subjectively, there’s no getting around that these women are lookers.

I don’t know if it’s my faulty brain chemistry or the curse of having a creative bent, but I think a lot about, well, me. I like to pick apart things I’ve done, feelings I’ve had, trying to understand why I said or did or felt something, what brought me to where I am at 2018, right at this moment, 7:02 a.m. on a Thursday, listening to a Jesus Jones album (no, really). Oh, and to, uh, try to be a better person maybe? As of late, my attention has been focused on my carcass – more so than usual. I’ve gotten back into writing in a big way in the last six to eight months, using good ole screenplay format (Fade In is awesome software) to spit out stories with an eye toward perhaps novelizing them one day (plus, I do love writing me a screenplay, always have). What looms in a lot of my stories lately is the idea of femininity, what is the “right” way of being a woman, how women who don’t perform womanhood “correctly” tend to be punished societally. Mind you, the stuff I’m writing I classify as romance/romantic comedies, folks. So, you know…layers.

Being a woman is not great for me. It never has been. I identify as a woman, but it’s always been with a bit of reluctance because it’s something at which I am not skilled in the least. I don’t like doing something I’m not good at – that’s ingrained in my DNA. It is something that makes me uncomfortable. I tried my best for many years to play the part. It’s only in the last few months that I’ve realized just how much damage it has done to me. And when I say “damage”, I assure you it’s not something that constantly haunts me in my waking hours or shit like that – honey, I’ve taken plenty of hits. I’m built like a motherfucking battleship.

I played the game for many years, performing all the aspects of my gender that I could – the makeup, the hair, the earrings, the shapewear. That version of Jane wasn’t me. Well, it was me, but it wasn’t me. It was, in a sense, a version of drag, except it didn’t make me feel “free” or more expressive or more in tune with who I was – it was a burden. It was a burden because all the things you’re told as a girl that will happen if you just go along with the program…didn’t happen. I wanted to be loved, and I wasn’t.

That’s the devil of it all, that little bastard that has haunted me most of my life, that cursed, heart-crumbling desire to be loved. I knew early on because I was fat and wasn’t pretty that life was going to be a bit of a thing.  So I cultivated my personality as early as I could – I would be the funniest, the smartest, the most entertaining motherfucker you ever met because I had to somehow transcend this garbage bag of a carcass so maybe, just maybe someone would see me and determine that I was worthy of love in spite of my size, in spite of my lack of prettiness. I did my best to meet regulations, you know, I wore uncomfortable clothes and put on a girl show, but even then I wasn’t great at it. I gravitated towards ratting my hair up like Robert Smith of the Cure and I stomped around in beat-to-shit Dr. Marten boots. My fashion icons were (and primarily remain) men – my god, I tried so hard to emulate John Taylor of Duran Duran’s look and my brain simply would not accept I wasn’t a gangly white 20-something INSANELY BEAUTIFUL man from England.

Tangent: No, seriously, we have to take a moment to discuss John Taylor in his youth because he was a beautiful, precious angel, like…it was almost painful to lay eyes upon him because he was so luminous. He’s still managed to remain a damn handsome man at 58 – oof, that hurt me to type mainly because of my own issues regarding my age – but sweet mother of pete, John Taylor Prime was fire.) (/tangent)

And the thing was that I was missing – yet really not missing – was that there were girls who could do the Robert Smith hair and the boots and it was good and appealing. The difference between me and them was that they were pretty.

Tangent/rule: I am absolutely 100 percent okay describing myself as not being pretty, because I know that I am not. Being not pretty is OKAY. I am not fishing for compliments, I am not playing Poor Me, this is simply a fact. I do not meet the societal expectation of “pretty” as it exists in the present world and THAT IS OKAY. (/tangent)

I played the game for a long time, longer than I should have. It took me until my mid-30s to take my leave, good ladies and sirs, and stop putting on the show. The show hadn’t done anything for me anyway. I could have draped myself in the finest couture, worn expertly applied makeup, whirled my coif into a magnificent tangle of meticulously highlighted hair and I’d either get “sir” or “fat bitch”. I was erased, essentially, because I wasn’t a proper girl thanks to my height (tall) and weight (big-ass). I was an it, genderless, sexless. A thing, a freak. I might be out of the game, but there’s no avoiding seeing the plays. The strangest things strike me, things that probably wouldn’t register with anyone else, probably didn’t even register with the person it happened to.

I was watching a video of a press conference for a movie, and one of the major people in the production was a fat woman (she was a producer/behind-the-scenes-y person). She was standing on stage as the actors were introduced, and then it was time for the cast and creators to sit down. The male actor standing next to her almost fell over himself to pull out a chair for the stunningly gorgeous, slender female actor on his left while the fat woman, who was on his right, just sat herself down. Pretty normal, sure. She was capable of sitting down in her own chair, like all of us are. Something you probably wouldn’t think much of, either as an observer or as a participant. But me? I saw it as her being disregarded, not being seen as someone worth being gentlemanly to. It was more important that the beautiful actor knew she was worthy of attention, even something as small as pulling out a fucking chair, than for him to perform that gesture towards the fat woman.

Yes, it’s a completely pointless thing and I am certain the man who did it was not thinking like that at ALL. He was not actively thinking “Beautiful Star needs to be shown she has value and Fat Chick sucks!” He could probably spend some time talking about how terrific Fat Chick is, in fact. Yes, absolutely, who cares about chairs being pulled out, chivalry is antiquated patriarchy blah blah blah – but it matters.

It matters when you are informed quite merrily by, you know, the WORLD that you are useless garbage because fat and you take that on board into your being and you can’t unsee tiny pointless things like that. It matters when you never ever EVER see anyone who looks like you in movies, on TV – unless you’re being used as an example of someone who’s gross, worthless, and only matters if she loses weight. And certainly will not and never can be loved - or even liked – while she’s in that state. She certainly won’t be anything resembling happy as long as she’s fat, and any sort of joy or happiness she has while fat will be constantly undercut by tragedy or near-tragedy (aka “This is Us” which can go fuck itself). 

Tangent: The trailer for “Life Itself”, which was written and directed by the same man-creature that created and runs “This is Us”, made me piss blood I was so enraged. I swear to God, after I saw it I rage-wrote a full 20-page screenplay treatment as if I was responding to a dis track. I don’t know what dirt he (I will not speak nor write his name) had on that murderer’s row of actors or how he managed to entrance them all with his garbage nonsense words or how he managed to make me temporarily, so very temporarily, like maybe 15 seconds long angry at the sight of Oscar Isaac WHICH IS NIGH ON IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE HE IS – never mind, we’ll talk later.

DUDE, HRH ANNETTE BENING, JEAN SMART, ANTONIO BANDERAS, AND MANDY FUCKING PATINKIN. HOW DARE YOU.

The saving grace is how mightily it ate shit. (/tangent)

Fighting to keep myself from succumbing to forces that really, really want you to loathe yourself (because boy oh boy it is good for business and maintaining power - hi, white men) is exhausting. All. The. Time. Looking at myself in the mirror is agonizing some days. It feels hard to look at my face because I don't like it. It doesn't look right. It doesn't look nice or pleasant or appealing. Then, other days, I don't give a shit. Striking the balance between that infernal self-loathery and not giving a rat's ass is an ongoing battle. I really want to be positive and a good example of...whatever, but I'm not sure what that looks like. I guess I'll just keep swanning through the world like I’m hot shit, and I will call Chris Evans “honey” and I will wear outfits that are not far off from something a Guy Fieri or the Guy from Smashmouth* might wear. I'll keep writing my little weird stories that I don't have the moxie to show anyone (yet) about my little weird characters who mostly get what they want in a world that isn't designed for them to have it.

*Guy From Smashmouth has a name – and honest to Christmas, I googled “Guy from Smashmouth” and got the answer: Steve Harwell.