Life Is Confusing
When I was a kid, I assumed the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was about Nazis. I wondered if “gentlemen” was sort of a code word for SS officers from a German point of view. I noticed the poster’s showgirl costumes and assumed the movie was like a more upbeat version of Cabaret.
I was surprised by the part of Cabaret that has that rich bi guy hooking up with both main characters and then ghosting them. I wasn’t sure if he ghosted them because they were poor and artistic, or if he just eventually ghosted everyone he slept with.
A kid I knew had a grandfather who fought in World War II for Germany. When people would talk about their grandfathers fighting in World War II, she would say, “Mine too!” No one ever said to her, “Your grandfather was a fucking Nazi.”
As a kid, I assumed I was a genetic anomaly as a white person with dark hair. Most other white kids I knew had blonde or light brown (barely brown) hair. Kids I knew who weren’t white, had dark hair like mine. I grew up in a college town. It was diverse, but only by Iowa standards.
I assumed the best about myself. That I was rare. While it’s good I wasn’t worried about fitting in, a little seed of ego was already firmly planted within my otherwise sensitive child self. I fed the seed by picking up sequins from dressing room floors during my elementary school dance recitals. I would add each loose sequin to one safety pin and then start a new safety pin the next recital. I felt certain I was destined for tremendous glamour.
I didn’t know the word authoritarianism back then, but if I had, I would have told anyone that a scenario like that was old fashioned and didn’t happen anymore.
I didn’t know the orange spray tans of the aughts would be embraced by a psychopath nepo baby long after orange went out of style. The orange baby-man’s grandfather had owned a brothel which makes sense because men with power usually gain it through women’s labor.
I’m sure I’ve said something that will make someone angry. Some people don’t like to be bothered. Don’t talk about Palestine. They say the starving children aren’t their fault. They say they just want to go to Chick-fil-A. My whole body hurts.
Meg Johnson is the author of the books Inappropriate Sleepover (The National Poetry Review Press, 2014), The Crimes of Clara Turlington (Vine Leaves Press, 2015), and Without: Body, Name, Country (Vine Leaves Press, 2020). Without: Body, Name, Country was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards, The Crimes of Clara Turlington won the Vignette Collection Award, and Inappropriate Sleepover was the runner-up for the Rousseau Prize for Literature. Her writing has appeared in BUST Magazine, Chiron Review, MAYDAY Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Nashville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sugar House Review, Verse Daily, and many other publications. Her website is megjohnson.org.
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