Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants

by Jill Soloway

  Killing is wrong. By the way, it includes Islamic Fundamentalists. Yes, I know a lot of people will tell you Killing is Wrong, but they’ll have a little asterisk where they’re secretly subconsciously reserving the right to kill Islamic Fundamentalists because Islamic Fundamentalists did The 9/11. But no, in my way of thinking, we can’t kill anyone. When I am Ruler of It All, negotiations between nations would start with that awareness, that no man is allowed to take another man’s life, even as punishment.

  Sure, maybe it’s okay if you wanna do other stuff, sure, cheat on your husband or take the Lord’s name in vain, that’s all negotiable. I personally love to take the Lord’s name in vain; I call out “Jesus on a Cracker!” when I stub my toe.

  Also, no one can hurt anyone, unless you’re Daphne Merkin and you’re visiting and you provide written, informed consent to getting spanked.

  Also, it should be clear that although this new land is geared toward exhausted and angry straight women, lesbians are certainly invited, as long as they don’t try to start softball teams or build a special shelving unit in the Centre with a sign above it that says, JUST FOR TEAS, PLEASE!

  My sister is a lesbian, so she can be there. I don’t know whether or not lesbians need to escape from their partners, and if they do, which one will come to Lesbo Isle? That’s up to them. I am very lesbian-friendly and only ask that if both sides of a lesbian couple come, they don’t fight on the veranda.

  When Faith and I were a writing team, people used to say behind our backs, “Which one is the lesbian?” For a while, when I had a crew cut, people thought it was me. But it’s never been me, except on a couple of ill-fated attempts to find out once and for all, for sure, for sure, if I was really straight. Nope. Faith has always been the lesbian. Ever since she came out, a lot of people have asked me silly questions about her lesbianishness.

  “When did she know she was a lesbian?”

  “When did you know she was a lesbian?” and, most important, “Is it possible you made her a lesbian by being so fucking fabulous she loved not only you but all women?” Okay, no one asks me that. That’s one I ask only in the privacy of my own bath time.

  Faith came out when she was in her early twenties. It was a surprise, yet, as soon as she told me, it put into order everything that had come before it. As kids, when we would go to buy clothes with my mom, my sister would end up in tears. I can still see her looking in the three-sided mirror at Saks, turning this way and that in her gauzy floral dress with sleeves fashioned out of scarves. I don’t know what she saw… a boy in a dress? A Volkswagen with meat sauce? It was something so incongruous that it made her cry. There were no words, just the familiar feeling of, oh god, Faith can never find anything to wear and now we have to go home early, and I’m pissed because everything looks great on me and I can only buy one outfit.

  As I got older, I began to feel more like Faith when it came to dressing like a woman. From fourteen to twenty-one-ish I was happy to don the leggings and miniskirts prescribed by Seventeen magazine. After that, I went into worker mode, as a p.a. and documentary film person and then writer. I could wear jeans and funny vintage T-shirts and be just like a boy at work. But now that I’m a woman, it is expected that on certain occasions, I put a dress on. Now, when I stand in the mirror, I feel less like a lady, more like a boy wearing meat sauce or a Volkswagen in a dress. I feel wrong. I want to cry.

  Those pointy shoes make me want to cry. Anything Sarah Jessica Parker ever wore makes me want to cry. Dresses that wrap or are strapless or empire-waisted make me fall to the floor in a crumply pile. When Steve Madden shoes were in I could pull off a heel for a while, finally getting some height, yet staying comfortable, up high on my thick Frankenstein chunky feet. But last year I was going to a meeting and looked down at my Steve Madden mary janes, the top part a brown-on-brown rendition of a schoolgirl shoe, all sitting atop a slightly curvy black brick they called a heel. It was similar to a moment that came a few years previous when I looked down at my miniskirt and said to myself, “This is the last day I’ll ever wear a miniskirt.” And I was right.

  As I stared at my clunky Madden nineties clodhoppers, sadly aware I’d worn them a year or two past their use-by date, something else was clear. Previously I’d never understood how all those old women were still wearing those big bouffant hairdos that took an hour and a half to set, once a week at the beauty salon. But now I realized what was up. These women were still wearing whatever they wore at their primes. I’ll stand with this poker hand. No more cards, they said to the fashion world. Because they felt confident for a brief stretch between post-puberty blush and the sags of age, and because this was the moment when they got the most head-turns, they were holding onto it and not letting go, not for their lives, like the way my mom’s dog acts when he finds one of her bras on the floor.

  Yes, I saw myself at eighty: I’d be stomping over to my Adult Day Health Facility in my thick black-heeled clodhoppers, a miniskirt, ironic T-shirt and long, greasy, flat-ironed gray hair. I’d be like an elderly version of Bratz. Like Geriatz.

  That day when I got home I put all my thick-heeled shoes into a bag and threw them up the hole in the ceiling to the attic. One day I’d go up there with my grandchildren, and we would laugh, yes, how we would laugh.

  If all of this is sounding good to you right now, tell your girlfriends that, at this new land, there shall be no pointy shoes or strappy stilettos, no pantyhose, no waistbands. I’m not saying it’s a place to balloon up and get huge and lose food in your folds and wear muumuus. I do believe bras will still be appreciated, certainly during hikes. But at Feather Crest, we’ll get to the business of our lives first and the constriction of appearing womanly somewhere far, far down the list.

  When my sister finally did come out of the closet, she did it in a very smart way: She went missing first. That way, when we found her, she could have told us she liked having sex with Danish exercise balls—we were just happy she was alive.

  Faith had a boyfriend. She had always had boyfriends. She was no hoor, but at every moment in her young life, there was one very funny cute man who loved her with every fiber of his being, a steadfast, kind partner. I guess when she found a guy with whom she could reasonably pull off the happy breeder charade, she stayed put. At her coming-out moment, she was twenty-three and dating a very funny cute steadfast gentleman named Tim. They had been seeing each other for a few years. One evening Tim called us and said he had been expecting Faith an hour ago, and she never turned up.

  Everyone’s hearts started beating. This was it. Yes, we Soloways had gotten a pass from God for far too long. Great tragedy—in the form of serial killer victimization— had finally struck. By the next morning the police were on the case and my mom was dashing out an obituary when Faith finally turned up.

  Faith had spent the night at a friend’s house. And Faith needed to talk to us, my mom said. My mom went first. Then it was my turn. By the time I got to Anne Sather’s, a Swedish diner on Belmont that did a really spectacular powdered-sugar-covered crepe, somehow, I already knew what Faith wanted to tell me.

  “I think I’m gay,” she said. Even then, she knew that the gay guys got all the better stuff than the gay girls. Gay, for one, was so much easier to say, particularly when coming out. Just one quick syllable, over fast, like a shot. “Lesbian” sounds syrupy, like baked cheese, mucous-y. It sounds lazy-bian, like too lazy to put on your pointy shoes and strut your stuff, like you just want to laze into another woman’s vagina and forget all the hard work of heterosexuality. Gay, dick. Les-bi-an, va-gi-na. Why the three syllables? Even in breaking away from expected forms of gender roles, the guys got to make theirs gunshot-like—GAY! while the girls’ words wave with l’s and moist multiple vowels, lugubrious and nubian and malarial.

  “I know,” I said, as quickly as possible, “and I don’t care, you know I don’t care, I still love you, of course I still love you, and I’m so sorry about everything horrible thing I’ve ever said about lesbians, I on
ly said them because you said them too! I really don’t care if you want to be a lesbian at all, I love you, Faydo!”

  I was apologizing for a lifetime of lesbian-bashing humor that Faith and I started crafting as children. We could have performed a 24-hour set in an anti-lesbian comedy marathon if someone would have thought to invite us. Throughout our lives, we’d made vicious fun of lesbians everywhere we’d seen them—the generous sampling in our extended family, on our high school softball team, and at the gay parade that we found ourselves at every year.

  In fact, my main emotion upon learning my sister was a lesbian was to question why in the world she had set me up like that for years—I had only said those things about the one lesbian with the rat-tail haircut, and the other lesbian with the big giant lesbian ass bent over her Hibachi—to entertain Faith—and now here she was, pulling the rug out from under me.

  Luckily, Faith assured me that our unrelenting targeting of lesbians would not stop, and that she was the cool kind of lesbian, the kind that was Faith first and a lesbian second, and that we still had all the authority necessary to make jokes about lesbians with too many cats, or who used the word labia too much, or who wanted to secede from men and start their… own… island…

  Oh god. Here I am again. It’s not that I hate men. I really don’t. I’m just mad that I have to walk into bookstores and find a tiny section called Women’s Studies. Why can’t the men have the tiny section? Why can’t most of the books, the books about being human, be written by women? I want to be the syllable (man); I want them to be the amended syllable (wo-man). In fact, I’d be just fine to be called Cunt, as long as men could be called Nocunts.

  So, sisters, give me time. Keep an eye out for the ads, though they may be a few decades down the road: Feather Crest: We Get It; Feather Crest: 100% Nocunt Free; or Feather Crest: The End of Blow Jobs.

  Maybe people will start to take notice of Lesbo Island. Maybe if we build some fences around ourselves so men can’t have us they might start to respect us, and then worship us, and finally let us rule the world like we’re supposed to. Maybe seceding will make some noise, bring back that resurgence of feminism I keep calling for. There are those two girls who wrote a book about grassroots feminism who have gotten a little attention, but where are the theorists? Where are the Betty Freidans and the Gloria Steinems of our generation? Are we really done making noise?

  NO! We will shout from the tops of our roofs at Feather Crest, if we can find the ladders. We will be a model society—not a society of models—getting along without men telling us what to do. We will inspire all of the young flat-ironed Girls Gone Wild to let their stomachs pooch out, to be the Hair Gone Wild girls, curly and frizzy and free. We will show them that they exist whether or not a man gets turned on watching them lift their halter tops. We will tell them it is probably not empowering to show them your boobs, no matter how many times they tell you to at Mardi Gras. And we will finally be able to ask them, what is that sign you’re always doing to show that you love partying, that thing you do when you stick out your pierced tongues? Does it mean “I Love You” in sign language, or “Go Texas Longhorns”? Or “Hang Loose” in Hawaiian? Or “I worship the devil”? And why are you doing it all the time?

  No, flat-ironed ladies, at Feather Crest you will let your hair go free and your bushes gone wild. Of course, you need to buy this book, so if you’re reading a friend’s copy right now, get your own because you’ll need it when you apply. You should also probably think Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants is great, supergreat in fact, for it will be our manifesto, actually, our womanifesto, not to be confused with Cuntifesto, a festival we have twice a year with really good barbecue.

  If you’re interested, please see the back of your book for your application and mail it to me through the publisher. I’m going to go up there and start surveying the land, putting dibs on my cabin site, waiting for you. And hell, if for some reason, my wildly unrealistic expectations are met with thundering disappointment, at the least, I do believe I can get another book out of it.

  Appendix 1 or

  Brain Pickin’s

  Even with my mild amount of fame, I’ve already gotten my share of unwanted attention. Everyone seems to want to know how to get into the business—old friends, friends of friends, relatives I didn’t know I had, nephews of women my mom met while naked in the locker room at the East Bank Club, and even my mom. I get e-mails or phone calls, or forwarded messages, all wondering if I wouldn’t mind getting together for a few minutes so they could “pick my brain.” Don’t they realize this hurts? Would they like it if I took a sharp implement to a part of them, just to see what kind of crud I could kick up?

  There must be books about getting a job in Hollywood that say: “The key to making it is networking. Contact every person you know, and every person they know who works in the business. Try to arrange something easy like a coffee where you can ‘pick their brain.’ Every bit of info helps!” Come to think of it, I’d bet there are books that say, “The key to making it is contacting Jill Soloway, 323-555-5763.” (Not my real number, do you think I’m an idiot? Yes, that’s the old 555 trick!)

  And so, I am offering up this chapter with the plan that after the book comes out, when people tell me they’d love to pick my brain about the business, I can tell them that my brain has, in fact, been Fresh-Pict®, and the leavings of it are in the appendices.

  1) Write a book. That way, when you make it big, you can direct people to a chapter in your book instead of having lunch with them. Those few cents per book add up.

  2) If someone actually lets you see them in person, for god’s sake, take them out for sushi.

  3) Writers Write. This is something my ex-agent told me when I was bitching to him about not having enough work. He complained about my samples, and I asked him what was fucking wrong with the fucking samples I already had. Perhaps I was having motivation problems because the only variety in my daily diet was bong for breakfast, pipe for lunch, joint for dinner. I harrumphed, then told him, “Well… well… if writers write, then agents… AGE!” Ha ha! I sure showed him.

  Sadly, he was right. It wasn’t until I actually got excited about writing, real writing, that I had samples worth sharing. Before that, I was only excited about having a big money job in the big money TV business.

  It was 1993, just after the Real Live Brady Bunch, and Faith and I were in Hollywood, taking meetings as a writing team. As we went on futile meeting after futile meeting, we came up with a new phrase: “Chipmunks in a Tree.” We used it as shorthand for “whatever the fuck they want.”

  It had occurred to us that, as low-level baby-writers, it didn’t matter what we wanted. Going in with passion projects seemed to be a complete waste of time. It was better to go in, lob shit balls, and then improvise a pitch around whichever shit ball most excited the room. We said in private that we both knew we didn’t care what we wrote, as long as we got paid for it—it could even be a sitcom called Chipmunks in a Tree about the behind-the-scenes hijinks of people who work on a puppet show called Chipmunks in a Tree. Hell, just give us our money.

  As much as we laughed and laughed every time we’d sit in a waiting area debating whether or not we should lead or finish with Chipmunks in a Tree, we really were way off track. Whether you truly have the passion— which makes it easier—or you have to fake the passion— the one thing you cannot let slip is that you’ll do absolutely anything they’d pay you to do.

  I liken the TV- and movie-selling world to prostitution. If you ever watch that Bunny Ranch show on HBO, which, by the way, should have its own channel because I’d watch it all day long (who signs THOSE releases?!), you’ll notice that the women never start out the session with, “Hey, bud, I’m a big whore and I’m just here for the money, so tell me what ya want and I’ll do it.”

  Instead, these chicks actually put on an act like they LOVE sex and they LOVE fat old men in business suits and they’re SO TURNED ON that they can’t hold back the giggles. Indeed, part
of the secret crunchy, baked-in goodness of the john-hoor relationship is that the john enjoys believing the girl really wants sex and likes sex and the money is just a formality. Believing that the whore would be doing it even if there was no money is part of the fun, part of what makes this chick a fabulous whore and not his wife. As a writer or producer, you have to have the same conviction—that you LOVE your new show, perhaps called Chipmunks in a Tree, and that you think it will not only be hilarious but also revolutionize television.

  There’s a slightly masochistic part of movie and TV executives and producers that likes to feel at the mercy of the strong-willed egos of the real artists. In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron calls these people Shadow Artists—people who in their heart of hearts want to be artists, but don’t have the confidence, so they work near artists. She surmises that, as your producers, developments execs, or agents, they have such a love-hate relationship with you that they actually want you to say no—sometimes.

  Whether you have the passion or are faking the passion, you should be open to what the exec wants. But not too open. If they want to change it to Chipmunks in a Chimney, or Squirrels in a Tree, that’s just fine. However, if they want Foxes on a Mountaintop, get up and storm out of the room, and wait for them to chase you out like a used-car salesman. It’s simply part of the deal of working as a writer in Hollywood: Much like prostitution, sometimes people are going to want to pee on you.

  If forced to continue the “pitch meeting as sex” metaphor, I would add that as paid sex ends up lacking, you’ll always have a better meeting if you’re in Real Love. If you wrote what you HAD to write because if you didn’t, you would have to be checked into the hospital, if you are compelled to the computer, if the story you want to tell is a story from your very soul instead of a story you think would sell, people in the meeting will fall in love with the project. Their passion will be ignited, which is worth more than decisions they’ve made with their business sense. When detours arise on the long road to getting your show on the air, or your movie made, your producer’s heart fire will sustain the energy, while their initial hard-on might be long gone.