Hello, Dearest Darlings!
Good news! As 2017 came screeching to an end like a locomotive driven by an orangutan with glaucoma and a history of substance abuse issues, I took stock of my life.
Some around the global world were popping champagne and exchanging kisses. Mariah Carey made her annual attempt at hitting whistle notes during another frigid wintertime performance. This year, rather than braving the blustery December Times Square air dressed in a nude leotard, she was swaddled in an open Muppet skin coat. Her own exposed meat puppets were warmed by a cozy diamond necklace and an evening gown that made the top half of her body look like a can of biscuit dough that had been forgotten in the trunk of her car. The blame for her need to sing at a register lower than a baritone in a barbershop quartet this year was awarded to the denial of her request for a piping hot cup of Orange Pekoe, instead of blaming her incessant desire to dress as if her breasts are attempting to escape through a rhinestone chain link fence. But me? What was I doing, you ask?
This may come as a complete shock to you, but I wasn’t at some fancy party hobnobbing with celebrities. There was no delicious caviar. No bubbly was uncorked. There was no midnight kiss with a significant other while swaying to “Auld Lang Syne.” Instead, my New Year’s Eve was celebrated with a mouth of generic Walgreens cough drops, a packet of Emergen-C dumped into a glass of club soda, some heavy midnight hacking and vertigo-induced swaying caused by a lack of oxygen from a coughing spell while listening to every dog within three miles of Lake Ivanhoe bark at firecrackers. I have learned that while NYE fireworks in Orlando reach their explosive zenith at midnight, you will be allowed to appreciate them well into daybreak and generally accompanied by people screaming as if they’re alerting a Cherokee tribe to approaching invaders.
This year, as always, I have just been awful: Short-tempered, judgmental, callous, boorish, insensitive, and hedonistic. If you think my white privilege is agitated when I am slighted, imagine the earful that poor guy with the obvious brain damage down at the cable company receives when I crack open a PAPER bill (because I clearly hate the environment) and discover that my bill has been increased to afford a collection of sports channels that I’ll use as often as a tampon. I am a goddamn monster. Now I see it, and guess what? I am going to change that.
2018 New Year: New Me!
I’m not going to burden myself with such pedestrian resolutions such a reading more and committing myself to volunteer work. I have a library of unread books just waiting for me to find a moment to tell the voices to shut the Hell up, and if Orlando paid her drag queens any less than she already does, my work would constitute community service. Also, I’ll have no cliché resolutions about a healthier diet and a commitment to exercise. If I am running, it’ll be because the ice cream truck just pulled out or because my unruly torch and pitchfork mob has discovered I allowed the fire insurance on my windmill to lapse.
Instead, this year I resolve:
1.) To find the joy in everything. For example, instead of watching Sarah Huckleberry Sanders deliver a press briefing and throw glassware at the television because a woman who resembles a well-heated wax figure of Jack Black in drag insists that somebody else in the room is generating lies… I will breathe. I will breathe and smile knowing that her one wonky eye will grow wide when the impending impeachment proceedings begin and a room of battle-worn journalists will be poising their pens with sly smiles aimed directly at her.
2.) To be more patient. Instead of screaming, “HEAD’S UP, LEIBOVITZ!” when a check-out line has inexplicably been transformed into a selfie photoshoot, I will breathe and focus my frustration on the sudden disappearance of selfie sticks that once doubled as a truncheon Billy Club that I could entertain that New Year’s workout with while rearranging someone’s jaw.
3.) To be more understanding. When I finally leave the comfort of my lair and venture into a movie theater to watch a movie and find this cinematic escape interrupted by a gathering of friends who’ve decided to use the opening night of a film as an opportunity to catch up, I will no longer bark, “Please refrain from talking” in a manner generally reserved for Linda Blair’s demon in The Exorcist. I will instead take a breath, turn around and calmly announce that I am having a hard time hearing the rest of their story and ask if they can project from their diaphragms like Ethel Merman coaching a cheerleading squad so as not to miss any juicy details.
This all feels like a real stretch, and I hope I can remain strong. But I feel confident that 2018 will see a kinder and sweeter me! Cross your fingers!
Better still: Hold your breath.
Amen,
Divine Grace
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