My mother always said I was a drama queen.
In fact, she said it so often that for a while in my mid-teens, it became my badge of honour. Every little fuck-up or disappointment could, neatly, be attributed to my dramatic nature.
I worked hard to perpetuate and live up to the badge. I did pretty well: many excessive drunken escapades, a string of wholly unsuitable suitors and an attitude that preceded me. What a bore I must have been. Maybe I still am although I try hard to be agreeable and not foist my sometimes over-opinionated thoughts onto others in the punchy way I used to.
I try also to be quiet - at least for a time. I generally feel there is too much talk in the world. Too much "blah" and not enough "ahh". That's why I like to write. At least a reader has the luxury of ending the experience of my thoughts and opinions in a way that doesn't exist in the real world.
And, when writing, I can be as dramatic as I choose without offending anyone at all.
I admit, I adore drama - dark, sexy gothic drama heavy on laudanum-powered, velvet-clad over-the-topness. Victoriana on Viagra. Give me any scenario and I'll turn it - in my head at least - into a circus of fetishistic burlesque.
I see the world in absinthe green, tinged with the scent of crushed rose petals. I could live my days among the ghosts in a semi-derelict mansion - watching dust motes dance in shafts of sunlight forcing their way through moth holes in once-splendid damask drapery.
Dramatic? You betcha. I build castles of faded glamour in my minds eye and prowl the halls and vaults - my heels clicking out a tattoo of dreamy eccentricity.
Click... click... click... Let's pause a while and gaze upon a family portrait. Who do we see?
I'm a product of parents whose own interests and predilections for beauty were apparent to me from a very early age.
Here's my father. An analogue audio-loving Francophile who'll wax lyrical on the benefits of everything from Michel Legrand to soup de poisson indefinitely. He watches foreign films without the subtitles, even though he speaks only a slow-drawled smattering of French. He 'phones me to quote inspiring lines from books and films. He wears a fedora around the house and once removed the plug from my stereo for daring to listen to Wham.
Click... click... click... Here's my mother. She's great to have on your side during quizzes and can name pretty much every king and queen of England from the top down. She reads poetry as I only wish I could - unaffected and light as a child reciting a nursery rhyme.
She took on breast cancer and won and, when I felt that hard little lump in her dear body because she wanted me to know the enemy, I thought about her as a pregnant seventeen year old knowing not what her future held.
I don't believe there is anything in the least dramtic to say that was the moment I stopped even thinking about making any kind of show. That was a drama she was utterly determined would not turn into a crisis.
As I click off down the hallway of my imagination I'm reminded that, drama queen I may be, I come from people who enabled me to develop that way: brave, imaginative individuals who have their own castles too.
In fact, she said it so often that for a while in my mid-teens, it became my badge of honour. Every little fuck-up or disappointment could, neatly, be attributed to my dramatic nature.
I worked hard to perpetuate and live up to the badge. I did pretty well: many excessive drunken escapades, a string of wholly unsuitable suitors and an attitude that preceded me. What a bore I must have been. Maybe I still am although I try hard to be agreeable and not foist my sometimes over-opinionated thoughts onto others in the punchy way I used to.
I try also to be quiet - at least for a time. I generally feel there is too much talk in the world. Too much "blah" and not enough "ahh". That's why I like to write. At least a reader has the luxury of ending the experience of my thoughts and opinions in a way that doesn't exist in the real world.
And, when writing, I can be as dramatic as I choose without offending anyone at all.
I admit, I adore drama - dark, sexy gothic drama heavy on laudanum-powered, velvet-clad over-the-topness. Victoriana on Viagra. Give me any scenario and I'll turn it - in my head at least - into a circus of fetishistic burlesque.
I see the world in absinthe green, tinged with the scent of crushed rose petals. I could live my days among the ghosts in a semi-derelict mansion - watching dust motes dance in shafts of sunlight forcing their way through moth holes in once-splendid damask drapery.
Dramatic? You betcha. I build castles of faded glamour in my minds eye and prowl the halls and vaults - my heels clicking out a tattoo of dreamy eccentricity.
Click... click... click... Let's pause a while and gaze upon a family portrait. Who do we see?
I'm a product of parents whose own interests and predilections for beauty were apparent to me from a very early age.
Here's my father. An analogue audio-loving Francophile who'll wax lyrical on the benefits of everything from Michel Legrand to soup de poisson indefinitely. He watches foreign films without the subtitles, even though he speaks only a slow-drawled smattering of French. He 'phones me to quote inspiring lines from books and films. He wears a fedora around the house and once removed the plug from my stereo for daring to listen to Wham.
Click... click... click... Here's my mother. She's great to have on your side during quizzes and can name pretty much every king and queen of England from the top down. She reads poetry as I only wish I could - unaffected and light as a child reciting a nursery rhyme.
She took on breast cancer and won and, when I felt that hard little lump in her dear body because she wanted me to know the enemy, I thought about her as a pregnant seventeen year old knowing not what her future held.
I don't believe there is anything in the least dramtic to say that was the moment I stopped even thinking about making any kind of show. That was a drama she was utterly determined would not turn into a crisis.
As I click off down the hallway of my imagination I'm reminded that, drama queen I may be, I come from people who enabled me to develop that way: brave, imaginative individuals who have their own castles too.