party gal gram #2: a total change of the heart (sung like Bonnie Tyler) & a story about self acceptance
Hi everyone! Thanks for reading another week of Party Gal Gram. I wanted to mention that if you feel so inclined- if you're like "Hey I am moved in such a way I want to tell someone the way I feel!" You can reply directly to this email and it will go straight to me. And I will cry! Enjoy this week. Thanks for letting me share and thank you to my first guest Tyle, he's a wonderful storyteller and he's currently working on his thesis film, "HOME" for Harold Ramis Film School.
a total change of the heart
by: sierra carter
The first time I had the kind of panic attack that makes you feel like you're going to die, I was walking into an exam freshman year of college. Did I say walking? What I mean was I was running late, wearing a long cardigan, a headband and heeled booties that I thought I could properly walk in because I wasn’t a clumsy high school girl anymore. I was in college baby.
I spent the better half of my morning creating different outfits that inspired the kind of college girl I wanted to be. Goodbye bright colors, funky earrings, and converse sneakers. Hello, heeled booties, infinity scarves, and pearls. I enrolled in a huge state University with the intent to leave my theatre loving ways behind and become a Public Relations major. So, I needed to dress the part and I started that day.
I flung open the doors of the giant lecture hall, spotted an open seat at the front of the room and made a beeline for it. As I sort of hop, skipped, walked, trying to be discreet, down the stairs in the middle of the room, my college booties betrayed me. I went hurling down the steps like a baby giraffe just learning how to walk. I heard an audible gasp from the 150+ people in the room, got up and scurried like a tiny bow-wearing rat straight to my open seat.
I sat down, held on to my chest and tried to catch my breath. What a terrible place to die, I thought, surrounded by a giant chalkboard, a professor that doesn’t know my name and frat guy dressed like he was going sailing immediately after this exam.
In the midst of my panic, I forgot to listen to the instructions of the exam given by the professor and instead I only heard him say the words, “you may now begin.”
I sat there looking at the blank blue book with empty pages and a questionable prompt. Breathing deeply. How was I supposed to write an essay about The Introduction to Urban Civilization when I just hurdled in here like an exquisitely dressed feral woman.
I started to write whatever came to mind and as soon as I started to feel confident I looked around the room to check in with boat boy to make sure I was filling out the essay correctly. I looked at his page, he was writing double spaced, I looked at my page, single-spaced. I looked at the girl’s page on the other side of me, double spaced. I was filling the test out all wrong.
My heart started racing, throat started closing up and for two minutes I wondered whether my outfit looked good enough for my ghost to float around wearing it for eternity. Turns out my ghost self would be disappointed in my outfit choices and honestly disappointed in my claims to really want a career in public relations.
I started crying. Embarrassed. Defeated. And a little injured from my dramatic entrance. I closed my book. Got up. Tears in my eyes. And turned my test in before anyone else. As I placed my book down on the professor's desk he looked up at me and gave me a tiny handkerchief from his pocket. Like the sweetest, kindest, old man. We embraced and he whispered a token of knowledge in my ear like a tiny Christmas man who pops up at just the right moment. I decided to transfer colleges and pursue theatre right then and there.
Okay, I’m kidding, in reality, he offered me the handkerchief and I tried to give it back and he politely told me to keep it and I mouthed, “Are you sure?” and he nodded. Then said, “Email me about this test or you will take a zero.” and I went on my way.
But all this to say that there are a lot of moments in my life where I have doubted the things I love and have tried to turn them into something more practical. I started thinking right then about the sort of human I wanted to be and I knew I wanted to be the kind of person that pursues a passion and makes a passionate life out of that.
I hope that I keep pursuing passions and never stop. I hope that I reach tall and wide and wild and sprawling; exploding with funky colors and sneakers and silly wigs from season to season. It may not be practical, but what a glorious life it will be.
THE GUEST
Writer, director, and actor Tyle Bivens was certain he needed to change his glittery ways and become the man his father always dreamed of.
I was a manly man once when I was 6 years old. A big macho manly man covered in blood. I took down a monster that day with my dad, a picture of perfection for an Oklahoman father-son relationship. But yet, the macho syndrome did not last with me, not even a day.
That day I left a gymnastic tournament with a 1st place medal slung around my neck. Gymnastics was something I fell in love with when I watched Shannon Miller dominate the Olympics. Each time I stuck a landing I would twinkle my fingers out just like her. At the end of a tournament, I would sit outside and wait for someone to pick me up. I was usually there alone, and by usually I mean always. My dad reluctantly picked me up asking me to change into “boy clothes” before I hopped into is Ford F-250. He didn’t understand that girls wore leotards, and what I had on was an extremely masculine unitard. Gymnastics made me feel my best but it only pushed me further into alienation with my backwoods redneck family.
If I were to paint a portrait of my dad’s side of the family it would be composed with hues of brown and green and a tiny pop of pink glitter in the middle for me. My cousins, Cody a master hunter, and Ashton a self-proclaimed tomboy didn’t help camouflage how different I was. Cody had a collection of Playboy’s at thirteen years old and Ashton started smoking in kindergarten and begged me to teach her to pee standing up. I, on the other hand, would lip-sync Whitney Houston during the commercials of Law and Order and chose to dress as the Pink Power Ranger for four years in a row. I was beyond different and for the first time, I just wanted to blend in. I sat in the truck trying to see myself through my father’s eyes - I felt uncomfortable. It was my first moment of self-awareness. I empathized with my dad’s confusion of me and I realized how confused I was by him. Why was he like this? I didn’t want to be like him, but maybe I could learn to want to be like him. Knowing you couldn’t teach old dogs new tricks I decided to work harder to be a dog like my dad. From this day on I was no longer a sissy boy - I had ceased to be a Pomeranian and felt the German Shepard blood stir in my veins. This was the moment I became a man.
The first task into my newfound manhood was to take on the biggest problem at our tiny farm – the goddamned mother-fucking critter eating all the shit ass chickens (I cuss now because it’s what men do.) I thought if I was able to catch the critter than maybe I would be a better version of a son for my dad. I wondered what it could be. I was hoping that it was a cat but scared that it was a werewolf zombie - either way tonight was the end of one of us. I stayed up late on the trampoline.
I slid down the rabbit hole of mindset changes I would have to make in my new life:
I would have to freeze my love of Spice Girls.
I would have to give my Mimi her heels back.
I would need to get rid of all of my friends who are girls and learn to spit lugies like the boys in my grade.
I was ready to give it all up to be the boy I was born to be.
Time passed and it was hard for me to not tumble on the trampoline, but I felt like that would trigger a relapse into my Pomeranian ways. Then it happened, I heard the goddamned mother-fucking critter eating all the shit ass chickens in the coop. I yelled for my dad to come and get it. I felt immediately sad. I didn’t want to kill something but I wanted to be a man so I yelled for him again. He came out with an eerie amount of pleasantry knowing that in the next few moments he would end the spirit that lived in the animal. I flashed a faked smile back at him, hoping he wouldn’t see through the mask I had just tied on my face. “Let’s go get ‘em!” he thundered. As the last syllable left his lips I knew this was not going to be a good first day as a man.
I slithered off the trampoline trailing behind my father. His silhouette was outlined by the moonlight. He was so big. His footsteps were heavy and rushed; hoping to find what was in the coop. I thought about the ways I could prove my manhood when we were face to face with the goddamned mother-fucking critter eating all the shit ass chickens in the coop, my list was short. I felt uncomfortable in my newly formed suit of masculinity. So I did what any good southern six-year-old boy does: I prayed.
“God, it's me Tyle (Tyle that is so freaking stupid God knows it's you. Don’t say your name.) It’s been a while. I hope everything is going you know, like, good with you up there. (It’s heaven it's always great. Get to the point) Um, I was wondering if you could do me a tiny, little, baby favor? Could you make me like a real man? I don’t really like being different anymore. I’m on my way to kill some monster and I’m scared. My dad isn’t, Cody wouldn’t be but I am. I want to be a boy like them. Can you please take out what makes me weird and put in what makes them normal? I won't ask for anything else ever again. And I promise to talk more. I‘ve just been really busy (oh no you just lied to God) Love, Tyle. (STOP SAYING YOUR NAME)”
God must have had an influx of prayers that day because I don’t think he heard mine.
We walked into the coop to see the flock lined against the wired walls. They were so still. I looked around hoping that the monster had already fled. Then I saw it, a mound of blood. And as sad as it was to see that we were another chicken down, I was happy I didn’t meet the killer. It was gone. It had to be gone. Right?
It was not gone. I looked up to see a demon opossum chowing on a headless chicken. It’s sharp daggers for teeth were shredding chunks of the bird onto the ground. I screamed. The opossum switched his head in my direction and looked so deeply into my eyes I felt it in my stomach. He hissed spraying chicken blood and saliva all over my shaking 6-year-old frame. I puked. And then committed the worst Pomeranian sissy-boy sin - I cried. I looked at the opossum and watched as my dad kill the animal, which made me cry more.
I sniffled the entire walk back covered in chicken blood. I tried to dodge the unwanted slurs my father had become skilled at hurling my way. I didn’t understand why he hated me so much. I tried so hard for him to love me, but it was never going to work.
I took a shower and thought about my day of failure. I did the only thing that made me feel better, I sang Whitney Houston – loudly. It was off key and pitchy but perfect to me. I watched the blood circle the drain and knew that this was the baptism I needed. This was actually my first moment of self-realization; I was enough just as I am. I realized that maybe I wasn’t good enough for him. But maybe I was enough for me, and that was all I needed.
Next week: a story about surprises by Austin Ratcliff