Sunday, May 26, 2013

Pride & Bullshit

Lately my pride has been getting the best of me.

When I read Anne Rice's novel, "Queen of the Damned" , back in 2002, I wanted to know what made the Queen turn evil and I got my answer.

For me, I think what turned me into a bitch was the day I decided to put my foot down and not let fuckers try to make me feel inferior anymore.

This is going to be such a silly blog.

My first brush with pride came in 1992, I was attending Haskell when it was Junior College and distinctly remember this Paiute girl giving me nasty looks when she drove by in her car and I didn't even know the bitch.

Its because of this instance that I've always resented anyone with an elitist attitude and have a tendency to withdraw myself from anyone who I think has poor character. Can you guys tell from this paragraph that I have trust issues? I can.

For me, trust is a very valuable commodity which is why if anyone wants to be in my circle, they have to earn it.  I would expect no different in return.

My turning point didn't happen until years later, until then I just wondered around aimlessly trying to figure out who I was.  The only thing I knew for sure, if complete strangers were going to shit on me than I at least needed to be able defend myself with a larger than life persona but how?

A few years later, some queen friends helped me soul search for my new identity and viola, this larger than life personality was birthed  This new persona was confident, active, and ready to explore life with new eyes.  This new persona was rooted in being flamboyant and just so out there.

And this is about the time where I started owning up to everything I did, regardless if my actions were positive or negative, I was going to embrace everything about it.  Strangely enough, I found it very gratifying being the center of attention, whether it was on the dance floor, gossiping in the student cafeteria, or as it turned out later in life, being on stage.

In 1997 thats when I knew I had power, I invited my old queen friend - Jade to attend Haskell with me that semester to have fun! I needed a bff to go party and play volleyball with.  We didn't care about trying to be on top of the social ladder or fitting in, we were there to have fun.  Looking back, we really were the Romy & Michelle of Haskell that Spring.  We didn't care what other people thought, we marched to our down drum and did everything our own way, so much so one our of straight guy friends, "Roy" , admitted to us that he never gave a fuck about what anybody thought of him at school except for me and Jade.

And to be honest, we only giggled at Roy because we would catch him acting like a girl and he didn't even know it, to us that was funny.  And then in another instance, a two spirited friend admitted to me & Jade that he talked to his therapist about us a lot. Wow, what do you say to something like that?  I don't know how that made Jade feel but I felt incredibly flattered.  At the end of the semester during the Graduation Powwow, it became clear to us we were under everyones radar whether we wanted to be or not. I distinctly remember the family of a graduating friend commenting, "look at those queens, we've only been here 2 days and we keep seeing them everywhere" . Haha, I attribute that to wearing the right color on the right day.

My first intervention came in circ 1999, when another queen friend with many many more years of experience pulled me aside and said, "stop being a bitch" .  And I said, "why" ?  She basically said it was a waste of time.  In 2000, thats when I heard another one of my queen mentors say, "I think we created a monster" .  That made me giggle because it was probably true.

During this time, it wasn't all bad, I'd also like to think I did things for myself to build positive character.  Like sobering up and also volunteering my time to lots of community events.  And then in some odd way I then became a social pillar for the school, somehow my presence there kept the school stable.  This is what I call using power responsibly, if I could affect someone elses life in a positive way, then thats what I was going to be about.  By then Jade was gone and I was still there because I was serious about school, I wanted that piece of paper that validated all the energy and hard work I was putting into my education.

If anyone has ever experienced my bitchy side, it was most likely because I felt like I've had to defend myself.  I'm not the type of person who goes around picking fights.  Thats not me and never has.  I've always stayed in my lane and tried to do things that enhance my life.  And the last thing I'd ever want to do is make someone else feel shitty.

If anyone read this blog and feels that I still need to grow up, I've been trying.

xoxo


Friday, May 24, 2013

Exhausted

Its May 24th and I finally have a break. For the past 30 days I've been filming my first movie, "All The Others Were Practice" , which has been a very grueling and a very rewarding experience.  And can you guys believe I'm playing the lead in the movie, which means I have the most lines and have to be on set everyday. 

I definitely have a new respect for actors. Since we started filming I haven't used my memory skills like this since college. The second day we filmed I only had 4 lines in a group scene which ended up kicking ass because I thought it was going to be easy, looking back on it, it probably was a good thing that happened because it motivated me to step up my game. That same day another actress said we had some heavy scenes coming up and that I needed to go study, so thats what I did, I went straight to Starbucks, sat down with my script and began to activate my old brain pathways.

The rewarding part of filming a movie has been getting to work with professional actors. It was a little intimidating at first to work with professional actors so my main job was to listen, watch, and learn from these guys. Most of these actors are SAG *Screen Actors Guild* , accomplished theater actors or have a MFA in Acting. And whats great, for this being my first acting job I've gotten some great compliments from them like, "you were really easy to work with", or, "I thought you've been doing this for while" .

As we've been filming the movie I'm beginning to understand the movie is less about me and more about our supporting cast.  We have so many great actors with great scenes! We don't start filming again until mid June so I'm looking forward to my mini break and then to finish it out, I can't wait to see how it turns out.

In other news the month of May was great, my Aunt Bev visited for a couple of weeks and it was my 39th Bday this past month too, yay me!

Here are some photos from this past weeks shoot, we went to Guernville for this shooting sequence.

xoxo