Rebel, Rebel
I wanna talk about this girl.
So, what we have here is a girl in hot jeans, her dad’s shirt from the 70s, a sweater with moth eaten holes on the elbows, her eyebrows plucked within an inch of their lives, a Farrah Fawcett 80s flip of the hair and a look that just dares you to say something, anything.
By 15, I had a fully-formed rebel living within. One who called most of the shots. Her blood ran sangfroid. She didn’t give a shit about much of anything. She’d been there, had that done to her. This rebel girl could cut you down with a look, with a swagger, with a killer retort. Her heart was armoured.
Rebel Dana knew how to bully a bully. She laughed in the face of danger (well, and stupidity). She did not rise to the bait. She did not show fear.
Age 8: Rebel Dana is born. My dad called me Black-Eyed Susan for awhile. I found it endearing but also worried that he’d forgotten my name.
It Begins
At 15, I was one year away from starting to smoke cigarettes; two years away from getting wasted on pot and drinking Singapore Slings in bars that loved underaged girls, having consensual sex for the first time, and fighting off the compulsion to jump in front of a hurtling subway car. I was three years away from being kicked out of my house, from dropping out of school, and dropping into acid, mushrooms and cocaine for the first (and certainly not the last!) time.
All the while, my Rebel self was running the show. Believe it or not, I credit her with saving my life many times over; she could read people and situations and intentions with a clarity that only the chronically unsafe and the hyper-vigilant can wield.
Nothing got past her. She was quick thinking and could run like hell. Transactional manoeuvres as pertained to the male of the species were her speciality. She could “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” (Muhammad Ali).
A Welcome Return
And, guess what? After years of dormancy, she’s back. The more I’d created a safe life for myself, the less needed was her particular skill set. But, well, the bullies, the abusers, the idiots, and the psychopaths of the world are being super loud and proud again which has been a rallying cry to my Rebel self.
The first order of business, once she’d dusted herself off and took a lay of the land, was to reduce the crazy level of fear coarsing through me. “Chill, man, chill”, she said. “Be cool.” Sometimes you just need someone else to take the reins and as I’d always trusted her to keep me safe or, at least, to face danger with dignity, I’ve given over, only this time around it’s without the drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and other sundry escapist mechanisms. That’s probably a good thing.
So, Rebel Dana is loose in the world and making the most of it. The swagger is back. The fuck you is back. The optimism of a limited youthful purview is back. I hold my head higher now - like, literally: I make eye contact, suss out who you are and let you get the measure of me. I allow the anger to wash over and through me but I don’t get stuck there as much. I’m shaking it off.
Rebel Dana was angry all the time but because anger on a girl was unattractive, inappropriate, and unladylike (probably still is but I don’t give a hoot anymore), she learned to hide it, to stuff it down, to pretend that she was too cool for bourgeois emotions. But it showed up in other ways: an eating disorder, problematic relationships with problematic men, breaking as many rules as she could get away with, playing it tough.
“I’m walking here!” ~ from Midnight Cowboy
It looks like Rebel Dana is going to stick around for a while and I’m grateful for that. She’s happy to do the heavy lifting. She’s feeling strong, and prickly just like a good sidekick should. I’ve had to remind her that we don’t smoke or drink or do drugs anymore and she’s learning to live with that.
As a compromise, she gets to be a pissy, judgmental teenager once in a while. Recently, she saw some other teenager vaping on the street and she scoffed. There is no cool factor associated with vaping, she told me with an eye roll.
Kelly, played by Jackie Earle Haley, from the movie Bad News Bears knows that looking cool is key to smoking.
And, yes, I have a new home for the blog.