Never Walked In High Heels

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Author Unknown

It’s the signs of the season. Every single coffee shop changes their plain white cups to red ones with snowflakes on them in an effort to be more festive. The light on the trees sparkle and cause domestic disturbances across the country because he didn’t hang the lights the way she thought they would look appealing. Everything is green, red, or blue even if it doesn’t mean to be particularly festive. Our brains work it into that exact classification. Christmas brings out of everyone the kind and excessive spirit; and the token cripple on the street gets all of it. It comes in the form of doors opening and baristas who refuse to charge me for a cup of coffee. At Christmas time I consistently get money handed to me by complete strangers on the street as if I was some Las Vegas hooker.

I don’t know what they expect me to do with this small fortune that they generously give me in the name of Christmas spirit. Sometimes when it happens I am headed out to the office in a suit and five inch stiletto heels, my hair done up in a tight bun, and the stresses of business pressing on my mind. Do they expect me to buy a weeks worth of groceries with it? Is it simply a nice gesture so I can buy myself a little something special? I’m always confused on how exactly to respond and despite looking, I have yet to find a manners book which adequately explains the protocol of accepting money on the street from perfect strangers.

When I was younger this sort of behavior used to happen me all year round. It took other forms of course. I would be in the grocery store looking around in certain aisles and a perfect stranger decided to get whatever it was on the top-shelf which I happened to be looking at, bring it down and put it in my basket. It didn’t matter if I voiced that I wanted it or not; the product was being stared at and therefore it ought to be mine. I thought that this type of behavior would go away in London since it is the land of the stiff upper lip and somewhat emotionally repressed individual. In addition, I thought that maybe with age and a business suit the alms I was given would stop as well. For the most part I was right, it does. Except during the most wonderful time of the year. Then it seems to be a charity free for all.

To make matters worse I am quite literally living in the homeland of “Tiny Tim.” The Dickensian idea of the crippled child who loves God and blesses everyone seems to run rampant on television as every single BBC channel seems to show a different version of ‘A Christmas Carol.” From December 1^st through the 25^th it’s like everyone wants to see themselves as the redeemed Scrooge and rather than buying the goose in the window and sending it to Mr. Cratchit, they do the modern equivalent by offering to pay for my chai tea latte with soy milk or simply place a fiver in my lap and patting my head as they go by. It seems, spited as I may be, suddenly when the baby Jesus’ come out and ice skating is on the top of every fashionable young persons to-do list; everyone wants to be in a Dickens novel and so they race to the closest person with a disability they can find.

The more I fight their good intentions, assuring them that I don’t need their money, I own my own company and can get along just fine thank you very much, the more they insist. And so it becomes a circular debate in the extremes. They want to give me the money and I keep saying I don’t want it; thus making me look like the more humble individual and so they want to give it to me even more. Usually I lose the fight simply because my hands don’t work and so when they thrust the gifts into my lap I am unable to give the cash back to them before they pat me on the head and run off. Usually I am quickly able to find someone who is truly in need to give it to. After all, that is what the original giver wished to have happen with that portion of their hard earned income.

I am sure there was a time in my life where I fit the stereotype of Tiny Tim very well. I was young, loved God, and decisively optimistic. While I still fit into those categories, as an adult I now own my own company and wear skinny jeans and knee-high boots rather than the modest clothing that such a character would wear. However, it became clear that I was a long way off from outgrowing the public’s perception that I am the innocent disabled child that is able to melt hearts and bring joy; regardless of the fact that I had no sleep, have been suffering from cramps all day, and managed to get into a huge fight with my roommate about whether or not ketchup should be refrigerated. Even at my age and having I still don’t know how to stop the Christmas charity of being given money by complete strangers. I would like to stop it completely because where I come from, throwing money at a woman going down the street means something that no doubt would make Tiny Tim blush.

I’m not sure why whenever I know that I am beginning to perform for an audience, the tension in my body escalates to an extreme degree. I consider myself a rather laid back person and with my disability I am notorious for having rather floppy muscles and overly limber movements. However, you put me on stage even as a trained actress and everything in my body grows nearly as fixed as concrete. This is particularly odd because in my daily life, walking down the street in stiletto heels, leopard print coat, wheelchair and flaming red hair a number of people are looking at me at all times. Even then, I am on display even though I am not necessarily “performing.”

The tension tends to creep in onstage as all of a sudden I attempt to fulfill everyone else’s expectations, please everyone via show rather than attempting to complete the task in front of me. In its simplest form, acting is about communicating ideas, which I should be relatively decent at as a writer. However, I find myself suddenly wanting every word to be clear in a way that is almost unnatural, I want to be sure I fit in on stage, shine, and be noticed. This of course calls in the eternal question that every actor must struggle with, who exactly am I performing for? Here the stereotype of the vain and self absorbed actor is at its root. If I am performing for the effect of self aggrandizement my own narcissistic qualities begin to weigh upon me harder than lead balloons. It is impossible for any actress, regardless of her talent, to please anyone. It is impossible for every performer to be completely understood by every audience. It is impossible to create the same perfect performance over and over again. However, these are the unreasonable standards I attempt to set for myself whenever I am in the wings waiting to go on stage.

Or is it, I perform for the stake of examining man, what it means to be human and the questions which inevitably plague us all. This is the reason why I am attempting to perform at all. I have set out to complete an unreasonable and impossible task. To examine mans’ questions and dilemmas is of course, equally impossible. One would go insane attempting to do so night after night after night in a two hour show. After all, we are called actors, not thinkers, emoters or (some of us may wish otherwise) even philosophers.

After having several weeks of attempted performance and fighting the unnatural tension of my own body I can see that I perform because on some level regardless of what is called the “prime mover” I was created to be a performer. Everything about my experience, my dreams as a little girl, high school aspirations and studies in college, point me in that direction. This means that it is not necessarily on stage opening night with bright flashing lights and perfectly choreographed sequences in which I accomplish my goal of performing. Being a performer can be fulfilled within the four walls of a rehearsal studio, making the audience myself, God and whatever other invisible beings may exist as important as any West End audience or Broadway crowd. Whenever I attempt to slag something off as just an exercise or a simple reading requiring little to no skill, I must then question what it means to be a performer. And realize that on its face, a performer performs simply because, she cannot help herself. She was created for it, even when the audience seems completely invisible.

I’ve heard that everyone else knows this fact, however it was indeed news to me. Winston Churchill managed to lose every public election he ever ran in, ultimately of course he grew to be one of the greatest leaders of the UK in all of history. We hear stories of such great people failing over and over, falling flat on their face and at one time or another an object as simple as the lightbulb would never have come into reality, we sit in awe dumbfounded, and to be fair, never actually believing that such great men would be capable of such great and consistent failures. In our heart of hearts many of us say, “After a while of not getting what I was reaching for, I myself would give up.” This is a statement that I hear over and over as I pass over rejection slips in the mail or don’t get a callback that I feel I particularly deserved. The truth is, I can’t give up my dreams, nobody can. Such stories of great men refusing to give up on their’s only supports the drive. If I gave up I would always wonder, what if?

Often we forget the value of preparing, a willingness to be sharpened as tools, ready when we are called upon, for insisting on being prepared for when that day comes. Many years of work, when thankless and filled with little to no success, we forget that in our world that is driven purely on the basis of results and end gains, its that the preparation in many ways is more important than the achievement itself. The act of sharpening a knife over and over again, even when there are weeks or years when its use is not necessary insures that in the end our efforts will not be laid to waste, and in many ways, that preparation will prove more important than our willingness to cut.

Over and over I’ve heard within acting classes as well as when working on my own writing at home that creating works is a ratio of 10% inspiration and 90% luck. The timing of getting ready equals always sharpening those pencils and creating work that may or may not be called upon. So that when your day comes, you are the best tool possible in an industry that has a distinctive need. People tell me over and over that there will never be a use for an actor with a disability, but they forget that the world said the same thing about airplanes, actors of different races, female writers, about a million unforeseen occurrences, which ultimately had to have happened in order for progress not only to be made but also measurable. New needs arise when we are in desperate times or even when we are simply challenged by those days that are going well. Often times it takes years of failures for a person to be able to fulfill that new need exactly when it is needed. More importantly, it indeed takes decades of failures to be able to stand down an abysmal situation, such as a country at war or the night taking over one’s life, and therein refuse to back down from the challenge that seemed self-evident.

I think of these things often as I walk to various classes wondering if my investments in training and education will ever reap a dividend and even, quite possibly mean a profit, I work in an industry that in many ways doesn’t want change. Doesn’t want people to rock the boat, but in many ways this is of course, every industry. Arts and entertainment is no different in seeking stability than banking and law practice. Maybe the day when my vision of the world will be fulfilled will not come in my lifetime, but I know that the best things in the world are built on the backs of people failing and discovering that even amongst these failures there is a grit and determination that is more helpful than such minor successes along the way. The world was made better by those insisting that failure did not necessarily mean game over. These are the men I think of on my way to class day in and day out. I am reminded of them as I prepare for more exercises and move to face the new day, or as Abraham Lincoln (another man to never win a public election) said, “I will prepare, and someday my chance will come.”

The girl next to me was crying so hard that snot was coming out of her nose. I didn’t know it was possible to be next to someone who was sobbing so hard and yet feel absolutely nothing. Our director and leader of the course, I felt, had manipulated us all into this dramatic situation. For weeks she had been going on and on about how terrifying an impending environmental crisis would be, and that the government and news outlets had yet to report the “real” event that they knew was approaching. She warned the class that it would upset us all, therefore she would not tell us and then today after lunch she decided that she would tell us if we would vote unanimously that that is what we wanted to hear. I really didn’t care, but being the last person to vote out loud I said that I wouldn’t mind hearing it either. Within five minutes the girl next to me was in tears out of full, unadulterated fear about our impending doom which of course to her, would come in the next decade.

She was in one of those situations where she was afraid of not knowing the truth and yet horrified to learn about it. And so, she would remark later, she went home terrified, analyzing how her life would change should the economy collapse and clean water become impossible to find. She was shaking as she packed up her books, got on the tube and went to lie down in her own bed at home. Of course, on this particular day the sun was shining and the birds were singing. There was nothing to fear. That is how panic works. The nature of panic comes at its finest when there is nothing, absolutely nothing to be afraid of. It comes in and paralyzes us all so that even the daily tasks of getting out of bed in the morning become mountains to climb.

When panic comes into play we all stop thinking, which of course is the absolute worst thing possible to do. It is the equivalent of taking our hands off the wheel when we run across a patch of black ice while driving down the motorway. We stop thinking. We go into what is commonly known as “survival mode.”

Of course in our society today there are entire industries built on keeping panic alive within the population. One needs only to look towards journalism to see this, the health industry, the safety industry, the insurance industry. All of these different services are in and of themselves good. But they have figured out that if they keep people running around attempting to prevent one disaster after the next by constantly feeding them such a constant source of panic, its better for their industry in general. Who would not want to keep their family and loved one’s safe? Who would want to, after a disaster say, I should have bought X and Y and then all of our lives could have been saved. But its the equivalent of having one of those extremely draining friends who always need a crisis to be dealing with in order to make life interesting and so they flit, creating crises, squabbles, panic from one person to the next in order to ensure their survival and to keep themselves dependent on other people.

Inevitably, when we listen to the news broadcasts, the insurance commercial, read the health & safety pamphlets, we all fall for it. As if this world were at one time blissful and perfect, now needs us to be alert to all the dangers out there. The world was never without danger, there has always been some disaster looming on the horizon and sometimes unfortunately coming straight to our front door. Perhaps I can say this because in my own life, I have never known it to be anything else. In my own life I could see that once one battle is fought, another one will come, so forth and so on.

There finally came a time for me that I had been scared for so long, afraid of what school administrators might do next, what discrimination I would next encounter, what friend would get the next form of meningitis that able bodied people were not susceptible to. Eventually the panic wore off and I became immune. Realizing that this life, as uncomfortable as it often was, is what my life is going to be like. I might as well get used to that fact instead of succumbing to panic and not allowing anyone else to feed such paralysis.

It is the nature of panic to put blinders on. Permitting only a limited and self-centered view of the world. It is impractical, and more often than not succumbing to panic works its way into allowing room for a crisis to take over. Perhaps it is because I am a person of faith that I have generally accepted from day one, that the world will end. That is how my parents taught me, and so ironically, when we talk about the end of the world in classrooms and in debates, I feel nothing. Simply…happy that someday it will all be gone and perhaps there will be nothing or perhaps there will be something better to take its place. But that better option will never come, the improvements will never be seen and the joy we all long for will never be created if we succumb to panic.

I was walking home one grey Sunday afternoon, when I met a young man, who happened to attend my church, he was bringing his gas canisters to have them refilled for his boat. I was on my way home battling the grim London rain and unexpected cold weather, where as is often the case with Sunday afternoons, I fully planned to curl up with my television and to watch a plethora of movies, among them seeing that I was feeling particularly spectacular this weekend included Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Birdcage and Mrs. Doubtfire. I informed him of my plans and immediately invited him to do likewise.

“Oh no I don’t think I would enjoy those movies at all, they’re not really my type.” I suggest that maybe he would come over and watch The Birdcage, a good mid 1990s film about the importance of family values regardless of your background. He backed up even more, immediately gave an excuse and started walking the opposite direction.

I like movies about men who dress up in drag and come across other strange beings in the human race, all of a sudden my life looks incredibly normal compared to three female impersonators making their way in a giant tour bus across the Australian outback. They calm me down and remind me in a way that romantic comedies and action films can’t, that absolutely nobody’s life could be remotely classified as normal if put under much examination. Many people I know can’t stand the strangeness of these movies even within the safety and comfort of the darkness within a cinema. These people I suppose look for films where everything is normal and expected. Films that reflect their values and their lives, which like it or not, are usually greatly different than my own, or, on the other hand; these people are looking for depth and poignancy in every film. A moral lesson that can be repeated in both Sunday school and on the steps of the Washington D.C. Capitol Building, more power to them. I guess when I pop a DVD into my television I’m looking for some way to remind myself that despite the extreme strangeness and oddity among people I find in my own life, its all going to be okay.

Looking at movies such as The Birdcage or Mrs. Doubtfire and honestly listening to them (indeed that’s the key) one can see a host of family values being supported and portrayed in a much more real and dare I say honest way than many of the Sunday school films produced by so-called “Christian” film houses. Their’s not the typical problems and dilemmas that are repeated over and over as new and exciting plots which test us as barometers of moral courage, indeed if the situation is black and white, just about everyone regardless of name of faith/god he worships can determine the right end of the path to take. The situations that test us in real life as well as the situations that make us think when we are telling stories, are the sticky ones. Filled with uncommon characters and circumstances, that don’t follow the Sunday morning curriculum. They don’t look nice in a suburban atmosphere, and they may never make you popular in school.

Perhaps the greatest virtue of all, be it family value or otherwise. Is the willingness to admit that one’s life is not ideal and even more shockingly, not perfect. This is the thought that we as Americans routinely revolt against as we visit our car washes and do everything possible to make sure our homes look like they belong on the covers of magazines. There is an ongoing pressure in the Western world that I see where a person has to be absolutely justified in his actions and blend in with the rest of suburbia around him. If you fall into this trap, ultimately everyone runs your family as you run around seeking approval from the people you know.

A willingness and almost preference to look odd to outsiders be it the way you dress or how you behave is almost a trademark of moral living. It is these people who refuse to look like everyone else, thus making us all take a second look that also refuse to look for praise be it from a fellow stripper or your small town minister. Being anything less complicated than the divine creature you were created to be is surely short changing yourself in order to live up to someone else’s expectations. Such is never acceptable to any all knowing creator or life force that has put specific energy into building you into the being that you were created to be. In terms of everyone else, when looking at the force that runs the universe in its eyes, the opinions of your next door neighbor hardly matter. After all, it is impossible to place judgment on anyone else until you know the complex characters that they too were created to be.