Me. And this is a story about me. Doing what I'm doing in this picture--CREATING.
I just applied for This American Life to be an intern for the spring. As part of the application (which turned out to be like novella length holy crap) you had to share a favorite personal story.
This was harder than it sounded. I tried to brainstorm. Has anything ever happened to me, I thought, mind whirling. No. No it hasn't. Have I ever done anything interesting? NO. OH NO, I realized. I've never done anything. I've had no experiences. I GREW UP IN A DARK ROOM. I'VE LIVED IN A DARK ROOM ALL MY LIFE. LIKE SOME HIDEOUS PERMUTATION OF THE GOOD OLD ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE.
AAAAHHHHHHH.
Then I calmed down and called my sister who in general has a better grip on my own life than I do and she reminded me of something that happened when I was little, so I went with that.
And this is what I wrote:
When I was little—and all stories that start that way are pretty awful, like, just because you think you were precocious and adorable does not mean the rest of the world does, etc.—but so anyway. When I was little I wrote a story.
Scene: little girl, honey curls. Wearing the same white flannel printed with rosebuds so small they look like measles. My nightgown matches my doll’s that I still pretend to play with when other girls are over. Blue eyes that look black because her eyes are so small. For some reason—some assignment, some activity, I had to write a new ending to a movie or story.
I had my own desk then—white—and I knew I made a point of sitting at it to complete the assignment, calling my mother in at one point to see me working. The desk was a sticking point between me and my mother. We had absolutely no money then (although I didn’t know it at the time) and I had just basically prostrated myself to get this desk so I could do homework at it like a real adult. However, once received, I continued to complete most of my academic and epistolary business on my stomach on the floor.
So I sit down at my desk, marker in hand. Since I was writing something that would no doubt impact the world, I judiciously chose a narrow purple marker that was all business compared to the broad shallow points of markers better suited to coloring.
Well, I remember thinking, marker poised over paper. This will be easy—I don’t even have to think about it. There’s one story in particular that the existing ending just doesn’t do at all.
I was five when Aladdin came out, and I remember losing count after how many times I had seen it after fifty. (I’m not sure why I was keeping count. Was I proud? Did I think that was something to be proud of? Probably.) Aladdin, of course, being the Disney movie supposedly based off the tale from the Arabian Nights but in fact being just kind of an animated version of the 1940 Thief of Baghdad, with June Duprez and the inimitable Conrad Veidt.
This dude was Cesare in Caligari, and the inspiration for both Jafar and the Joker. But I digress.
The plot of Aladdin: Rebellious princess with kind but dim father seeks to escape marriage to king’s advisor Jafar, falls in love with a plucky dude hard on his luck with a puckish sidekick, there’s a genie, the plucky dude saves the day and everyone’s happy.
(But I mean everyone knows this.)
At the end of Aladdin, when all seems lost, the character Jafar has gotten all these magic powers so he can do whatever he wants. According to the film, what he wants is piles of money, his old boss dancing on puppet strings, and the princess in scanty clothes and chains serving him.
Totes a kids' movie. Didn't scar anyone at all.
But so anyway. At the end, Aladdin (the hero) comes and challenges Jafar. At some point in the fight Jafar turns into a giant cobra and fights Aladdin. Of course he is defeated, and Aladdin marries Jasmine and everyone lives happily ever after.
They are pretty cute. But I was having none of it.
I felt very strongly about how dumb the ending of Aladdin was, and how I could improve it.
So, intent on contributing my vision to the world, I wrote my story. Shared my truth with the world in magic marker.
I probably took an hour or more to really complete the thing, wrapping up all the loose ends and doing justice to the aesthetic and the characters. Also I kept changing my mind about phrasing, so I had to marker out a good deal of the prose. It looked like it was heavily redacted instead of edited.
Once finished, I proudly called my father into the room to read my story.
Can we just pause and look at how cute my dad is.
My father is the sweetest and most supportive man alive. I remember him walking in and smiling, and saying, “Oh wow, I can’t wait to read this! What story did you choose?”
“Aladdin,” I told him.
“That was a good idea,” he told me. He took my colorful pages and started to read.
The clearest thing I remember—and this is one of those crystal memories decontextualized and bizarre in its clarity—is exactly how his warm paternal smile darkened with confusion and probably even a little disbelief and disgust, before he recovered his smile.
This is the closest approximation I could find. Madeline and I call this his "daughter face."
“Huh. Ok. Bridgette,” he said. “This is really great. Let me show Mom.”
“Oh! Of course,” I agreed. He brought it downstairs, and a few minutes later I heard a sort of dark laughter before my mother came up and asked my questions about my story, being really warm and supportive while still trying not to laugh while my father just sort of stood there.
I hadn’t written anything scatological or sexual or anything outside a standard little girl’s cultural vocabulary.
This is a summary of what I had written: At the big fight in the end, in the movie, Jafar traps Jasmine in a big hourglass before he turns into a giant cobra. About halfway through the fight, Aladdin manages to break her out. That’s where I come in.
Jasmine, maybe or maybe not bearing the brunt of some projected feelings, decides right then and there that Aladdin is stupid and that Jafar is much cooler because he can turn into a giant snake.
Like, what more could you want in a man was my general thought I guess.
The whole hourglass thing (and preceding hour of narrative) was just kind of a misunderstanding. She voices this decision to Jafar, who’s all like, “awesome.” Aladdin voices his concerns about the development, and Jasmine tells him to shut up.
What a b.
Jafar asks her (politely) if she would like to join him in beating up Aladdin. She agrees wholeheartedly. As a sort of favor/surprise, Jafar also turns her into a giant snake. They beat Aladdin, of course, who runs away crying, while Jafar and Jasmine discovering a newfound respect and affection for one another.
I mean they got along sometimes, right?
(ps don't google image search "jafar jasmine" for the love of all that is holy.)
At the end they get married. I can’t remember if they stayed snakes or not.
Probably they stayed snakes.
What I had written—creepy fanfic—solved a basic problem, for me.
Probably they might have felt more like this.
Everyone in the movie had had a happy ending. Except, as my young self noted, Jafar. Jafar was probably not the most jazzed with how everything played out. And so I was not jazzed about that.
Basically designed with little girls in mind. Oh god. I just remembered I had a toy staff.
I can’t really explain Jafar’s appeal to a young girl. He was flamboyant and femme and extremely funny, and used words my mom had to explain to me. But, he was obviously smarter than everyone else, and was pretty frustrated about his lack of power being proportional to how intelligent he was.
Also he could turn into a snake. And man, was I a little girl who loved me some reptiles. I’d often get excluded from playing “house” on the playground because I would insist that no house was complete without a resident velociraptor or dragon or, after seeing Aladdin, giant cobra.
Would have livened up a game of house, was what I held.
I like this story because it kind of instantiates a lot of tendencies and trends that would manifest themselves as a sort of themes in my life.
I love little microcosmic moments like that.
This story of the story I wrote presaged my interest in fey sociopaths and weird power dynamics, and my willingness to forgive smart people pretty much anything. My absolute impatience with earnestness and physical beauty as values to be championed at all costs. My loving father consistently being horrified and bemused by his daughters. My absolute ignorance and later dismissal of what might come off as creepy to others, and my love of writing and sharing stories.
It’s a shape in a fragment in a fractal; inconsequential, revealing, ridiculous—like a ritual gesture in Noh theater. A specific angle of the face or fan in fact tells a whole history and future; a life in shorthand.
Everyone, upon reflection, has those microcosm stories because although people get wiser and more compassionate their basic drives and passions rarely change.
This is one of mine.
I may have been (still am) a little creepy, but I was the most adorable creepy dragon-girl around.
