HUMBLED

I get on my high horse. I don't know why. I don't know where the high horse comes from. I have Mars, Jupiter, north node and vertex in Capricorn in the fifth house. I have a Virgo moon in the first house. My Pluto in Libra squares Mars in Capricorn tight. In the progressed chart I have Venus and sun conjunct in Aries. But I get on my high horse and I burn bridges left and right. I tell what I think needs to be told. I vent. I bitch. I kvetch. I do go on with much muchness. I'm ridiculous. Most of the time I just want to escape. I want to run and hide, give myself a new name. Roxi Xmas. Some unpronounceable symbol. Then someone goes and humbles me. I'm forever humbled by the holiness in other people.

Yesterday I found out that my final grade in math is a C. I was certain my final grade would be an F. I was certain I wouldn't receive my BFA, finally, at the age of forty-three. I won't walk across the stage. I couldn't afford the cap and gown and didn't like the idea of waiting for hours just to hear my damn name called. So the paper that proves I accomplished something will be mailed to me.

I still feel like I have just won an Oscar. I had Oscar fantasies when I was a kid. I was bullied throughout childhood and adolescence. I was never a cheerleader or an honor student. I never sat at the cool table. Never went to a single prom. When the cool kids were going to parties, getting drunk, getting high, getting fucked, I was babysitting and mooning over Beatles records. I was reciting all of Vivien Leigh's lines from "Gone With The Wind." I would wake up someday and be Scarlett O'Hara and various motherfuckers would be crazy in love with me. I would wake up someday and be Vivien Leigh and I'd stand onstage in a designer gown without any blood on it and I'd give a speech. My speech would not be gracious. My speech would be a big FUCK YOU to everyone who ever shit on me and spit on me.

This will be cheesy as fuck and I don't care. I'm not being timed. I'm standing onstage and I can stand here until I've delivered my speech. And it isn't a FUCK YOU at all. My gratitude is sincere. Thank you to Cindy for giving birth to me. Thank you to Fred for teaching me hatred, fear, guilt, shame before I even knew what my name was. Thank you to my little sister for worshiping me before she learned that I was a wreck of a human being. Thank you to my little brother for sucking his thumb and listening with big blue eyes when I read books to him and for growing from Dusty to Dustin, a man who floors me with the beauty and strength of his character. Thank you to my maternal grandmother for reading fairy tales to me from those beautifully illustrated Childcraft books and for telling me stories about Pocahontas and Indian Chief and Suzie and for baking M&M cookies with me and taking me to the park in Bridgeport to climb the rocket. Thank you to my cousin Shane for walking away from the tacky little girl who showed him her pink panties and following me outside and reaching for my hand. Thank you to Greg for lighting up every room he ever entered and for sending me a letter from prison with a picture of me with stars in my hair and telling me I could shine as brightly as any other girl in the world. Thank you to Chase for being the first man who tried. Thank you to Brian for not loving me because if I'd gotten my wish and married him it would have been a disaster. Thank you to my first husband for loving me long before he knew me and for loving me after he learned my ugliness.

The man who inspired Walking The Earth gets his own paragraph. Thank you for giving me a home and for telling me if I ever got fat you would dump me so fast my head would spin. Thank you for inspiring tears, endless tears in me. I've never cried harder. Right now I'm forty-three years old and I've never loved a man as deeply as I loved you. I still don't know why. I have a few ideas. Limbic xmas tree and all of that. Thank you for trying. Thank you for taking me to your mother's house. Thank you for introducing me to your family. Thank you for showing me your son's grave. Thank you for being the drill sergeant with the boot up my ass. If it hadn't been for you there is no way in seven hells I would have ever passed remedial math and made it to this bright, bright day. The last time we spoke on the phone I told you I'll love you until the day I die. Man, I hope I was lying.

Thank you to Mrs. Becker. She was my fifth grade homeroom teacher. She told me she looked forward to the day she would read a book by Misti Velvet Rainwater. I made her laugh until she cried.

Thank you to my acting professor Jay Jennings. I dreamed of him the other night. Holy holy holy.

Thank you to the professor who did not accept my sloppy research paper on The Yellow Wallpaper but made me jump through flaming hoops of fire until I got that shit straight.

Thank you to Prince. I started praying to you the day I found out you had died.

Thank you to Shari Oestreich, the only friend I made in Fredericksburg, Texas. The day I found out you had died I searched until I found the typewritten letter you sent me, apologizing on behalf of all the football players who mocked me as I wandered down the hallways of Fredericksburg High School, a frizzy haired brunette lost in a sea of perfect Germanic blondes.

Thank you to every family member every boyfriend every friend every professor who ever wrote me off as beyond hope and redemption. Thank you to Amy and Anna for shitting all over me in sixth grade. Thank you to Tonya for feeling superior to me and judging me for working as a topless dancer for one semester when I was attending Texas State.

Thank you to Todd Moore for gracing Instant Pussy with your fire and for inscribing my copy of that outlaw bible with "misti...yr a helluva poet" and for inviting me to your 70th birthday party and for telling me to "hang in there." I can't believe I'm still here.

Thank you to Hollie Stevens for inspiring me and for being a catalyst in my life. I never met you but when I learned of your death I mourned as if you had been a family member. Holy holy holy. Hollie.

Thank you to Henry Miller. Someday I'll make it to Big Sur. I might be ashes in an urn but I will make it to Big Sur and Moonlight Sonata will play.

Thank you to Erica Jong for writing How To Save Your Own Life. Thank you to Sylvia Plath for Ariel. Thank you to Anne Sexton for The Death Notebooks. Thank you to Gertrude Stein for Tender Buttons. Thank you to Yoko Ono for Grapefruit. Thank you to John Lennon for everything. Thank you to Jimi Hendrix for every damn thing but especially "Bold As Love" and "If Six Was Nine." Thank you, Bon Scott. Thank you, Janis Joplin. Thank you, Jim Morrison. Thank you "Lizard Queen" for trashing me online after sending me a letter written on parchment in purple calligraphy, thanking me for knowing the truth when I read it. Gracias, Sandra Cisneros. Girl, we got a chingon in common! You tried to seduce him. I successfully seduced him more than a few times and threw back with him in Progreso and Matamoros. La verdad. But I'm pretty sure that Iowa Writer's and Loose Woman trump dick so...you win.

Thank you to Elsa for inspiring me and countless others, tirelessly. I am honored to know you, know of you. Your light is one of the brightest I have ever witnessed.

Thank you to the manager of the hot shit designer boutique on Union Street in San Francisco who raked me over the goddamn coals during a ten minute job interview. You inspired me to take the bus to Golden Gate Bridge and contemplate jumping off. Powerful stuff, words.

Thank you to every small press writer/editor/organ grinder who wrote me off as a bat shit crazy broad. You were/are all so fucking right. Namaste, as they say.

An infinity of gratitude to my son and his father. There will never be enough words. The love floods me. The love shown to me by the double Scorpio and the double Leo is the most humbling thing I have ever witnessed and received on this god awful glorious planet.

Thank you to my mom's third husband for loving my son as if he were his own blood. Thank you for telling me that if you had been my husband you would have thrown me out on my ass. You intensified my self-loathing when that and a car loaded down with everything I owned packed in Wal-Mart bags was all I had.

Thank you to Mamaw Crenshaw for always telling the truth. Straight. No chaser. Sagittarius women rock pretty fucking hard.

Thank you to the man who inspired Bullshit Rodeo. I agree. The giving tree needs to be put out of its misery with a chainsaw.

Thank you to Andy the Artist and Andy The Retired Vice Cop. Scorpio. Cancer. I dig watery men but alas, they do not dig me.

Thank you Stepdad for getting down on your knees and kissing my hand that December day in the hospital in Midland, Texas. I try to tell myself that I am a queen and queens do not accept crumbs. Crumbs are for cockroaches. That day you saw me and my swollen eyes, swollen from crying for hours...and you saw a queen. I looked out the window. The sun was setting. I was holy, holy, holy.

Thank you to every Baptist preacher who ever Baptized me. I'm pretty sure that unlike the dead butterfly referenced in Bullshit Rodeo I will make it to Heaven.

Thank you to Dolly Parton for "Hard Candy Christmas" and thank you to Patsy Cline for every damn thing and thank you to Pluto and beyond to Billie Holiday. Girl. I feel ya.

Thank you to Nicole. When I sat on the futon in your den almost catatonic in pain you handed me that necklace with tears in your eyes and spoke words I don't exactly recall but I recall the tribute and the praise and I will never forget that moment. You held me up. I wanted to die when I was thirty-nine. I thought my life was over. You assured me that it wasn't.

Thank you Famous Poet for writing shitty poems about me and my tears. I'm crying right now but my tears have nada to do with you. You got good taste in records and books. Bravo.

Thank you to Peach. Thank you to Lauren. It's so fucking rare that I connect with women. Because...Texas. Pinterest. Women who define themselves solely through their men and alla that noise.

Lastly. Thank you to Erica Warthen for blowing me away on the open mic and for hugging me and praising me and for asking for a copy of Bullshit Rodeo. I am humbled as hell. Holy holy holy.

Wait. I forgot Seymour Glass. But he already knows.

p.s. okay so there was some FUCK YOU to this and there is blood all over my designer gown but really and truly, y'all...I'm happy to be here and we are all connected in some weird mystical way and I can dig it...hope y'all can, too!

p.p.s. BILLY FUCKING JOEL!!! "She can't be convicted. She's earned her degree." WORD.