Picture me, if you will, clothed in a flowing silk shirtwaist dress of livid 80's green; black, painful shoes with pointed toes and a threatening heel; scarlet lips and painted brows that would inspire Solomon to blunder about metaphorically. Think of me as a girl, just 12 years old, straining to seem 20, or better, 25 and fully a woman. Imagine a girl who became a woman in her head long before she sprouted tits. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer, invariably, was "retired".
In my head, I floated down a wide, spiral stair in the grande lobbye [sic] of the Omni Netherland Plaza in downtown Cincinnati like a verdant angel (I thought in antiquated words even then; a steady diet of Barclay and McCutcheon will ruin any girl for the modern age). Actually I teetered down, desperately trying to maintain both balance and composure; the former for the heels, the latter for the fact that the unfamiliar, borrowed silk of my big sister's dress seemed too light and left me feeling exposed.
Of course, it could have been the stares.
I grew up in an artificial lime light. This statement assumes there must be a genuine lime light, but I've yet to see it. The problem with lime light is that everything you see is the bilious hue of projected jealousies, and even a pair of rose colored glasses just makes it all a sort of indistinct and confused brown.
The hotel was beautiful, elegant and restored to its former Art Deco glory. The plaster arabesques of Erte curled around corners and about the many rich moldings. Conscious even then of such things, I tried to make my smile match them. A necessary smile that had to be there, so it might as well blend with the decor. Red and full and hard; bee-stung lips stretched formally over prominent eye teeth, of which I was quite vain. Just a budding vampire, waiting to break the flesh of the next sycophant to mistake me for a child.
I remember what it was like to grow up knowing too early what power meant; power of a kind that had only limited range, but infinite scope. I was a Princess Royal, or Grand Duchess at the very least, brought up to perform like a puppet with a perma-smile. I was the youngest daughter of Prince John, Defender of the Faith, Lord of the Realm, Senechal of the Waiting and Mouthpiece of the Emporer Himself, May He Live Forever to regret his inaction.
Raised by the best of parents, but unduly influenced by perpetuated lies and unholy bootlickers, I was an odd child with few real friends. Those friends I did have were counted among the aristocracy. I like to think that I was guilelessly led into the position, and born into certain immutable privilege that I was powerless to deny, but I think differently now. If I seemed guileless, it was only because I wasn't really paying attention at the time. How greedily we all casually sucked up the attention, while damning it in secret conversation.
I wasn't the only one.
And all about my feet scattered little unimportant ants, little people from little places who knew my name and so did not feel the need to introduce themselves. Ever. They had known me since I was born, seen me singing, seen my sometimes outrageous but always expensive clothing and no doubt snickered behind my back. Didn't I know their names? Some, but only those I liked, which were few and always rebellious. I lived vicariously through them, because I couldn't afford rebellion. Why willingly step down from this pedestal and sacrifice the view? I can still feel the serfs' sharp shoulders pressing into my throat as I endured their empty yet enthusiastic embraces.
And I sang, oh, how I sang. I sang their songs and I spoke their words and I coughed it all up every night before bed, hating the wretched taste of tepid, two-faced religiousity. O Sifuni Mungu this, you tool of a quasi-Christian.
Over all of this unctuous host was spread a cloudy film of gilded filth, and the good seeds grew up rank and thin under its canopy. The evil ones perpetuated and fed it with a roiling boil of sanctimonious Bible-rot, living solely to spout passages out of context to fit their little beliefs. Full of fallacies and proud of their shiny veneer, always polishing what would one day be torn from them and shaken over a slow fire of holy exposure.
The truth will set you free, but first it will destroy your innocence.
