Pocahontas Never Came Home

[Skinner]

They never called.
To burn up some waiting time I ran out to Premiere Costumes yesterday afternoon. This is always dangerous as I have a still-dwindling obsession with costume shops and tend spend hours there. This Christmas I bought most of my presents at a place called “Halloween Adventure!” (What do you get the person who has everything? A wig and false teeth. Can’t go wrong. ) As a kid I would save my money to go to Premiere to by pirate earrings and joke gum. But this time I had a mission: tattoo coverage.

My father didn’t want to rehire the costume woman we used last month for a number of reasons – she overcharged him, she was lazy, she wasn’t very good at doing make-up, and most heinously, she called him “Ernie.” He really hates that. I don’t know why, but it drives him nuts. So I often find it funny to introduce him to my boyfriends as Ernie. Hilarious in the moment, cold, lonely, and baby-less in the long run.

I took a makeup class in camp when I was nine, so I was the natural choice as a replacement make-up artist. I knew that I would need some…uh....make up. Honestly, I would have been lost, if it hadn’t been for a kindly old transvestite who helped me. Of course, like all kindly old transvestite make-up artists, (s)he was exasperated with all my questions and answers, and loved to shit-talk actors. But it was in that grumpy old man/woman way, so it was cute.

When I look at transvestites, I always feel like I’m slacking off on my own upkeep. Like, should I be shaving my widow’s peak, too? Or my eyebrows? I am definitely under-accessorizing. The transvestite helping me wasn’t a showgirls type, but more an eccentric old lady type. I caught myself thinking, “That’s the kind of old lady I want to be.” Then I worried a little.

 

[Skinner]

When I was nine years old my mother started telling me that she thought she and my father might possibly get a divorce. I went to school and asked my friends with divorced parents what it was like (apparently pretty sucky), and got – as any nine-year-old in my position would – totally freaked out. I know that dealing with divorce is devastating for a kid, dealing with a “possible divorce” feels like a riptide.

The reason things were so bad was that my parents were working together…on a film….about the founding of the Jamestown Colony. Sound familiar? They fought all the time, on set, at home, in the car (usually with me in the backseat crying.) They threw things and screamed a lot. It was loud and awful and scary, and both my mother’s and father’s fault. That’s the family history that’s been hanging over my head during this whole project.

Things seemed off as soon as my father came back from Angola. He wasn’t giving me much to do, and even left me at home while he went out to film one day. (The day he met Colin Farrell, while I sitting at home in pajamas downloading Hall& Oates classics. Awesome.) Then he started implying that I wasn’t doing anything because I was lazy and nothing I did came out right. This quickly elevated into a campaign to prove me a complete fuck-up. He seemed happy when he could find a way to point out my shortcomings. Each day he'd knock me down a little more.

When I was a kid my father and I played this game where he would give me a thumbs-up, and I had to grab his thumb before it disappeared into his fist. I thought it was a true test of skill, on par with a fly in chopsticks or a pebble in the fist. As an adult, I have found that it’s not a test of anything – it’s just a game, a distraction for a fidgety five year old. My father’s game no longer interests me, in fact it seems pretty stupid.

So Saturday evening I told him I was going to leave early and come back to New York. I was there to help him make this film, but not just take his shit and get blamed for mistakes that HE had made. If I was such a fuck-up, then the best way for me to help was by leaving. Rather than agree to that, or apologize, he got upset. He threw his hands up and started to leave saying that I would only ever see him as the villain. The villain? I couldn’t believe he thought that, or that he was going to walk away. That after all this he was going to walk away from this conversation, an by my account, our relationship. I panicked and stopped him and told him he didn’t understand, that I don’t see him that way at all. That I just wanted to help him and it kills me to keep hearing what a bad job I’m doing at it. Kills me. I can't let my dad kill me. He'd never forgive me.

I used to be really hung up on figuring out who a person really was. Are you the person that you think you are, or the sum of your actions – should they speak otherwise? Or are other people’s assessments the most accurate, objective view of one’s own personality? I don’t really think that way anymore, I think now that it’s impossible to get a definition of a person. People change – just a little bit every minute, so you just have to keep trying to understand them. The best you can do is try to have something good between you in the moment, as often as possible.

He’s very frustrated with his film. He’s disappointed in it, and in himself for not being able to make it better. He was pretty mean to me. He doesn’t ever want anyone to be mean to me. He apologized. He’s my Dad. I love him.

 

[Skinner]

On Sunday we spent the day filming the ships on the Chikahominy. The New World film had borrowed the two smaller ships – the Discovery and Godspeed – to use in their movie, and they had to sail them back to Jametown. I was aboard the Godspeed with the volunteer sailors, making sure they maintained their dirty faces (from the ben nye “Grungy Pirate” line) and that they didn’t look at the camera.

The sailors kept asking me when I was going to climb the rigging. They’d gang up and try to convince me to give it a try, like grandmas with dishes of hard candy. I would get shy and often my usual, “No, no, I’m ok, “ scurrying below deck and out of sight. But I really wanted to. It looked like a pirate ship! Who wouldn't want to climb up into the crow's nest and shout "YAR!" for a while?

When I was about seven I got offered a pony. My grandfather owned a farm, and the people who worked on it had this old pony that they tried to give me. Nothing really would have happened, they would have kept it there, but I could have been able to say it was mine. I refused. I was the only little girl ever in the history of the world to refuse a pony. I wouldn’t even touch it. Why? I don't know! I totally wanted to pet it, and name it, but I was...scared. I’m not even sure exactly what I was scared of – it wasn’t the pony. It died a month later.

Pocahontas wasn’t scared of anything. When the three ships first arrived in Virginia she was about 11, bald, and probably naked most of the time. While the story of her saving John Smith soon after is largely regarded by historians as “total bullshit”, she did become friends with him while he was captive. After he went back to the fort, she would often show up there, turning naked bald cartwheels and showing off for the strangers. She learned everything she could about them, and was very bold about asking questions and trying new things. And I can't even take a free pony.

But then again, she died at 21, so maybe it’s for the best I didn’t climb it.

Yar.

 

[Skinner]

*note*
Do not leave your IRC account signed on at your sister's house.
She will probably unwittingly post under your name.

 

[Skinner]

Guess who's going home again?

 

[Skinner]

Greyhound

As we were pulling into the DC bus terminal, the driver informed us that we were "pretty lucky" in that we arrived half an hour ahead of schedule. This brought to mind some questions about his definition of "lucky" - for me, spending an extra half hour in the fucking scariest place on earth waiting for myconnection to Richmond is decidedly "UNlucky."

Inside the DC bus terminal is a Hardees, some payphones, some angry people, some junkies, some angry junkies, and a hand full of crying women. And for the 1 1/2 hours I was there, a white girl. Everyone in the DC bus terminal is crazy - everyone. It's like the doors are a portal to the dimension of insanity. As I was washing my hands in the bathroom (a laughable undertaking in itself) a well dressed middle-aged woman walked in and I thought "A-ha, ok good - somebody here is normal". Then she apparently got real itchy and started a screaming argument with the door. EVERYONE is crazy here.

To kill time, I decided to check out the Hardees. I was searching the menu for french fries when someone said "'Scuse me, but can I ask you a question?" I turned and saw a bald, toothless man in a suit jacket. He smelled like the floor of a bar, but I liked the jacket, so I said "sure". He looked shocked, and said "thanks! Thank you! You said yes and didn't even know what I was going to ask you! That's...Thank you! Now look - you're white."
Me - "Uh-huh."
Guy - "I'm black."
Me - "Uh-huh."
Guy - "But see, I'm muslim! I believe that God don't see no colors, see? - God's invisible. He's everywhere - he's here right now"
Me - "Uh-huh."
Guy -"God's an invisible rainbow and he sees everything as a rainbow, so there are no colors 'cause he sees everthing in every color"
Me - "Uh-huh."
Guy -"So I'm not black, you not white, becuase God don't see us that way. We're every color, so we the same"
Me - "Uh-huh."
Guy -"So listen, can you give a dollar?"

Since it involved taking my wallet out of my bag, I normally would have said no, but I figured that since he had bothered giving me his whole "God is a rainbow" speech, I may as well throw some change his way. Plus, if God really was there I didn't want to look like a jerk. (You know, with Christmas coming and all.)

I sat down to eat my fries and a biscuit in a plastic chair with a TV attached. (It didn't work.) To my left was a guy on the pay phone working out the details of his divorce from "that bitch", across from me was a man trying to sell poems from a duffle bag, and to my right was a woman constantly crying or laughing hysterically. This was the calmest part of the bus terminal. God is totally fucking crazy.