Recently I said to a friend
“I think that in the soul of every 20-something woman there is a pubescent boy. Mine is named Frank.”
For a long time, the little sprite inside me that made me love comic books and find words like gaelic funny (because it's gay and lick at the same time!) remained nameless. As ethereal and mischievous as Ariel in Shakespeare's The Tempest, it has been with me since around the time I turned sixteen. Around the time I began to become a woman this little creature hatched from its shell like a deformed velociraptor, the most deadly and awesome of all baby dinosaurs. I didn't realize it at the time, but all the work I put into trying to appear normal feminine during middle school and my freshman year of high school, all that repression was actually sustaining the heat of incubation for my little Jurassic time bomb. I hid him as well as I could, but it's kind of hard to keep a velociraptor under wraps.
Like a little guardian angel, or Hell banished fallen angel, he's there for all the testosterone ridden, angst filled, sex spoofed moments in my life. Every time I watch Boondock Saints or The Punisher, he's there. Every time I rock out to misogynist music, he's there. Every time DC comics publishes a new Batman graphic novel, he's there. Every time I decide not to shower for a couple of days, he's there. He's the inspiration for every Mortal Kombat reference I've ever made. Every time I utter the words, “That's what she said,” he gets bonus points; he's saving them up to mail in for a new dirt bike.
Little known fact: Every time a “Your mom” joke is told, an inner teenage boy gets his wings.
It was this past semester that I finally named him. After watching Donnie Darko for the first time that I realized that Frank had always been his name, I just didn't know it. I realized this after seeing Frank's Halloween costume and thaught, “That's totally something that my Frank would wear.”
In addition to taking part in all the teenage boy things I do, he also tells me to do things. This summer, he's telling me to go see Death Race, starring his favorite actor/seedy Brit, Jason Statham. I must admit, that request may be one I don't grant, simply because of budget issues. I've told him to settle down, but he just turned up his Marshal Mathers LP.
1 comment:
I have a little dude inside me, too. I don't know his name. Right now, he's pretending that he doesn't know me.
Post a Comment