Hold My Finger

Wicked little lessons

Happy New Year! By now everyone who emailed should have received their book. If you didn’t, please email again. I’ve got tracking numbers, baby. And thank you again for the subs and coffees!

Okay, look. I don’t know how I’m going to satisfy you if I’m not writing about politics or trans. It’s stressing me out a little. Like I said recently, as a service to marital sanctity and personal sanity I went on a media diet. I am so slim now. Take THAT Ozempic. Mister and I are (knock wood) getting along swimmingly with no fights every other day the way we used to before 2022.

I can also see how maybe I was a litttttttle tiny eensy weensy bit obsessive about my new political POV. One smart Reader commented that it’s a pendulum. The novelty and excitement are slowing their momentum, leaving me in a middling state of mind that yawns and says, of course. Of course the Democrat party is off the rails. I don’t need to prove it to myself every day of the week with hours and hours of scrolling, reading, viewing and so forth.

As far as trans, Missy, as I’ve said, still goes by her fictitious name and pronouns to her friends but not with family. She even deleted pronouns from her IG bio. I love when that happens. She doesn’t return to school for another week and it’s been great having her here, even if she leaves the basement a mess and maybe doesn’t put a new roll of toilet paper on the dispenser stick thing. Yes, she tires of my very existence and teases me but as a late adolescent/emerging adult it’s still her job to individuate and reject me. Thankfully she balances her bitchiness with some affection: Will you massage my shoulders? I like your nails. Your hair looks good. Those and other words of affirmation (my love language if you hadn’t guessed) have passed from her lips to my ears.

#Blessed.

Last night in fact, she asked me if I wanted to go see Wicked with her but I said I didn’t want to see that particular movie, because a month ago I’d watched a couple videos, wherein Brett Cooper, in her signature way, lampooned the ridiculosity of Cynthia Erivo’s and Ariana Grande’s press tour along with Erivo’s woke meltdown over a fan’s poster art re-conception.

Seeing it sounded like torture, even if I got to spend time with Miss Miller. I prefer our time is spent on neutral turf, not trapped in a sensory explosion of woke virtue signaling, Hollywood style.

But I immediately regretted not saying yes because Miss Miller shrugged and said, “I’ll go ask Dad,” to which I got jealous because I am a 13 year-old girl trapped in the body of a menopausal crone.

“I’ll go if he goes!” I shouted after her as she climbed the stairs to find her father. She harrumphed.

Oh you’ll go if he goes. Nice.

Of course he said yes, winning a battle waged only in my head where there is a competition for our daughter’s affection and Mister usually wins because he prefers her company over his comfort. He knows in the end it’s about making good memories. Keeping and cultivating a life-long bond. I hate that I’m still learning that.

In the end and $83 later, the three of us went because I am a fast learner, and FOMO. I still expected to hate the thing. Because those interviews! The tears. The finger-holding!

But Reader, OMG. It was SO GOOD. I started sobbing when the credits rolled and sang (hideoteously off-key) the defying gravity chorus on the way to the car afterwards. Then I played the song on the way home and promised to commit it to memory. Maybe buy a T-shirt. Paint my nails green.

Miss Miller rolled her eyes. Life was good.

YES Cynthia Erivo is cringe AF. YES Ariana Grande cries all the time and her eyebrows are yellow and sad.

But these ladies are talented up the Ozian wazoo and the movie, even though allegorical on many levels, is successful in so many other elements—story, design, music, dance, talent—that I didn’t feel force-fed an agenda. In other words, Wicked could have been total dumpster fire like so many other movies. But it’s not. IMO. Let me know if you feel differently.

Maybe if I’d started my media diet sooner I wouldn’t have flip-flopped on Missy. I would have simply said when asked, “Yes, Honey. I’d love to go see Wicked with you.”

I don’t need to know that Cynthia has “claimed her queerness.” Or that Ariana is a hypoglycemic demi-vegan. All I knew before seeing the movie was that they were a whole lot of drama. Who needs it. So I was shocked at their talent. Which maybe is a good thing. I had zero hope.

Yet, I have to give a nod to conservatives who feel alienated from today’s pop culture offerings. Now that I am one, I too suggest that performers could maybe just do their jobs and then get off the damn stage. We come for the show, not the social justice.

And that’s my cue.

💚