A Tone of Authority
Intro (Chapter 1)
Next Time
1 (Intro) A Tone of Authority
In which I muse about how difficult it is for me to talk about myself, to take over my life story with “a tone of authority,” and why that’s most likely the case.
Intro (Chapter 1):
A Tone of Authority
“Tell me more about yourself!”
Her eyes were bright as they questioned me. She was a pertly beautiful blonde, a good deal smaller and only a little bit younger than me, wiry and energetic in that way that pixieish women can be. She crossed her runner’s legs, tossed her short-cropped and well-coiffed hair, sipped her cocktail, and waited.
I was dressed in a tight and spectacular-looking pencil skirt, with a grey Pierre Cardin blazer, which I couldn’t afford (it had been a Christmas present from my mom). I’d spent the whole day at an academic conference held on one of the campuses where I taught, and had presented about blogging and video creation in composition classes, this being the early 20-teens, when we still did such things.
Having been very “on” most of the day, I was tired, but I had the whiff of a second wind starting. It may have been the blonde’s understated perfume...The bar was a bit more posh than was my norm at the time, but as she insisted on covering the bill, I decided to enjoy an artisanal cocktail myself. After all, it was a first date, and one needs to keep up appearances.
“About myself? What about myself?”
“Oh, I don’t know—anything! Your bio is just so interesting! Tell me more about any of that!”
She had to repeat this refrain several times through the rest of the evening, which ranged from the posh bar to the arcade to a lovely dalliance in a photo booth in the latter. But I found I could not, could not think of anything to say as an answer to that question, repeat it though she might. I could tell she was getting a little frustrated with what must have felt to her like me being cagey. At that time she was successfully emancipated from an estranged soon-to-be-ex, winning a custody battle over her son, and starting her own business to boot. Whereas I was still living with my soon-to-be-ex-husband, my finances so dire I couldn’t even afford the three hundred bucks for divorce paperwork, let alone all the expenses included in moving out. And I didn’t have any kids. And I worked as an underpaid, put-upon adjunct faculty. This sounds pretty pathetic, but I had stunt coordination, a published textbook, swordfights, published poetry, aerial dance, and academic awards in my life story. None of that came to my mind, though, and I couldn’t bring myself to do what felt like bragging, even though this beautiful woman (who was just my type, and now playing with her cocktail straw with her tongue) was literally begging me to.
“Tell me about yourself!”
Ugh… how? I had written a pithy and witty summary of various and sundry things I myself found most interesting about me in my little bio on my profile in the online dating app OKCupid, which is how the blonde and I had met. After some juicy, fun, and flirtatious messaging, we finally set an in-person date. And now that we were finally here, looking gorgeous, loosening our tongues on high priced cocktails, she asking me to elaborate on what she already obviously found interesting enough to buy me a drink about, my mind still screeched to a halt.
How had it come to this?
A few years later, having finally successfully separated from my ex-husband, and having begun a fascinating new branch of my theatrical career in burlesque and intimacy coordination, local journalist Sarah Haas followed me to a couple of my stage combat seminars, and interviewed me twice, recorder running. She was doing a sort of half profile piece on me, half expo about the arts of sex and violence onstage. Speaking with her was a little easier, maybe because the apt questions she asked me as a skilled interviewer kept me talking, maybe because I was shaking off the cobwebs of my marriage, living fully alone for the first time. Maybe it was because none of our meetings were dates.
At any rate, after she gleaned all the Jenn Zuko info she needed for her piece, she exclaimed, “Can I just… be your friend? You are such a badass person, and I just need to have you in my life.”
Point is: I’m a brilliant, odd, interesting person, with some incredible life and art experiences under my generous, beer-fed belt—why is it so hard for me to talk about myself?
A lifetime of being bullied makes me assume I need to temper my weirdness, dumb down my extraordinariness. It’s actually more of a knee-jerk reaction than anything I’m consciously doing to myself. It’s a coping mechanism of the bullied: to always appear nice, affable, small, safe, controllable. It’s one way to buy calm time when you’re with an abuser. It’s a way to keep a job when it’s unstable in the extreme. It’s a way to get cast. Don’t rock the boat and you won’t get pushed over the side…
But that’s not what people want to hear when they ask you for your life story. “The mistake many would-be essayists and memoirists make is to try so hard to be likable and nice, to fit in, that the reader, bored, begins craving stronger stuff (or at the very least, a tone of authority).”1
The reader, the reporter, the blonde… “Tell me about yourself! Tell me more!”
Hoo boy. A “tone of authority.” Yipes. That’s the rub, right there, and how strange is it that an intelligent, accomplished woman who is a half century old, somehow has no tone of authority when it comes to talking about her own life? What could I possibly have more authority over than my own life? Well, actually... I’ve been trained out of it. Punished out of it. Gaslighted out of it.
I learned, the hard way. From bullies at an early age, and then, for the past two decades (arguably my whole adult life), in relationships with a gaslighting husband and similarly abusive career. How dare I be amazing? How dare I steal the spotlight? —and it is stealing, when we’re talking about narcissism: that spotlight does not belong to us. How dare I be so brilliant? How dare I take up so much space? How dare I? Who do I think I am?
Who do I think I am? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you.
I’m 5’9” in bare feet. I often wear platforms and/or heels, and therefore my regular public presentation is at least six feet tall if not more. At my heaviest, I weigh around 180 pounds (at my adult lightest, 150)—when I was weight training three times a week, martial arts training five days a week, and teaching gymnastics as my full time job, I weighed a jacked and muscular 185. All my height is in my legs, and I have a giant cranium to boot. I’ve got crossed green eyes and my cheekbones will cut a bitch.
I bring this up because I need to be very clear how frighteningly powerful I appear in person. I’m large and striking and have an enormous presence, even after having been belittled so completely, so often. I have literally terrified burlesque audiences with my acts, mostly because I am larger than life.
My variety show, name of Blue Dime Cabaret, was originated by a friend of mine and myself, to bring burlesque and other saucy and crazy and fun acts to packed bars across Colorado. As co-producers, she and I would appear onstage (barely clad) and basically celebrate the show, publicize the next show, etc. Now my friend Brandy is an incredibly fit, beautiful woman just a few years older than me, with a slamming bod at a respectable 5’5” or so. Me? Well I’m as described above, these days with a significant beer belly. Our banter would consist centrally of me getting the audience to cheer for us. My catchphrase? I indicate her and declare: “abs of CrossFit.” Applause and whistles. Then I gesture to my own self and announce, “abs of craft beer.”
The level of louder and more raucous cheers at that phrase has been some of the best therapy for my body image issues I could ever have imagined. Just in case you wondered if burlesque/stripping was demeaning. For me? The exact opposite.
I have been diminished, degraded, shamed and silenced throughout my whole life by bullies, though, only the most recent of which were this job and this man. I may be okay walking down the street at night, but I have been a lifelong victim of those who would try to force me into a small space. It’s not necessarily the weak that are targeted, and it’s not always the small that are chosen as victims. This has affected even powerful me, in how I carry myself and in the words I choose to use to talk about myself. When I’m able to talk about myself at all, that is.
If you’re suffering from this kind of abuse and are wondering what to do next as you survive, know that even the most powerful-seeming of us can be roped in by gaslighting. Having suffered under the reign of a gaslighter doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you stupid. It’s easy to look up to me literally and figuratively and think, “she’s an utter badass, nothing can touch that,” but inside? I’ve been forced into unimaginably small spaces.
I also bring these issues up, because it’s important to understand how very difficult it should be for me to erase myself, to shrink and make myself small and normal and nothing… my sheer size makes that hard to begin with, and that, along with my level of intelligence and enormous stage presence, have all added to the difficulty others have had in believing that I could ever have been a victim. I mean, look at me! I’m the picture of female strength! The ultimate badass, and a woman to look up to. I can kick anyone’s ass—and often do, as a professional theatrical fight director and erstwhile martial artist.
It took years of cruel effort on the parts of three different influences in my life to effectively pull me down and pummel me into a more manageable, more obedient, more manipulatable size. I’m only now starting to take some of myself back. And I’m noticing that I’m not sure at this point what that even means. My self. Tell you about myself? How do I begin? What does that mean?
It’s been a difficult process for me to learn to speak up for and about myself. It has only just begun, and it’ll take a long time. This book is a big part of that process.
Now. Buckle up.
Lopate, Phillip. To Show and to Tell, p.19.
This was stunning. I could hear your voice so clearly throughout.
This line in particular really struck something in me: “I’ve been forced into unimaginably small spaces.”
It made me think of how small we can feel when being invisible is the safest option and how little space there can be for anything else when we have to be that small.
Jenn, I’m just catching up now on my reading, and this is such a terrific Ch. 1 after the prologue - you are so insightful about the difficulty of claiming authority with an “I” - I’ve long appreciated Lopate’s “To Show and to Tell,” but I agree that the idea of being authoritative about one’s own story is hard. The reason I wrote my textbook about first-person journalism was to dig into why a subjective account can be compelling without traditional claims of authority - it comes in admitting what you don’t know, in questioning your premises, in the Montaigne “tests” of it all. I don’t think Phillip Lopate would disagree (I’ve been on panels with him), but for me, creating a solid first-person voice is not about marketing or summarizing yourself - it’s about directing readers to the details you want to see - as you’re doing here. Brava!