The Birth of Heather Saxon, Sybarite-at-Large

Is there anything more threatening... difficult.... CHALLENGING... to a writer than the blinking cursor of one's blank screen? Or the blinding emptiness of a naked page without a single dot of ink?

I never know how these things start. Perhaps that's been my problem all along. I have never finished anything I've begun, because I have begun everything in the middle, full-steam ahead, until I'm completely lost or no longer interested in the journey. Maybe I think I can cheat death this way--

Anyway, this was supposed to be a piece about the actor in me. It came to me while watching the documentary Salinger.

My stage career was marked by only two performances of legitimate consequence, the first being at the age of seven as both Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, and as the "fourth" Dorothy who got to throw a bucket of tinsel at and melt the Wicked Witch of the West during Mrs. Wheeler's first grade class' adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Because of my wide dark eyes and short dark hair, comparisons from members of the audience were drawn to Liza Minnelli (though at the time I had no idea who she was), but not because of any true acting talent. My second thespian moment of near-greatness was at the age of nine, playing the (now somewhat typecast) role of Cinderella's Fairy Godmother (got to use the same floofy pink dress and gold-sequined crown and wand) during a summer arts camp production of Disney adaptations. It was a very short role, and I recall virtually nothing of the Cinderella portion of the play. I only remember the entire cast standing in the aisles, then swaying back and forth, clucking the chorus to the Peter Pan number "I've Gotta Crow." Never appeared in another play after that. Just never had a great burning desire to be on a stage.

Only a year or so afterward did I decide that I would love to be literally anyone else on the planet than myself. Just without a stage.

While I'd been an aspiring artist and cartoonist since I was old enough to hold a pencil, I had taken more to writing as my choice of expression. The childish, silly stories of youth took shape in my teens as gritty contemporary slices of life, or else as tales of fantasy and mayhem punctuated by dragons, unicorns and treasure galore. Or, my favorites of late, wishful thinking about meeting pop music idols and the daring, dirty encounters we might have. The thing I learned earliest about writing was very simple. If there was nothing around worth reading, then you had to write what you wished to read.

I occasionally passed around the latter pages to friends at school, who would gobble up the stories and beg for more. They would be thrilled with another installation in a matter of days, and some would be so crass as to flip ahead through the pages to "get to the good parts." It was the earliest glimpse I ever got into what having an adoring-- and sometimes demanding-- public might feel like.

Back in the Dark Ages of the 1980's, long before there were personal computers of any consequence, much less the concept of a cell phone that a teenager might tote around like an extra appendage, a high school student's primary source of communication was the combined art of note-writing and note-passing. Both skills required great stealth and dexterity, otherwise an unshielded page or a fumbled pass might result in an embarrassing public reading aloud by one's teacher, coupled with the punishment of writing no less than one-hundred times that you would never again partake in such a rude pastime during Social Studies class.

Because so many other things bored me (boredom often being touted as a sign of genius, or so I am told), I elevated the art of note-writing and note-passing to a new level. I would use whole spiral-bound notebooks for my correspondence, and pass the entire book to a friend in the halls between class, and then get it back full of responses later in the day. Granted, the notes didn't quite match those little folded-up brilliant bits of origami that so many other kids could make. I was never very good at 3D art. I was more about the efficiency of delivery at that point.

Not only was my deceptive form of delivery a revelation, but in my boredom I even took to acting while committing the act of note-writing. It was much more fun to pretend to be someone else. And my friend Amy, whom I had known since the fifth grade, was one of the only friends I had who truly appreciated (and occasionally encouraged) my bouts with eccentricity, which passed for creativity in those days.

The character whose personality I delighted in writing from within was named Heather Saxon (as "Saxon" was the most WASP-y name I could think of on such short notice), Sybarite-at-Large. "Sybarite" had been a vocabulary word during our 9th grade English class, and I just loved the concept of the self-indulgent pleasure-seeker. Soon, the character just flew from the tip of my pen and splashed the pages with her highbrow, ridiculous adventures.

Ms. Saxon would often start her letters to Amy in the most nauseating, over-the-top voice (and I'm paraphrasing from memory here, since none of these notes are in existence today), "Hellooooo Amy Darling, I hope that this quick note finds you well. I myself am exhausted, as I write this from 32,000 feet, dry martini in hand. It's been a whirlwind, a positive WHIRLwind, can I just tell you? All this traveling from city to city, art openings, movie premiers, it's WRETCHED. And all the while they keep changing the TIME on me. It's utterly ridiculous, this whole concept of time zones-- and SO interferes with my nightlife. Early morning wake-up calls are positively BARBARIC."

Ms. Saxon was indeed real, as real as I could make her, as I would incorporate actual comments and responses that would relate to experiences I had with Amy, like this one time I had dinner at her home. The charmingly erudite sybarite called Amy's mother "such the gourmet," and to this day, some 30 years on, she and I still joke about this ridiculous heaping of praise that Ms. Saxon felt the need to spout, and then there she went, off and running, on to the next random topic.

One of the many trademarks of her letters was the intense dropping of names of every trendy designer article of clothing she wore, or makeup and hair product she used, much as Bret Easton Ellis' first-person narratives often would do when giving a running tally of every single item the protagonist had in his medicine cabinet at that particular moment. I tended to pick these names from the copies of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle and Glamour that I used to pore over for inspiration. (Truth be told, I would steal them from the break room at the grocery store where I worked after school, as coworkers would buy and toss them casually onto a chair after briefly leafing through them. My fashion craving was quelled for free, as the covers always had a big neon orange PAID sticker on them, and I could then just shove them into my stereotypically-over-sized 80's purse.)

Other names Ms. Saxon dropped were of her "suitors," most often in the form of British rock stars or popular actors of the day. Heather Saxon, Sybarite-at-Large, was one part Holly Golightly, one part Auntie Mame, one part Edie Sedgwick, and one part Diana Vreeland in equal, madcap measure. The odd thing was, I had no idea who any of those people-- real or imagined-- were at the age of sixteen. But I had embodied their personas to the T in the form of this completely nutty, vacuous young socialite.

It's probably not too difficult to imagine what Ms. Saxon would be doing these days, but I'm sure she'd be telling us about it from her iPad, "as I'm rushing off to Elton's AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party, desperately trying not to spill this glass of Moet & Chandon on my Alexander McQueen jacquard minidress and leopard-print Louboutin t-strap pumps. I'm ESPECIALLY looking forward to the grilled mascarpone Asian pear sandwich, the ahi tuna tartare and wonton chips-- I've heard that positively HATEFUL, grumpy little chef Gordon Ramsey has simply outdone himself yet again this year... And oh, the after-parties-- I'm fairly certain I'll hit up the Governors Ball-- rumor has it that FABULOUS little Wolfgang Puck will be all about the Lobster BLT's, tonight... Oh, and I'm SO looking forward to brushing up against that DARLING little Brit actor, Eddie Redmayne. Yes, he gave a positively INSPIRING performance in that film about the super-intelligent little genius-man in the wheelchair, but he can't possibly win, darling, he's got FRECKLES, for godsakes. They don't give Oscars to people with FRECKLES. But he's a gem, just delicious. I could just eat him up with a shrimp fork. Oh, and I CANNOT wait to meet up with that other DISHY Brit Benedict Cummerbund and his gorge, gorge, GORGEOUS and glowing pregnant wife Sophie. No, she doesn't need to know about my fling with him last year-- it would only upset her, in her delicate condition, darling... What? No, honestly, the man's last name is Cummerbund. Or was it Cabbagepatch? Oh, seriously, I don't even CARE, darling, it's the OSCARS! Ciao for now..."

It's such a hectic world, darling, even I honestly don't know how she does it, after all these years.

mirage © 2001

my love wears
a painted desert
of a painful past
his art, his armor
etched and inked
forged into his pores

one night as he slept
I ran my hand
across one sandy shoulder
to the smooth slope
of his spine
and I watched him dream
for hours

back and forth
my fingers wished
the devils away
one by one

til only their ghosts
left shadows behind
like whispered stories
on his skin

perhaps
he’ll read them to me
one day if I ask

if only
I could write a happier ending
for the two of us