by Holly Lorka
epilogue
So here we are, a little later on. I haven’t heard from either George Michael or my mother since that day I spoke with the medium, but I’ve since placed their pictures all over my house to make myself think of them often. I previously had no pictures of my mother up. I was so angry with her that I kept them all in a box and refused to look at them. Now I’ve put up several. In particular the ones where she is young and seems happy, as this is how I want to remember her. Is it bad that I want to remember her in her life before she had me? Sometimes I wish I could go back and take myself away to give her herself back. I like to imagine her as a giant, famous opera singer with throngs of adoring fans and fancy clothes and a full passport and zero stupid kids to ruin it. I don’t have a picture of that, but I do have the happiest one of her I could find perched on my writing desk. She is young, laughing, and drinking beer at the lake. She’s holding a plastic bat up in the air that she’s about to use on my dad’s head. I bet she hit him pretty good.
I have a shrine to George Michael out by my garden. My friends think I’m a little nuts, but it feels right having him there, dancing in his tight little jeans among the sunflowers. The tomato crop sucks this year, but I blame it not on him but on the expensive dirt I chose to plant in. I should know better: the really good stuff grows out of plain old regular dirt.
I’m still the dick whisperer at work. I continuously can’t believe that I’ve landed in the perfect place and time by complete happenstance, all dreams and luck and impulsive decisions. Was this the plan for me all along? Is the Universe so damn good that It began hatching this plan from the first time I snuck into my brother’s room to try on his Batman underwear?
I was often teased in my family for flying by the seat of my pants, having no plan, being so messy and disorganized that I probably had a colony of roaches living under my bed. There were no roaches, but I did stuff my SAT application under there and didn’t find it until the day before it was due. That’s right: I almost didn’t even take it, and I would have missed my scholarship and probably wouldn’t have been able to go to college. Whoops. Career choices, places to live, houses, cars, furniture, all the same: whoops. Choosing my girlfriend was also like that. I saw her picture and thought, “She has a nice face.” I invited her to a show, took a shot of tequila out of someone’s cleavage, and nonchalantly asked her out. Why she said yes, I don’t know, but we went out and didn’t really like each other, but kept going out because we couldn’t think of a reason not to. She became my biggest cheerleader and the person my mom trusted to speak to me through. And even though we never got married and ended up separating after five and a half years, I’d still call it a good run while it lasted.
Every New Year’s Eve while we were together, my girlfriend sat down to go over her resolutions from the previous year to evaluate them. Then she would carefully plan out her new resolutions and painstakingly write them down in different colored markers. She would look at me and say, “Let me guess. Your resolution is the same as last year’s: fly by the seat of your pants and have it all work out again.”
Yup. The Universe sure seems to know what It’s doing. So maybe I don’t have to.
Cheers, Mom.
Photo by: Unknown
about the author
Photo by: Lisa Hause
Holly Lorka is a writer, storyteller, and retired stand-up comedian whose work has been included in several anthologies and podcasts, including Dan Savage’s Hot Mic. Her stories of gender, sex, and shame have earned her a following in Austin, Texas, where she lives and works as an ICU nurse and super sharp wedding officiant. Handsome is her first book.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
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Stutterer Interrupted: The Comedian Who Almost Didn’t Happen by Nina G. $16.95, 978-1-63152-642-8. The funny, revealing, and unapologetic tale of how Nina G became, at the time she started, America’s only female stuttering stand-up comedian.
Blue Apple Switchback: A Memoir by Carrie Highley. $16.95, 978-1-63152-037-2. At age forty, Carrie Highley finally decided to take on the biggest switchback of her life: upon her bicycle, and with the help of her mentor’s wisdom, she shed everything she was taught to believe as a young lady growing up in the South—and made a choice to be true to herself and everyone else around her.
Once a Girl, Always a Boy: A Family Memoir of a Transgender Journey by Jo Ivester. $16.95, 978-1-63152-886-6. Thirty years ago, Jeremy Ivester’s parents welcomed him into the world as what they thought was their daughter. Here, his mother—with Jeremy’s help—chronicles his journey from childhood through coming out as transgender and eventually emerging as an advocate for the transgender community.
Queerspawn in Love by Kellen Kaiser. $16.95, 978-1-63152-020-4. When the daughter of a quartet of lesbians falls in love with a man serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, she is forced to examine her own values and beliefs.
Daring to Date Again: A Memoir by Ann Anderson Evans. $16.95, 978-1-63152-909-2. A hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir about a legal secretary turned professor who dives back into the dating pool headfirst after twelve years of celibacy.