A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body
Page 17
Suddenly she seemed to notice I had been standing there the entire time.
“Oh, Diane,” she said, looking at me. “Thank you so much. She’s just great. We’ve just had a lot of fun with her. Did you want to talk to her?”
I clenched up, worried that Diane might say, “No thanks, but tell her I said, ‘Hi.’” It was possible that my mother had already worn her out, and that I would end up with a Hallmark card and five bucks’ back-allowance.
“Well hold on, I’ll put her on!” my mother said.
She told me to pick up the phone in the other room. I was hoping for a little more privacy, but since I’d been the one breaking into people’s rooms all my life, I doubted I’d earned it.
When I picked up the phone in the library, my mom’s voice came blasting out. “So when is your birthday? Do you have any diabetes in the family?”
Just when I was about to give up on ever getting a chance to say something, my dad walked into the kitchen.
“Oh my god, Sid’s in the kitchen too, now!” Mom screamed into the phone. “Wow, this is a big night!”
I wasn’t sure my dad knew I was adopted, much less what all this excitement was about. But I heard him gently ask my mom to hang up so that I could have a chance to say hello. Hearing him ask her that made me so sad I almost wanted to hang up too.
When Mom finally did hang up, Diane and I sat on the phone for a few seconds in silence. It was too much, I thought. It was way too much.
All my life, whenever I watched television shows that featured a birth scene, I’d feel sorry for myself. I couldn’t help thinking that at the moment I was born, instead of an outpouring of love and a counting of toes there was a whisking away of Baby Jane Doe to avoid the pain and the shame. Finally, this could be the celebration I’d always suspected I had been denied. Or it could just as easily not be.
But when I first heard the sound of her voice it became very simple.
Diane didn’t sound ashamed or angry or inbred. (Or—sadly—Jewish.) She sounded real.
“Well hi, Lauren,” Diane said in the sweetest voice I’d ever heard. “This is a pretty exciting phone call, huh?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s a cliché but I have to say it—if it wasn’t for my editor Brangien Davis, this book would not have been possible. She worked so hard with me the entire time and I am very grateful.
And the following people also were key supportive folks who were so good to me I almost feel guilty (’cuz I talk shit behind their backs all the time—just kidding). Deep thanks to:Jeff Weatherford
Zach Weatherford
Christie Smith
David Weatherford
Heidi Lenze
Wendy Spero
Jon Bernstein
Matt Price and Eric Friedman at Show and Tell
Maggie Rowe and Jaclyn Lafer from Sit and Spin
Jill Soloway
Dave Eggers
Kurt Stephan
Gary Luke
Jacque, Kaz, and Casa Earl
Mike Hoffman,
Samantha Silva,
Olivia, Atticus, and Phoebe
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lauren Weedman made her television debut on Comedy Central’s Emmy Award-winning The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2001 as a featured correspondent. At the same time, Lauren was a regular on NPR’s national political satire show Rewind and appeared Off Broadway in her solo show Homecoming at the Westside Theatre in New York City. For two years, Lauren was also a cast member for the long-running local-turned-national comedy show Almost Live for Comedy Central and guest starred on several episodes of Reno 911!
Prior to her television work, she studied, wrote, and performed in Amsterdam for five years. Lauren returned to the States with her first play Homecoming, which began as a 15-minute performance art piece that ultimately grew into a full-length show. She also toured with the Seattle Repertory Theatre.
Later that year, Homecoming was featured at HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, before finding its way Off Broadway. Homecoming earned Lauren the honor of being published in Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002. In Fall 2002, the Empty Space Theatre in Seattle premiered her solo work Rash, which was recognized by the Seattle Times’ Footlight Awards, with nods for both “Best New Play” and “Best Solo Performance.”
Rash received tremendous reviews, including: “Weedman comes so very close to celebrating indulgence rather than just contemplating it that when she manages to do both things at once, it’s dizzyingly brilliant: She ends up hitting all her targets—including herself” (Seattle Weekly) and “Since first turning up on Seattle stages in the early 1990s, Lauren Weedman has proved herself one terrifically funny gal. And more people know that since she moved to New York two years ago and earned some well-deserved breaks in TV and Off Broadway” (Seattle Times).
Other solo shows include Amsterdam, If Ornaments Had Lips, and Wreckage. Her latest play—Bust—about her work as a volunteer at the Los Angeles County Jail, was named “Best of Theatre” by Seattle Magazine in 2006.
Lauren is also the recipient of a 2007 Alpert/MacDowell Fellowship.
She currently lives in Los Angeles and is developing a pilot for Oxygen TV based on her Web series Our Bodies, Myself.
Copyright © 2007 by Lauren Weedman
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The chapters “Diary of a Journal Reader,” “I’m Hugging You with My Voice,” and “A Fatty-Gay Christmas” were first published, in slightly different form, in Swivel magazine.
Publisher’s note: Thanks go to Brangien Davis, who provided invaluable editorial guidance as the manuscript was written, revised, and polished.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weedman, Lauren.
A woman trapped in a woman’s body : tales from a life of cringe / Lauren
Weedman.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-570-61746-1
1. Autobiographical fiction, American. I. Title.
PS3623.E42W66 2007
813’.6--dc22
2007020905
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