Magpie Ulysses

So much to say and the clock is ticking, but it’s your friend; it likes you succinct, precise. So does your audience at Our Town Café, 245 East Broadway on the second Wednesday every month for Word Whips and Story Slam. The following is the winning March 9 Story Slam.

Friends tell me I should write more smut. They say that when a girl says dirty things it’s somehow funnier. Apparently it depends who you’re asking. Not that I wouldn’t mind being the D.H. Lawrence of the twenty-first century. Go on: ban me. But I have come to learn that there are moments for smutty and moments for diplomacy. I mean, just last week I met with contempt at the supermarket just for being me. For once I didn’t even have to open my mouth and say anything.
Imagine this, there I am standing in aisle six with a raised fist, looking at the canned ham. I’m wearing a pink mini skirt, army boots and a button on my T-shirt that says: “Jesus would slap the shit out of you.” I’m eavesdropping on two old ladies as they squabble over the last can of mushroom soup.
Then I hear, “Margie, I’m just going to aisle two to get some of those stimulated bacon bits…”
If anything makes me laugh, it’s language play like this, but now they’re looking at me like I’m some kind of freak.
I already know what dinner conversation will be:
“Oh Georgie, I was with Margie down aisle six, and all I said was I was going to get some of those stimulated bacon bits, you know, the ones you like, and then this atrociously rude girl in these black boots was laughing hysterically, I thought she might be crazy, you know, they just let them free these days.
“But Margie says, ‘It’s okay, she’s probably a lesbian anyway.’ ”
Like I said, there are times for smut and moments for diplomacy.
Where my sexuality fits in is confusing because these two ladies had nothing on me. If they only knew that at that exact moment my friends were in the produce section, talking about how the exotic fruit looked like pussy. If only they knew that I was too busy to worry about what they had to say. I was stunned, captivated in thought, wondering what my grandma would think if she didn’t know me.
I’m pretty sure if she knew half the things I said, she’d probably never talk to me again. Never mind the one-quarter of what I do. I mean: she’d be sending me off to theology school. Often though, I wonder what it means for my grandma to be sexy. Every time she goes for groceries lately someone asks her to go for coffee. Yep, my grandma’s been getting picked up at the supermarket.
She tells my mother over the phone that she has declined the offers.
When my mum asks her why, she replies, “What if they want more than a coffee?”
“Mum, you just say No.”
“Well I’ve never had to before,” she says.
At which point my mum breaks off conversation, saying, “I don’t want to know any more.”
My grandma’s a bit freaked when she calls me, but I tell her not to worry, adding that, “Three quarters of a century never looked so good and with tits still as high as yours…”
“Oh my, oh my God!”
(Yeah, back to that smut and diplomacy thing.)
But you see: my grandma has been concerned from day one with me. Maybe it’s because I had a mother from the seventies, who taught me the appropriate words for my anatomy.
Or maybe it has something to do with this story in my family about a trip across the country when I was two. The train pulled into a station and the conductor said:
“We’ll be in Regina for about 20 minutes,”
And I started yelling, “Vagina! Vagina! We’re going to…?”
At which point my grandma leaned over to my mum and said, “See, I told you not to teach her those words so early.”
I’m working on broaching the subject of sexy though. Last spring I watched The Vagina Monologues with her. We only got 20 minutes in when she went to do dishes, saying, “Oh my God, that word, oh dear, that word.”
I was surprised for the reaction to come so early considering we hadn’t even made it to the monologue about the word cunt.
Apparently, I’m learning, generations past just aren’t ready to open up. So, I have to remember to be gentle with her, let her remain steadfast in the fact that she only had one lover ever, learn to hold my tongue when she says:
“I know how good I got it the first time.”
When all I want to say is “Yeah, but grandma, you should see number five.” (Like I said, that smut and diplomacy thing.)

So yeah, I’m in the grocery store, down aisle six, in my pink skirt and my boots with my questionable button on my T-shirt. And these two ladies are still staring at me and these are the things I’m thinking about:
I’m thinking about my bad language, my grandma and her sexuality, the ebb and flow of generational realities and the still taboo of coming across as slutty. I’m pondering the fear of our own bodies and bemoaning the unfortunate truth that the only words in the English language available for such beautiful things still
sound dirty.
I’d love to know where the lines cross. I want wisdom, but just as I turn to ask the women, I realize they’re gone. I think I can hear them now somewhere down aisle 4.
I heard there was a sale on tinned
oysters.

Magpie Ulysses is a performance poet and writer raised in the Wild Yeeha of Alberta. She currently resides in Vancouver where she runs an etiquette school for young ladies.
magpieulysses@yahoo.ca

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