NON-FICTION : BEARDED LADY (an excerpt) by Allison Landa
Allison Landa has been a reader at The Racket Reading Series more than a few times at this point. And we couldn’t be more excited that late last year Landa released a memo Bearded Lady: When You're a Woman with a Beard, Your Secret is Written All Over Your Face (Woodhall Press). We’ve had the pleasure of hearing Allison read from the book twice now, and it’s a beautiful, funny, bracingly honest portrayal of her life.
And Allison was nice enough to record an excerpt of the book for you all to give a listen.
But first, buy a copy of The Bearded Lady.
Bearded Lady (an excerpt)
by Allison Landa
1993
Carol and I are shopping at the Isla Vista Food Co-Op. It’s a little more than two blocks from campus, but two blocks are another world when you’re talking about the difference between campus and IV. Campus is manicured lawns and commemorative plaques, landscaped pathways, and well-maintained buildings. IV defies description. If a garbage dump featured cafes, burrito shops, and a place called Dogshit Park, it would be the college town in which I live.
“This place is dusty,” I mutter to her as we walk in. “I feel like I need a mask or something.”
“You looked at your bedroom lately?”
I moved here after the end of the school year. Carol, Sandy, and I found a place on Camino Pescadero. Translation: Fishmonger Street. It’s between Picasso and Abrego Roads: a painter and a southwest wind. I sometimes wonder who named these streets, who if anyone designed this place of pizza and the occasional peace march. It feels random and reckless, as if whoever named it was as drunk as the residents.
We live in Apartment Zero, five blocks from the beach. That might as well be another country so far as this college surf town is concerned. I’m okay with that. Isla Vista may not be for the weak of stomach muscles or those who lack a decent tan, but I don’t feel as out of place as I might have expected. This little enclave is 80 percent clones, and that makes for a 20 percent freak show. There’s room for me.
See, a freak finds its way. On the face of it, there’s not much choice. Figure out how to walk in the open or spend your days in the bell tower. Modern-day bell towers are no place to spend your time. There’s no pizza delivery. No satellite TV.
“What the hell is an Oatmeal Wheat Free Snackimal?”
“A dollar’s worth of love, that’s what.”
So the freak climbs down into the world.
The world. That warren of rocky pathways. The freak learns to navigate, bumping against dead ends, tripping on fallen branches. There’s the occasional twinge of the funny bone, the high sweet sting, a flashing warning, a lesson.
Today’s lesson: Organic Cheerios cost five dollars. Why am I doing this?
Because I want to lose weight, that’s why. I want to be healthier. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t go to this co-op. I would take the bus to Lucky, a place of everyday low prices and familiar goods. They don’t have the kind of cereal and bread I like here. They don’t sell Ruffles. Good thing, though, since I’m not supposed to be eating that stuff anyway.
“These coffee filters are called If You Care. What if I don’t care?”
“Then you get the ones that ruin the environment. And shut up while you’re at it.”
We’re in the bulk foods aisle when the blonde approaches. She’s maybe 35, with wavy hair that brushes her shoulders and a warm, inviting smile. I would trust that smile. I could fall into it. She wears a tailored jacket and matching slacks. Other than Ronald Reagan, I couldn’t think of a more ill-fitting customer for this place. This woman looks like she should be shopping downtown at Lazy Acres, browsing for free-range poultry on her way to the cappuccino bar.
She walks up to me as if we’ve known each other somewhere in a past life. She was Lady Godiva and I the horse.
She walks up to me as if she had the right.
Her mouth never opens. She doesn’t speak a word. She retrieves a silver holder from her jacket pocket. She handles it with long polished nails, a subdued version of my mother’s talons. She flips the holder open and retrieves a small, square card.
My reach is a reflex.
The card feels stiff and substantial between my fingers, a tactile testament to her professional expertise. In an instant her smile disassembles and walks out the door. Part by part, the rest of her follows. All that remains is a shampoo scent, something the marketing people might call Fresh White Rain.
I look down.
I see one word: ELECTROLOGIST.
I heat up from the inside out. I turn to steam. I could vaporize.
Carol takes the card. She pulls it from my grasp. She rarely smiles and when she does it feels as if it’s for you and you alone. She is not smiling now. She runs her finger along the raised lettering, then folds the card in half, creasing it. She reminds me of Missy in this moment, forceful and protective.
The market smells like a mixture of incense and plastic, a blend of the phony and the overly familiar.
I watch her ragged nails with their torn cuticles as she rips the card along its crease. She tears it in half, then in fourths, and throws away the remnants.
