Back when my family kept a VHS player in the attic, I used to sneak upstairs to watch Disney’s “Cinderella” whenever I possibly could. I wouldn’t even watch the whole movie – I’d fast forward to the very end when Prince Charming fits the rogue glass slipper onto Cinderella’s slender foot. I loved knowing it was going to be a perfect fit.
It is no secret that I’ve always been entranced by happy endings, but the glamour of fairytales in particular stole my six-year-old heart. Though the castles, jewels, and horse-drawn carriages are admittedly seductive, it was the convention of the perfect story arc that I latched onto at an early age. It always seemed to work out for the princesses in my storybooks: their tales had a beginning, a middle, and a neat, romantic ending under a glowing sunset or a starry night. Everything was so pristine, so contained – I’ve looked and I’ve looked, but I have yet to see the stars in New York City.
In every fairytale there is always a prince. It’s a package deal, an added bonus to the princess job description. But even in middle school, I knew a prince was never going to be in the picture for me. The idea of one seemed like a liability, and this scared me. The first time I said the words “I’m gay” out loud, I felt like I had just jumped off a castle turret to drown in the moat. There was the fear of disappointing others and not living up to expectations, and the humiliation the day I came to school and saw that someone had written the word ‘dyke’ on my locker. But most of all, my vulnerability came from the overwhelming suspicion that I had disappointed myself. After all of those years of fairytale fantasy, I felt as if I had just given up on my own happy ending. Princesses like princes, not other princesses. It took Disney eighty-six years to create a black princess – just imagine how long it will take for Snow White to come out as a lesbian.
The story arc I had been planning was now precarious. The comfortable, conventional ending I had always envisioned no longer seemed possible. But then I graduated from storybooks and old Disney movies and forayed into literature. I stumbled upon David Sedaris, Jim Shepard, and Raymond Carver, and learned that when it comes to stories (and life, really) happy endings are often the least interesting kind. When I read “Loggerheads” by Sedaris, the fact that there was no resolution, no comfortable ending – it thrilled me. It was as if the glass slipper was a size too small and gave my heel blisters.
I began to write. I wrote poems that didn’t rhyme and stories with no end. I loved having no rules to break and no audience to satisfy but myself – if the pen is mightier than the sword, I took to slaying the ignorant dragons in my life with my prose. I threw out the “Cinderella” VHS and bought a DVD of “The Queen,” turning to Princess Diana as my new royal heroine. She never got her neat fairytale ending, but she took the ancient, black-and-white institution of the monarchy and made it human, transforming the royal identity so that one day, perhaps, it could become rainbow. If someone like Diana could become a princess, I could, too – jean shorts and all – and happily-ever-after be damned.
Besides, why do we read if not for middles? After I read Margaret Atwood’s short story “Happy Endings,” it became apparent that the bookends are overrated. It’s the messy part in the middle that matters – the place without labels where I can be a non-traditional traditionalist in my own fashion. Who knows if glass slippers are made in a size twelve anyway? Frankly, I’d rather wear my volleyball sneakers.
“True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with,” Atwood says. “That’s about all that can be said for plots, which are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.”
When I go to college, I’m going to try How and Why.
It is no secret that I’ve always been entranced by happy endings, but the glamour of fairytales in particular stole my six-year-old heart. Though the castles, jewels, and horse-drawn carriages are admittedly seductive, it was the convention of the perfect story arc that I latched onto at an early age. It always seemed to work out for the princesses in my storybooks: their tales had a beginning, a middle, and a neat, romantic ending under a glowing sunset or a starry night. Everything was so pristine, so contained – I’ve looked and I’ve looked, but I have yet to see the stars in New York City.
In every fairytale there is always a prince. It’s a package deal, an added bonus to the princess job description. But even in middle school, I knew a prince was never going to be in the picture for me. The idea of one seemed like a liability, and this scared me. The first time I said the words “I’m gay” out loud, I felt like I had just jumped off a castle turret to drown in the moat. There was the fear of disappointing others and not living up to expectations, and the humiliation the day I came to school and saw that someone had written the word ‘dyke’ on my locker. But most of all, my vulnerability came from the overwhelming suspicion that I had disappointed myself. After all of those years of fairytale fantasy, I felt as if I had just given up on my own happy ending. Princesses like princes, not other princesses. It took Disney eighty-six years to create a black princess – just imagine how long it will take for Snow White to come out as a lesbian.
The story arc I had been planning was now precarious. The comfortable, conventional ending I had always envisioned no longer seemed possible. But then I graduated from storybooks and old Disney movies and forayed into literature. I stumbled upon David Sedaris, Jim Shepard, and Raymond Carver, and learned that when it comes to stories (and life, really) happy endings are often the least interesting kind. When I read “Loggerheads” by Sedaris, the fact that there was no resolution, no comfortable ending – it thrilled me. It was as if the glass slipper was a size too small and gave my heel blisters.
I began to write. I wrote poems that didn’t rhyme and stories with no end. I loved having no rules to break and no audience to satisfy but myself – if the pen is mightier than the sword, I took to slaying the ignorant dragons in my life with my prose. I threw out the “Cinderella” VHS and bought a DVD of “The Queen,” turning to Princess Diana as my new royal heroine. She never got her neat fairytale ending, but she took the ancient, black-and-white institution of the monarchy and made it human, transforming the royal identity so that one day, perhaps, it could become rainbow. If someone like Diana could become a princess, I could, too – jean shorts and all – and happily-ever-after be damned.
Besides, why do we read if not for middles? After I read Margaret Atwood’s short story “Happy Endings,” it became apparent that the bookends are overrated. It’s the messy part in the middle that matters – the place without labels where I can be a non-traditional traditionalist in my own fashion. Who knows if glass slippers are made in a size twelve anyway? Frankly, I’d rather wear my volleyball sneakers.
“True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with,” Atwood says. “That’s about all that can be said for plots, which are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.”
When I go to college, I’m going to try How and Why.
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