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Before I graduated from the publishing industry to become a totally broke independent, I honed my repartee skills on a viciously left-wing website that was popular with a devoted lesbian crowd while I worked a day job as an Art Director, but first I needed the right avatar for my online persona: a "front" for my actual intellectualism as a genuine media professional working in the big city among so many striving, pseudo-literary poseurs.
I found the perfect image in an actress whose breakthrough part had been playing it straight in a thinly-masked gay role about a female boxer from the 'hood. Because I was training hard in MMA at the time, my sports lingo was freshly dyke-friendly, which dovetailed nicely since the "out" actress had practically crashed her car on the set of a popular t.v. show with her also-drunk girlfriend in the passenger seat. She was dysfunctional enough for me to pass muster with the bullish traffic cops on the site. It got me "in" with their gatekeepers, as I began hunting the board during the annual summer slowdown that's our industry standard. I was so good at it, in fact, that I became a "starred commenter"; meaning, out of all the responses their articles generated, mine would be at the top of the list as a preferential read.
It was incendiary. As I won every conversation, the trolls went wild with bloodsport. The message boards were so hot that the editors, in a fit of diva pique, decided to remove them from the article's features one slow Monday morning, as their entire audience (myself included) wrote them the painful truth: our sparring meant to be a sideline to their "ChickLit" main event was far better than any trite, canned copy a bunch of easily-programmed drones could ever hope to write.
Their collective online works were such robotic, politically-correct pieces of crap, that any ass-kissing, first-year student at a women's college could regurgitate the tepid curriculum of an average "Gender Studies" class on their site. Their supposedly select cadre of special guest writers and accompanying editors didn't have an original point of view in the entire pretentious place, but I did. I was so unnerving to the home team that I earned a "rep" that carried me all the way here, to you: my beloved, faithful audience living in the land of the free and the home of the brave, in an actual writer's paradise that's "The Promised Land". Thanks for sticking with it. <Ding ding!> "HERE. WE. GO!"
As the bargain program I packaged for the largest U.S. book retailer in the country wound down (after years of brutally hard work and unusually long hours), I finally found myself enjoying some free time during the day, even contemplating trips to the beach over long three-day weekends like any other publishing employee accustomed to summer hours. It became, dare I say it, a more genteel and congenial place to work, much more like my way of doing business, with organization and efficiency built right into the workflow, which increased the mental static of the severely disordered around me in almost direct proportion as a contrast, because now I had time to explore the neighborhood at lunchtime and walk around the office. Oops.
I began surfing the web for longer and longer intervals, even becoming a "starred" commenter on a trendy media site geared towards the workaday lesbo, which was tremendous fun for me. As the assholes at work became increasingly rabid amid the next economic crash, killing each other off in violent work conflicts that matched their growing unease, I simply put on my headphones and went to work on another site. I'd put up "Illuminations" over one slow summer hour day before the weekend started, as a way to keep a focus on my personal work and achieving my artistic goals.
At first, I established myself artistically through posting my photographic and design works to advertise my credentials, with a link to my extensive online portfolio to seal the deal as your new publisher, and it worked. In my business, when you don't receive a lot of negative criticism, you know it's time to go ahead at full speed, which I did. But, the rabid "Politically Correct Police" at this newsy dyke site hated me so fucking much, I immediately knew that I had struck online gold. Every single comment I posted, even the most harmlessly obvious observations, were vehemently denied and attacked in a way that meant those boy/girls knew I didn't strap on a fake plastic penis after office hours. No, it was far worse than that. I preferred the real kind, the fleshy one that comes attached to a man. Ew!
They must have sensed a beautiful hetero woman attracted to males in their midst by my writing alone, but because my comments were so good at generating buzz on the site and drawing attention to their shitty pieces (plus, I helpfully followed the site's rules by not answering their hysterics in "Common Cave Troll"), I was allowed this free pass through online lesbianism, with some temporary restrictions applied. They were boring, in their own bitchy out-of-towner type of way. Do you know the country queer moving to the city looking for an exotic good time but hopelessly inept? That! That was the annoyingly whiny tone of every overly emotional crybaby who went "wahwah" about New York City and its inhabitants; how unfair and cruel the city was to them and their "poopypants" interests.
I'm not joking, either. One of their biggest features was written by this bland WASPY bitch from the 'burbs who decided to unleash her inner "alternative" goth lesbian on all of us unsuspecting readers by publishing photos of her dirty vibrator covered in old period blood stains as it compared to her new one of the exact same model. So fucking interesting, troll. Here's my mucus in a tissue! Get a life, bitch. Every weird hick who has ever tortured me on the job came bubbling to the surface through these inane puff pieces designed to attract dykes in such a brutally obvious way, I found my smarter commentary striking lightning quick responses to their fucking bullshit as fast as I could type it, edit it, and post it, and guess who won?
I did! It spurred me to write a lot more during the day, which was part of the point for me, and in the process, I pulled into the fray the unsuspecting crazy dykes who worked with me (or around me) to stop their work and read my posts. It became such a huge distraction in an office that conspired almost daily against me, that their publisher was forced to ask me to stop writing during the day (over his bullshit editorial staff), which I duly ignored. You can't legally censor creative output at a publishing company. It's that tricky "Freedom of the Press" and/or "Freedom of Speech" thingy we have in the Constitution. Duh. And so I typed on, in response to an injustice present in an unfairly skewed media world that sought to push me out, when they actually lived and breathed on my fucking land, on my fucking turf, earning on my fucking say-so through my design works that actually earned a lot of money for the house. If you don't like it, get the fuck out!
And so, out of those excruciatingly irritating tourist bitches with a zest to treat our fair city like a lesbian cruise ship on their "vacay", arose my desire to write more and more about my interests, which are a lot like yours, right? "Outsider" culture became no longer hip to practice, because how fun is it to read about changing a baby's shitty diapers? You know, the ADHD couple with the already fucked-up kid dancing around your cocktail party bare-ass with a stained diaper in their hands to show off? You crazy fucking bitches were that for me: so egregiously wrong in your hatred for us as a society (and your complete inability to adapt to normal human life) that I found it easy to despise a group of supposedly "marginalized" minority voices who used media to get attention, like any other spoiled football star overdosing on hookers, booze, and blow, except without the talent.
I took away their privileges at hating us for nothing more than simply being here and being healthily normal, but more importantly, for loving our lives and daring to love the city that gave rise to us. I stood fast in front of their searingly misdirected anger at me, and through the power of my words, I channeled them back into their backwater channels where they belong. And do you know why? Because this is my real prime time, bitch. I am your fucking "Major League" woman-in-action, dyke. You just didn't know it, yet. And now you do. You can thank this here mama the next time a woman gets voted into an important office, pigs. I probably voted in their primary election while you were too busy online "roasting" some plebe you wrongly perceived to be more powerless than you, and isn't that like every single prejudiced dyke who secretly hates women that you've ever met? It sure is! Who's the traitor now, bitch? Yeah, that's what I thought. Go fuck yourself. Without airbrushing, losers.
