Today I Am A Book by xTx
CCM Design
Pp. 117
All of the short, poetic segments (it feels wrong to call them stories, and, besides, they have the tart juiciness of an orange) in this collection are introduced with the words ‘Today I am a…’ It is a great creative writing exercise, and a way to express thoughts and feelings, but a lot of them are complicated and negative.
Many are tales
of abuse, violence, sexuality and shame, with cripplingly low expectations; a
woman goes to bed early because she wants to masturbate without her husband
disturbing her; a woman seeks out compliments from a man she knows “isn’t good
at saying nice things”; a woman desperately wants to hear the words ‘You are
wanted’. In Today I am a Slave, the
author writes, “Except for trying to kill me every day, Pepito is pretty nice.
He’s definitely getting better at it though. Surprising me now, but I am vigilant.
I don’t want to die and I don’t think he wants to kill me. Yet.”
Let’s get the question
of authorship out of the way. Who is xTx, and does it matter? I assume the
author is female, although some segments are written from a male point of view.
The first page announces, “Today I am a dedication. Today, and everyday you are my driving force. Thank you,
Roxane Gay, for making me believe. Still.” Many of the themes are similar to
those found in Roxane Gay’s book Bad
Feminist. For example, one harrowing piece reveals, “Today I am a bulimic.
I take in the world. I throw it up. Do you want to see pain? Hold on for a
minute. Just one minute. That’s all it takes for me to work it back up. Do you have
patience? Are you a patient person? The one who waits the longest gets the best
payoff. Please trust me.”
The narrator
goes on to list the things she has swallowed; “An ongoing gorging since I was a
girl: Frosted Flakes, a handful of bow shaped barrettes, twelve ice creams,
seven fingers of my brothers’ friends inside me”. She explains, “The time it
takes doesn’t matter. What matters is how you feel afterwards.” Her specific
instructions of what to do are heartbreaking and visceral (don’t read them
while you’re eating) from “1. Eat enough to make you feel sick and/ or hate yourself”
through “4. Approach the toilet. Make sure it hasn’t been cleaned in a while. The
filth will help you” and “7. Stare at the toilet water. Feel how gross you are,
how utterly disgusting and worthless you are” until “11. After each hurl reach
again. Keep fucking puking. Empty your fucking guts. Remember to breathe.
Remember you are a big piece of shit.” That is absolutely raw and confronting;
it is shocking and emotional; it is exceptional.
She is often the
gateway for someone else’s needs or frustrations. In Today I Am A Time Machine she writes, “He has made me his time machine
so he can stay there. He tells me this. He wants me to open myself wide enough
that he can crawl through. Go back to the boy he once was… Back to when his
life wasn’t as tarnished as it is now.” She is not often considered as a person
in her own right but in how she relates to others and what they can take from
her. In Today I Am A Lion she
confirms “It’s hard being everything for everyone when you just want to be
someone else’s everything.”
But women are
expected to be all things to all people, and that is exhausting, even though we
should be prepared for it. “It’s easy to be a make-up artist when you’re a
female. So much of what we’re meant to be is pretend anyway.” As she continues
in Today I Am A Make Up Artist, she
can no longer tell tall tales and make up big stuff as an adult, so she has to “resort
to little things like giving the guy at Starbucks a fake name just so I can see
it black Sharpied on the cup… convincing my boss I am completely on top of
things, assuring my two kids that everything will be okay, telling my husband I
love him.” This story switches from comic to bleak in the twist of a sentence.
Her prose is
sparse but full of imagery. The analogy in Today
I Am An Outlier is breathtaking when considered more deeply: “My period
blood is made for bigger things. It’s an important liquid made waste when not
called upon. It’s like the genie from the lamp giving up and leaving, bags
slung over shoulder, after eons of nobody rubbing.” And, like all good
story-tellers, she returns to the beginning with Today I Am A Writer: “Today I am a writer. I say this thirty-three
times while forcefully bashing my head into the metal keys of a typewriter. I
want the answers to imprint my face. I want its ribbon to birth answers. Tell
me what I need to say… All the blood mars any facial embossing and I am still
sitting where I began – blank.”
There is a lot
of style in these segments, but there is also deep substance. The stories that
seem short and even superficial are full of meaning. Much of that meaning is
grim and dark; this is an uncomfortable glimpse into a tormented mind that is
trying very hard to make up.
