Making it Up: Today I Am A Book

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.