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on being nikki
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lysergia and i were having a discussion during which she commented that she didn't know what it was like to "be me". i think she meant that she couldn't quite put herself in my shoes sometimes. so i decided to write a page about what it's like to "be nikki".
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i suppose that means that i should start off with some history (a bit more about who i am is already written here). being nikki, in the beginning of my life, was all about doing the best i could to be a personification of what our peers wanted me to be. our peers in junior high school (when i came to life) were for the most part typical small-town hicks. the best things for a girl to be were pretty (but not prettier than they were), trendy (or a small-town version thereof), indifferent to academics, ridiculously boy-crazy, able to take a punch (from either gender) as well as throw a punch (only at another girl), able to drink and smoke (several things) without passing out, rebellious against authority, and most of all, a good lay (albeit a discreet one).
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i succeeded on several of those counts. i became all of those things, except trendy (i tried, lord how i tried, but i just couldn't do it right). and i couldn't throw a punch, either, but i learned to take them. i pretended to be academically indifferent, but i couldn't fight dana on that one. dana upheld her academic standards despite my efforts at failing, so consequently i was on the honor roll consistently.
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some of the kids actually liked me genuinely, i think. for the most part what i earned from them was respect, if not affection. most of them didn't want to be "too" closely affiliated with me, since i was the town freak (new wave was me, baby.... and i was goth before i knew what goth was hehe). in a town where the trendiest fashion consisted of doeskin jackets and construction boots, i preferred arm-length lace gloves, latex, and eyeliner cobwebs on my face. don't even get me started on the hair. our mother even threatened to kick me out of the house during a snowstorm once if i didn't dye my hair back to its natural color. she won - it was cold out. but that's another story. there were some folks back in hellville that did like the way i looked, but would never dare to do it themselves. it took about four years of being the lone oddball before some of the younger kids started imitating me - after all, i looked like the people on MTV, so it couldn't be THAT weird.
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the ironic part of my "character development" is that it was based on the naive belief that my peers were telling the truth about their own activities. since they talked about getting loaded and screwing their boyfriends, i assumed it was how they actually spent their free time. what i learned later is that my "friends" were braggarts. so as it turned out, i was by far the first among my peers to be sexually active (that's an understatement), and i drank/did drugs far more than they ever dared. later in my life one girl actually told me that she poured more than half of every drink down the toilet, because she just couldn't drink that much but didn't want to be seen as immature. me, i just drank every drink i could get my hands on and got accustomed to throwing up quickly and quietly about a half a dozen times throughout the day. i got a reputation for being able to party with the big boys (the older guys in the town who still had nothing better to do than get loaded with high school kids - how pathetic - but i was impressed enough at the time).
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to sum it up, i created myself to be a woman/child who was better suited to Penthouse Forum than real life. but i thought it WAS real life, because my friends said so, and because there were always people quite willing to indulge me in all these activities. i'm leaving you to assume that it was natural for me to adopt sexual activity, since my predecessors had already experienced it, and had built the system to handle the emotional impact of being "fucked" with. maybe my name says it best: nikki, from the Prince song Darling Nikki. i'll quote some of the lyrics...."i knew a girl named nikki i guess you could say she was a sex fiend.... i met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine... she said how'd you like to waste some time and i could not resist, when i saw little nikki grind....". so there you have it.
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okay so that was my public life. well, not totally - i'm making it sound like it was all fun, when really it wasn't. lots of it WAS fun, but lots of it scarred me permanently too. i got myself into a lot of bad situations that i couldn't get out of. i was raped more times than i can even remember (who wants to remember that?). my health suffered as a result of my drinking, and my sexual escapades more often than not physically painful (because of mysterious scar tissue inside - well, you know). my relationship with my family was horrible - they didn't even know the half of what i was doing, but they hated what they saw. i had two abortions, one of which was badly botched and landed me in the hospital. i left home at 16, working part-time at a McDonald's in the neighboring town where i moved to support myself through school. i left for the city after graduation and declined a chance to go to university because of a conflict with our parents - they would support a degree in commerce or something equally respectable, but they would not send me to the graphic design college i wanted to attend. having no other financial alternative, i said screw school and severed my relationship with them (lysergia patched it up later). i worked dead end jobs, quitting them and finding others at an alarming pace. i hopped back and forth between Toronto and Halifax and my hometown. i became pregnant for our daughter, Sydney, at body age 20, and then lost my foothold as the dominant member of the Paradox.
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i'm really not that much different on the inside in the year 2000 than i was in the year 1983. on the outside i am - i no longer carry on multiple affairs, i no longer drink to excess on a daily basis (although i still have bouts of it), i don't dump partners like used napkins. but i still feel the same way. i still want those things. those things are part (a big big part) of who i am. i am a woman/child out of her element, maybe forever. what's it like to be nikki? it's shame - shame at being really good at the things nice girls aren't supposed to do, shame at wanting those things. it's longing to keep running, keep life changing, have a different experience every day - and being stuck in a body with a few dozen others who will suffer if i do. it's being that annoying borderliner who can only remember the last emotion i feel about a person, never mind the years of emotions before today. it's being a drama queen amongst a system of quiet stoics. it's wanting so badly to be adored, to have undivided attention, to be loved for the moment but not for all time. it's feeling like you could be one of the brightest stars in the sky - if only the clouds would go away.
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i can't say it any plainer than this. i really am trying. it's incredibly difficult for me to say "i am this" or "i feel that". my view of myself and the world changes by the minute. but the things i have written here are the things that have endured. i don't do emotions very well... i can't hang on to them long enough to let them change who i am as an individual. i wasn't meant for that. i can feel anger and sadness and joy, but their impact fizzles against the steel door of my memory, so i can't remember if i have been mad or sad about the same thing a hundred times or twice (but it sure feels like "always" at the time). i know i've left a lot out. there are some important people along the way i haven't talked about, but i just don't feel like it right now. this is hard - i don't like to talk about who i am, because i know there's really no place for someone like me in our life anymore. a rebel without a cause.
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