2.12.05-- She's baaaaack!

Just when life couldn't get any weirder, I've been invited to come back to my high school to speak at "Career Day" about my life as a performance artist. Flying back and everything.

For those of you who don't know, I went to Mercy High School, an all girls Catholic school. The last remaining all girls school in San Francisco. I think.

I am not sure what I will talk about but here are some things that I've been thinking of telling the young Mercy Women...

"Hey Skippers, I am living proof that you can make the honor roll every year, win scholarships and speech trophies, get into a great college, make good grades there, and yet still manage to shame your parents and become a living fuck-up."

"I am so honored to be back at Mercy. Why just two years ago I applied for welfare assistance. I was denied because my car put me just over the required income bracket. I am proud to say that today in 2005, I absolutely do not qualify for welfare, and I have Mercy High School to thank for it."

"Ok kids, who wants to play with my big vagina? Ha ha, I'm talking about a prop from one of my shows! Hey now, don't look at me like that."

"I know that the video footage of my performances make me seem like a crazyass homeless drunk lady. But believe me, there are graduate students who will study this. Therefore it has value."

Ok seriously, I'm not going to say any of the above (but I know some of you were thinking that's what I would say!). I think it's a good time for me to come back to that school and talk about what a weird ride it's been. I really want to inspire the women to listen to their own voices, find creative ways to work against injustices that they witness, and embrace themselves as being capable of anything.

Or maybe I'll just show them my big vagina.

My high school days were so filled with that strange teen angst. I was so high strung and was working under so much pressure to succeed. It didn't help that I was also on a constant stream of no-doz pills so I could stay awake to study. God, there was like a week that I think I got by on only 3 hours of sleep. I remember I had this late night routine of putting my Mercy uniform on at 3am, falling asleep in my books, and then crawling to the car in the morning to get dropped off at school. I'd spend the time before school started, lying on the hallway floor, clutching my chest, hoping and praying that I wouldn't die of a heart attack.

And yep, it was all worth it, because I became a performance artist. Career day here I come!

Apparently now the school is much more politically aware and feminism is integrated more into the spirit of the school. It wasn't like that when I was there. I was such a weird specimin of high school student. I was like this total model student-- I won speech contests, got great grades, worked on student council-- and the school would wave me around like their trophy.

But I was also so misbehaved. Me and my friend Sara once got 5 detentions at once because of "inappropriate" things we wrote on this banner for the mass that we had with the all boys school. Me and Sara got in trouble a lot. It was problematic to our dean because we were also on student council. At one point, me and Sara wanted to engrave our names on the chairs in the dean's office because we were so used to sitting in them.

Back then there was this messed up rule that you could take a girl from Mercy to a dance, but not another girl from another school. But you could take a guy from another school. This sucked because I wanted to take my friend Ariana to the prom after this fartface named Brian Kenny dumped me to go with this gross chick named Marian Gonzalez to the same prom. This policy was such outright sexism and homophobia-- it basically commicated that women were not supposed to go out with women, only with sorry-ass guys. So as the story goes, I ended up taking this guy who worked at the local donut store to the prom, it was awful, and had I been able to take my friend Ariana, it might not have been so awful.

Well, apparently the students a few years later were able to overturn this policy as discriminatory and now girls can take other girls to dances. I wish I had been strong enough to overturn it when I was in school. I think I was too scared to know to speak up for myself.

Incidentally, I'd love to document the Career Day visit back. If any cool budding filmmakers up in SF want to work on helping me document the day on April 28th (it ends at 2pm or earlier), I'd love to collaborate with you. Hit me up g.

Anyway, that's it really. I just had to share.

My workshop is filling up like hotcakes! Sign up if you want a spot.

Love,

Kristina