Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Being Ripped Off

I spent a little time deliberating before I posted anything. Probably everyone does.

I thought about how to introduce myself to the one or two people who are going to happen upon my little page while searching for that Schizophelia from Canada, the 17 year old who seems to be angst ridden and miserable, or that Schizophelia with the tattoos who says she likes to eat babies and fuck. I’m not sure if there is a ritualistic component at work there, but I am sure that I don’t eat babies. I do fuck though.

Those are a couple of other chicks who hijacked my name after seeing it somewhere on the web. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I say that until you’re big and famous and everyone in the world knows who you are, imitation is the sincerest form of being ripped off.

No matter. Being ripped off doesn’t have much to do with who I am. The name, however, has everything to do with who I am.

But that’s another story. My story of introduction isn’t going to be about initiating either of the two of you into my cult of personality. It’s going to be about Newport. The White Trash Moulin Rouge.

When I moved to Newport the first time, I was crazy. No doubt about it. I had done a stint in a mental hospital (if any of you other Schizos can produce documentation by a medical professional, you’re in) a few months prior, which really isn’t as romantic as movies try to make it seem. Romantic? Oh, ok, so why wasn’t Angelina Jolie sucking on a cherry in my movie? Or Brad Dourif being a weirdo, mother lovin’ psycho, groveling before a stern ass nurse (who, by the way, is one of my personal heroines; I want to see another movie where the lady dominates the world and lobotomizes asshole 70’s gorilla men like Jack Nicholson) or even a silent Indian standing around being, well, silent. No sir, mental hospitals are no slice of Sara Lee. I’d like to have moved to Newport sooner and saner, because that’s where the romantic mental hospital really is.

I was driving home from the grocery store this morning when once again, I was assaulted with the very vibrancy of this town: Its freaky ass people. This woman was like, almost running down the street but was so large that at first, I thought it was one person carrying another on their back. Then I realized it was only the one lady and then I saw what she was wearing: A little catholic schoolgirl outfit, complete with flat, black shoes and crooked piggy tails. One of them was perched on the upper left side of her head and the other seemed to have been a by-product of whatever creative impulse drove her to make the first one. She was walking with the same kind of purpose that Ophrey had in “The Color Purple” and she (the piggy tail lady) had this contented look on her face like she had just been elected president or had just gone to the bathroom after having to wait a very, very long time. Oh, and the best part was that she was wearing some kind of smock, like the kind women used to wear at dime-stores. It was red and tied at the sides, so I’m thinking that she was either walking to the bus-stop to go or had just been dropped off from her job in the fabric department at Wal-Mart. This woman, like most people in Newport, is incredibly intruging to me. You just want to watch her to see what happens next, if only to watch the faces of those around her. Living in Newport is like throwing pebbles into a different pond every day. I never tire of feeling brand new ripples lift my ass up (like a duck, which is my spirit animal, by the way) and set me back down on the smooth water to contemplate what the air was like two inches above me.

I moved away from Newport for a while, back into the jaws of the West Side of Cincinnati. Bad idea. Good Northern Kentucky people scoff at Cincinnati. The way I see it, Cincinnati is not for fierce people like me and that was a lesson I learned well. Northern Kentucky is for people who don’t exactly want to take life by the balls, but who are the BALLS (or highly fertile OVARIES in my case) of life! I moved to Cincinnati four or five years ago and never stayed in one place for more than six or seven months. I’ve been in Newport for over a year now and really, I don’t know if I’m going to leave. The tempting aspect of great grad schooly goodness is making my intellectual mouth water but how can I leave a place when it is the only place that has ever felt like home? Yes, that’s right, home to me is a David Lynch film, and complete with dwarves (I swear this lady right down the street is only 2 feet tall. The first time I saw her, I thought she was a toddler) whores and pimps [the whores are sickly looking, pale young men, the pimps are large diesel dykes with bad mullets (what’s a good mullet, eh?) and greasy t-shirts] strip bars (Don’t ask about the strippers here. Just don’t ask) and its own special breed of dog, the “Newport”, which is just about the friendliest and sweetest dog in the world (I know a fellow who has one) and can be identified by his cheap suit (dirty black fur with a white spot at the neck, like the cravat of a dead guy who was buried in his butler uniform) and intelligent brown eyes.

If you ever come to Cincinnati to visit, blow it off and come on over the river to Newport. If it sucked, would I have wasted this much time on it?

If a person can be defined by their space, Newport is where you'll always be able to see the bumpy antique window into my head. But exercise extreme caution and please, don’t forget to NOT wipe your feet on the way in.