LJ Idol, week 18: It's Not What You Think

[rm]

I've been using my wealthy voice all week, and it's getting a little tiring. Whatever you think this is, it probably isn't.


I didn't grow up rich, but I sure as hell grew up around those who were, and I remember things like ladies menus without prices and that to be treated with respect you must never, ever let the dress shop sales lady catch you looking at a price tag; my mother taught me how to do it on the sly while trying to find a size. It was a given, too, that we dressed for going into Town -- Midtown, Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf's and Bendel's, where my father had been a window dresser in the 1950s.

My mother sent me to private school because all the girls wore white gloves like in 1940s movies, but this meant that my peers were not my peers. They were daughters of captains of industry and had brothers with numbers following their names; no one could make me understand why girls could not have the same.

My teachers, always trying to be helpful and kind, asked constantly if I was French. But I was not French. I came from Jews and inbred Italians, and in the world of my childhood such things were more than just a little bit sordid.

In the eyes of many, my breeding bore out. I lacked a natural facility at nearly everything -- gross and fine motor skills, the formation of words, the proper modulation of sound, the ability to remember vowels in the correct order. My early report cards were filled with beautifully hand-written paragraphs on how my parents must not hope for too much from me, most grace and spatial awareness being beyond my ken.

My father bought me a Pete Rose jersey and took to playing baseball with me in the Park; maybe that would help. My mother sent me to speech therapy.

"Speak well," returned from me silence. As did "Speak slowly."

But speak like Suzanne, like Julie, like Lulu, like pert and perfect Maguerita and her exacting t's and lovely posture? That was easy. It seemed I did have one singular natural gift, and it was mimicry.

Eventually, it was deemed that I had learned the proper use of my voice and so Hewitt also taught me French, Latin, Spanish, Rhetoric and Musical Notation. I learned to dance. My parents sent me to camp, and I made friends.

Their parents, though, were always strange around me.


"My mother says I have to wear a dress when I come to see you."

"Why?"

"She says people would think poorly if I didn't."

"Why? I play baseball with my father."

"But you live uptown."


I didn't understand for a long time.


In my twenties, a new friend called laughing after we'd been at the beach for a day.

"I came home, and my mother wanted to know where I'd gotten that horrible, affected private school accent from!"

Oh. That.


By then I had learned to recognize it.

I drawled. Still do. A bit like characters from Boston on Saturday Night Live. If I'm not thinking about it, I talk and move languidly, like some drunk 1930s socialite. It's the sort of thing they teach you at private school, even by accident, especially when you're a mimic.

I've never really tried to tone it down, although it's faded some as I've moved away from that world; mostly, it's just the way I speak, but I've always been keenly aware of when I've had to dial it back up. It's easy, really, as if I have a native tongue that came from bankers and their ladies-who-lunch wives and not parents who never finished college.

Which brings me to the fact that I've just booked a cruise, about an hour ago, on Cunard for Patty and I. And when our Cunard representative (she is Ann; I am Miss Maltese) first called me, I was so tickled. I knew how to do this! I'd been doing it my whole life.

Except for the part where that's not really true. This isn't the sort of bullshit I've had to fake in more than 15 years.

But I knew the rules. Voice high, drawl, say things like "well, you see, I'm not really sure...." as a way to hedge around matters of price. Pretend like I did this sort of thing all the time, booking a cruise where one has to dress for dinner (that means black tie now; once it meant white).

And it was fun, the first two days of the Great Cruise Booking Ordeal. But it's a strain on my vocal cords; it makes me impatient, and I felt like a doll. Besides, Patty and I really needed a king bed, not two twins. I didn't grow up in _that_ 1940s movie after all.

And that's when I sighed, dropped into my regular pitch and said, "Call me Racheline and Patty's my partner and we need a king bed and I have this awful food allergy and she's in the middle of nowhere Oman, so I'm sort of doing all of this on my own, and I'm having trouble making decisions about money and I've never been on a cruise and will I get seasick?"

Ann, as I imagine her, didn't blink. Her tone did not change. I was still a wealthy person doing the things wealthy people do. The dress shop attendants were not going to suddenly ignore me because they had caught me looking at the price.

The world I grew up in was not real, even then. It was a relic, dead and uninformed of the fact. In many ways, that makes me sad, because I learned beauty and refinement at its feet, and it served as a fragile thread that bridged a century bisected by a war that was a part of my school's history: we had boarded British girls of a certain class, when they were fleeing the bombs.


Despite assumptions and despite my own arrogance, I do not speak the way I speak because I think I am better than anyone else. I speak the way I speak because I am trying desperately to keep up, because I am trying to buy a dress, because I am trying to take a vacation, because I am trying not to be both the first and last of my kind even though there's a really strong chance that I already am.

It's not fun or nice or romantic. It's lonely. And I don't know how to talk.

Comments

[brightflashes.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness this is beautiful. And get this - I fake a southern drawl because my north east accent doesn't fit in central Arkansas at all. People think me could if I speak that way.

Something that I love about this piece is the urgency of your wanting to fit in so much by playing whatever role you have decided is the role you need to play in order to just live in this world. Again, the urgency is what strikes me, because it really comes across in this. I just really love it. : )

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you! This is a topic (crazy money and class stuff of my childhood) that tends not to make people think well of me, and was a particular issue in last year's LJidol, but this was all I could think of, so I just hope it makes more sense this time. It's like this story I have to keep telling, so someone gets it, and so it's not just all gone. The world I grew up in was really beautiful, it just wasn't meant for me.

[coriander.livejournal.com]

Oh, enjoyable read... also brought tears to my eyes. That bittersweet spot between youth, innocence and understanding...

How I relate to so many of these things.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Someone will have to explain to mr. country mouse the uptown/downtown thing, because it is as mysterious to me as Mum taking about streets in London. No context.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Despite the fact that downtown is hipper, the Upper East Side, where I grew up is where Old Money lives. Like bank presidents and stuff. Even if we live in a rental by the river and not on Park Avenue. But like my uncle had a triplex on Central park when I was kid. It just... is.

That means black tie now; once it meant white.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I know this part! *ahem*

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

You have a very distinct voice in your writing, too. I rather enjoy it.

I've never been on a Cunard-line cruise, only Carnival, but I didn't get seasick at all. You really don't feel the ship moving unless for some reason they have to go Very Fast, or if the seas are very choppy, but typically the liners are able to bypass most inclement weather so it's not much of an issue.

Where are you crusing to?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It's a 10 day Carribean trip leaving from NYC. So we'll have four days/5 nights at sea and then a day each at St Maarten, Barbados, Grenada, St Lucia and St Thomas

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

This is one of the best things you've written this season, I think. It is suffused with the melancholy of lot worlds.

I have always marveled at your ability to change your tonal quality, your speech, your voice. That shifting sound contributes to your fey and unusual nature I suppose. Remember the first time I visited and you had to snap at the weird waitress in the Japanese place? It completely startled me, because it was a huge change from the way your voice was two minutes prior.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I totally don't remember that. Wait, was it squid related. Where were we?

And thank you, I'm nervous about this, because the class stuff tends to not go over well.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Now I want to invite you out to lunch and wile away an hour or so talking about the advantages and disadvantages of having the chameleon voice. I have it too, but I've gotten to a point in life where I'm a bit perverse about it. If I'm around somebody who seems to take their diction a bit too seriously, I'll gradually sound more and more like I'm from north Dallas. (Even though I was born in Detroit.)

I'll gradually sound more and more like I'm from north Dallas.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha! Great!
I do the opposite. I morph into British Imperial. The more irritated I become, the more the High Tory genes kick in.
I'm not sure what activates the Southern Cracker mode, but my mother quite recently said that I sounded exactly like my paternal grandmother, whom I do not even remember even having.
Doesn't matter. If I live with you, in three days I will sound like you. If I work with you, eight. No idea what it's for, but it really works!

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

God, I adore reading your entries.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

You are a really amazing writer.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm an Army brat and have been a master mimic my entire life. My mother is a Southern lady and my father was a Southern country boy. My father made sure I knew how to shoot while my mother made sure I knew on which side of the plate the forks went. I fit in because I make myself fit in and I know how you feel. It's hard work and it's exhausting. Keeping up always is.

[graene.livejournal.com]

"Despite assumptions and despite my own arrogance, I do not speak the way I speak because I think I am better than anyone else. I speak the way I speak because I am trying desperately to keep up..."

Yes, that. Beautifully told, as always.

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

I always feel a resonance with these pieces of yours because I spent some of my youth in that world as well, though it was the Mesdames of the Sacred heart, not Miss Hew's. I can walk in that world though I don't often choose to. Your take on buying a dress is brilliant.

[jfargo.livejournal.com]

While I know this wasn't the point of what you wrote, I still want to say that as I read this I couldn't help but think that you must be an absolutely fascinating person to get to know.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

Damn.

That's good and raw and elegant at the same time.

I envy your gift.

Thank you.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

It's always fascinating to hear you write about that world. My parents are absolutely classic nouveau riche who brought me up with a rather confused mixture of middle class values about normality & honestly and the need for trickery and guile to get ahead. However, I remember when I was about to start middle school, they were trying to talk me into going to an upper class boys school. I protested sufficiently, but it's odd to know that I could have easily ended up also having a taste of that world.

Even w/o that, I picked up some tricks such as attracting the attention of clerks in expensive shops - I loathe doing such things, but it's occasionally a useful tool.

[verasteine.livejournal.com]

I can't relate -- I want to, but I can't, because this is a fabulous insight into post-war American culture, my own experiences of bourgeois restaurants and knowing how to eat in them at a young age are startlingly different. Intriguing, and thank you for sharing this wonderfully sculptured entry.

And I don't know how to talk.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Most of my elder maternal relations were born or grew up in a country that no longer exists, gone with a vanished Empire.
I think I was born to be awkward someways.

[torenheksje.livejournal.com]

My mother was debutante Southern and my dad was dirt farm Midwestern "doing the warsh," so if you drop me into either area I can and will slide into those voices and characters. Add moving to the San Fernando Valley outside Los Angeles when I was young and I can "like ohmigahd" with the best of them.

After 5 years in the Netherlands, I find myself speaking English as if it were not my native language, which is just insane.

So am I a Southern Belle, a farmer's daughter, a Valley Girl, or a Dutchie? Yes. Whether that is simply an indication of a complex and multi-faceted personality or mental instability is something I've yet to decide.

[supremegoddess1.livejournal.com]

I've become more Southern as the years go on. When I was a child I was teased for my voice, which was more Northern/Midwestern due to my parents being transplants to the South. However, I affect more extreme Southern all the time, as even my light adult drawl is too genteel for most of those around me. A nice deep Southern gets me an "in" with a lot of the good old boys...

[kittenboo.livejournal.com]

this worked really well with the topic, i feel silly saying "good job" because you always do a good job, but I'll say it anyway

good job :)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I worried it was a stretch.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

That's gorgeous.

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

-- so I've been lurking here for a while, but.

I think I'm about twelve years your junior, but my experience at school -- private school, in Manhattan, I don't think the same one because mine was co-ed -- as the daughter of classical musicians, Jewish and Russian and not at all assimilated to wealth, property, propriety -- matches this account to a remarkable degree. I'm a mimic, too. I can move in that world, but I know it's not mine, and that I am pretending so carefully and so hard as to construct a completely different identity, a completely different frame of reference.

Reading this was a little like looking into a mirror.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Definitely different if it was coed. Hey, did you ever see Metropolitan? If not, you must rent it IMMEDIATELY.

And it makes me both a little glad and sort of sad that things haven't changed that much. Because it's so strange and isolating.

[kessie.livejournal.com]

This one hurt. I'm not quite sure why yet, but it did. This is one of the best things you've written so far for this year's LJ Idol.

[hexkitten.livejournal.com]

I'm swooning over the fact that you know the difference between black tie and white.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Do people really not know that anymore?

*twitch*

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

I'm a chameleon for accents also. And I throw them in when I'm telling stories. Sometimes I don't even notice it, but a coworker will say something about it.