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LJ Idol, week 18: It's Not What You Think
Jan. 30th, 2009 12:34 pmI'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.
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.
