The Princess Diarist(27)

I must be who I am and people adjust to it. Don’t try to rush or influence the decision. Do not let what you think they think of you make you stop and question everything you are. Surely between the various yous, you can find that you not only have enough going for you to keep you going, but to “take you far.” Maybe even to Alderaan and back.

Who are you doing all this bullshit for? Certainly not yourself. If you were the only one around to be yourself for, you’d stop for the lack of interest. You know all the shit you tell people—you know it, you’ve lived it, you’re living it, etc. So what’s the point of telling any and everybody else? Ingratiating yourself to them by being so available. “Admitting” and “confessing” and “confiding” all those things that sound secret and special and spontaneous when it’s really just the same old ploy. Seduction. I would resent if I were on the outside looking in. Someone telling me things I didn’t ask to hear. Telling me things I don’t want to hear. Too much, too soon, and I don’t know what she wants in return. Am I supposed to nod and smile, look interested, or does she expect me to exchange stories? Does she expect me to tell her about my childhood, my parents, guilt, anxiety, fears, sexuality? ’Cause if she does she’s got another thing coming.

I should let people I meet do the work of piecing me together until they can complete, or mostly complete, the puzzle. And when they’re finished they can look at the picture that they’ve managed to piece together and decide whether they like it or not. On their own time. Let them discover you.





You’re my thought collector



Part-time love rejector



Draggin’ round and round and round in my dreams



And you make me smile



Decorate my meanwhile



Drivin’ me to extremes



Can you hear me, my sweet chauffeur



Drivin’ me to extremes





Something really incredible happened to me. Something that should’ve happened a long time ago, but Jesus, I’m just grateful it happened. I mean, it’s changed everything. You’re probably thinking, oh, she’s falling in love, or she’s found God, or the IRA, or whatever. But it’s nothing like that. Although in a way it’s like all of those things because it’s a kind of revolutionary deep emotional religious experience. And yet not like that at all. I suppose I should just tell you exactly what happened and let it speak for itself.

I was sitting by myself the other night doing the usual things one does when spending time alone with yourselves. You know, making mountains out of molehills, hiking up to the top of the mountains, having a Hostess Twinkie and then throwing myself off the mountain. Stuff like that. Anyway, I’d done this . . . oh, 4, maybe 5 . . . we’ll call it an even 19 times. I was just about ready to start construction on my 20th molehill when I suddenly thought I heard someone playing a polka outside my window.

I later discovered that it was a recording of Ray Conniff jamming live at the Troubadour with Led Zeppelin. It was early Ray Conniff, before he got really commercial. When he was still really mellow and innovative and . . . Well, when his music got inside you, you know what I mean? You remember the days when everyone would rush home from school, grab some Fritos and Ripple wine, put on their favorite Ray Conniff album and just unwind. And finding out when his new album was coming out and rushing down to Discount Records, hoping that they’ve not sold out.

I know one guy who actually saw a Ray Conniff concert, before he stopped giving them because the girls would scream so loud that you couldn’t hear his music. But this guy was close and could hear pretty well and he was just . . . Well, completely blown away. I mean, he said it was so fucking moving, you know? He said that Ray Conniff, and I do not make this up, he said that Ray Conniff was the most real person, the most together person, he’d ever seen. And this guy’s been around and met them all—yes, including Mantovani—and yet Ray Conniff was the one person whose mere presence and even merer music moved him profoundly.

Anyway, all this has nothing to do with my experience really, except I think it is somehow ironic that I should be sitting there and suddenly hear this incredible music that had meant so much to me. So I stopped work on my molehill and went to the window to see where this music was coming from. Suddenly I noticed a light in the distance that seemed to be coming towards me. As it grew closer I could see the light was coming from a fire. I look back on this and find it really strange and sort of eerie, but at the time I thought nothing of it. It was almost 5 feet in front of me when I realized I was looking at a man sitting on a flaming pie. He smiled serenely at me—or maybe he coughed violently—but whatever it was, it was mystical. Almost embarrassingly mystical, if you know what I mean.

The man must have noticed me blushing because he offered me a rainbow trout and enough money to finish my payments on my new Dyna-Gym. My eyes filled with tears and he leaned over and wiped my eyes with the trout and then said, “You needn’t ever make mountains out of molehills again. You have misjudged yourself. You are not who you think you are. You have been examining yourself from the wrong end of the telescope, one might say. You can set up housekeeping on one side of the looking glass or the other—the side that makes big things small or small things big; I like to hang out on the big things small side, you meet a better class of people there. But of late, you haven’t been able to see yourself clearly. You see, my dear, you are not Carrie Fisher at all. They just told you that to test you. Well, now, my dear, the test is over, and I’m pleased to say you pass with a C?. Now you can graduate to your true identity. You see, my dear, you are really Mr. Ed. And you have been all along. You can now live out your life as who you were intended to be. Farewell.”