There are many great questions: In storytelling, there is the “What happens next?” In friendship, there is “Where do you want to eat?” And for the rest of life there is, “What the Fuck is that about?” Go on, preform that line in your favorite actor’s voice; it just gets better. Nathan Lane in a freak out moment is mostly the way I say it; though when I don’t understand the lyrics to a Rufus Wainwright song usually some variation of that question fits (way to reference two gay men before paragraph one is done, L.J.).
My favorite question though is probably: “Jumping Whatsits on the Empress’s bed?”
When I was a kid and before I understood how to lie, I would blame everything I did on “the Jumping *Inarticulate-word-that-no-one-knows-not-even-adult-me* in the Empress’s bed.” i probably said it in a mind-blowingly cute baby-voice. The adults reaction was always a confused, “what the fuck is that about?” (not always made suitable for child-me). I don’t remember ever being pressed for details about the Empress, her bed, or the inarticulate-word-that-no-one-knows-not-even-adult-me, because, remember, I was in trouble at the time. I was getting asked about why my sister’s hair was three inches shorter and the scissors were in my snoopy dog’s lap. Or where all the pots and pans had gone.
The usual follow-up to the unanswered question was “Don’t be so bold, Little L.J.” (bold being a negative word in this use; I didn’t realize that until I was an adult). Of course, I never actually cut my sister’s hair or used the pots and pans to make an alien space fort. It was the inarticulate-word-that-no-one-knows-not-even-adult-me. These creatures, given the lack of precaution my parents took to stop them, have probably multiplied and are wreaking havoc on the children everywhere as we speak. more importantly, as a result of my adults’ short sighted-ness, adult L.J. also must ask “Whatsits? Jumping Whatsits? What did I mean?” And the world may never know what amazing creatures were jumping on that mysterious empress’s bed…
After I developed my language skills and learned to blame everything on my younger cousin, my sister’s stupidity, or indulge in the occasional flat-out denial, I had a notebook which I titled “Jumping Whatsits on the Empress’s bed.” This became the place I wrote down all my half-baked ideas. Oddly enough it was always more used than the good notebook where my story was being written; I organize shit, folks. I think mostly because I had a problem with regulating my font (read I’d spend hours drawing the title and never write the first sentences; this practice stopped when another child mocked me for have twelve pages with the same words written on the top. Now I have trouble with titles. God Damn you, children of Hometown, Pa and your soul-scarring bullying! Then again… I’m pretty sure I stabbed the kid with a fork so…No, I’m not ready to apologize). A little context: at the time, I was writing on a word processor that got my father’s sister through college, and the Lion King had just come out. I wrote my first and last 16 page novel to that soundtrack on that word processor.
When Dad got us our first computer (literally when the rest of the world was also getting their first computers… I think, Hometown is sometimes slow). One of my first files was a little text file called “Jumping Whatsits” and yeah, I dumped all my ideas and observation there. I still have the file and I still fan through it regularly. A lot of the ideas I have there will end up here, because when I need random inspiration I go there.
Personally, I’m just waiting to figure out where the inarticulate-word-that-no-one-knows-not-even-adult-me live so that I can join them in their relentless creative experiments. Until then… guess I’ll write more porn.
This is what the whatsits look like in my head.
Jumping Whatsits in the Empress's Bed 