July Born Girl Quotes

I played the last Born This Way ball here in Montreal. I was so badly injured, and I had been injured for like, a few shows. And I didn’t want anybody to know, because I didn’t want to disappoint fans, and I didn’t want to cancel. I remember, I was dancing on the stage - Sheisse - with a big castle behind me, and I was in some kinda fuckin’ pain, I’ll tell you. But you just kept cheering, all of you kept cheering for me. And I never told any of you what was wrong, I never said anything. But when I was saying goodbye, some fans that I picked out of the pit, backstage.. These two girls looked at me, and I’ll never forget it. They passed me a McQueen cane with a skull on it. And they looked right at me, and I knew that they knew I needed the cane to walk. I don’t know how they knew, or why they brought it, but it was one of the most special moments of my life, I’ll never forget it. That you could feel what I was thinking, like we’re one. We are friends. I made a decision on that day, and I thought I had made it long ago.. that I would never let you down again, and I would always put my fans first. The music, the magic of this music and these concerts, I hope that you remember them forever. You pretty girls putting flowers in each others hair… And you sweet boys, painting your faces like the sad clown that I was when I no longer heard your applause. How you whisper to each others ears, and you whisper, its okay. I was born this way. I will never forget these moments. you’re my little gypsy kingdom, and I love you.

Lela’s love affair with nuptials was born at the age of eleven, when she watched two epic weddings on TV. In July of 1981, Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles of Wales were wed in London. Back home in Wisconsin, Lela watched every minute of it with her mom, perched on the edge of their brown pleather sectional. Then, in November, fictional couple Luke and Laura tied the knot on every teenage girl’s favorite soap opera, General Hospital. Actress Genie Francis wore a bizarre head-hugging veil and a dress that looked like a marshmallow. Her groom, Anthony Geary, rocked his deceptively fluffy ‘80s hair. Lela couldn’t help but be transfixed. It all felt larger than life. And her little eleven year-old heart gave into it lock, stock and barrel.

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep. My father had a master plan. He told me, "My son, each man during his lifetime should buy a house. Finally he dies and leaves that house to his son. Then his son gets his own house and dies, leaves both houses to his son. That's two houses. That son gets his own house, that's three houses . . ." The family structure. Victory over adversity through the family. He believed in it. Take the family, mix with God and Country, add the ten-hour day and you had what was needed. I looked at my father, at his hands, his face, his eyebrows, and I knew that this man had nothing to do with me. He was a stranger. My mother was non-existent. I was cursed. Looking at my father I saw nothing but indecent dullness. Worse, he was even more afraid to fail than most others. Centuries of peasant blood and peasant training. The Chinaski bloodline had been thinned by a series of peasant-servants who had surrendered their real lives for fractional and illusionary gains. Not a man in line who said, "I don't want a house, I want a thousand houses, now!" He had sent me to that rich high school hoping that the ruler's attitude would rub off on me as I watched the rich boys screech up in their cream-colored coupes and pick up the girls in bright dresses. Instead I learned that the poor usually stay poor. That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh, otherwise it would be too terrifying. They'd learned that, through the centuries. I would never forgive the girls for getting into those cream-colored coupes with the laughing boys. They couldn't help it, of course, yet you always think, maybe . . . But no, there weren't any maybes. Wealth meant victory and victory was the only reality. What woman chooses to live with a dishwasher?

She lives here now, Mom. With me. And it won’t be long before you can meet her, but there’s one more thing. During that short time we knew each other in Grants Pass, we had a little…ah, a little…blessing, that’s what it was. We had a blessing. Well, actually a couple of blessings. On the way. Soon.” Dead silence answered him. “It came as a shock to poor Abby at first, and I admit—I was pretty surprised, but we’re very happy about it. Happy and excited.” Silence. It stretched out. “Mom? Twins. We know one is a boy, but the other one is hiding.” Again, a vacuum. Then he heard his mother shriek, “Edward! Come here! Cameron got some girl pregnant!” “Mom! Just have a little sip of that wine!” “I think it’s going to take something a little stronger! Twins? You got some girl pregnant with twins?” He couldn’t help it—he laughed. “Mom,” he said. “She’s not some girl—she’s not a girl. Her name is Abby and she’s thirty-one.” “Cameron, how in the world—” “Now, Mother, I’m not going to explain. You’ll just have to trust me, I’ve never been careless and neither has Abby. So—here’s the deal. She’s probably going to go early, though the babies are due the second of July. Anytime, Mom. Abby wants to have her mother come as soon as they’re delivered, so I hope you can be a little patient. Twins is a pretty big—” “Cameron! Are you married?” “Not yet, Mom. Even though we’re in this together, completely, we just haven’t had time to get married. That will come—we’ll take care of the details. No point in rushing it now. Besides, we’re not going to be fooling anybody, including the great-grandmothers and great-aunt Jean, by rushing into it right now. They’re nearly here.” “Dear God in heaven,” his mother said. And in the background he could hear his father, Ed, saying, “What? What? What?” “I’ll call you the moment they’re born. Tomorrow, when I’m at the clinic, I’ll get Mel to take a picture of me and Abby and e-mail it to you. By then you will have calmed down.” “But, Cameron,” she said, “you haven’t given me time to knit anything!” He laughed again. “Well, get started. Abby’s really ready to unload. She just has to make it a couple more weeks to be completely safe.” “Oh, dear God in heaven,” she muttered.

Jake,” I murmur. He opens his eyes. “Are you absolutely sure this is what you want? The baby, I mean.” “I’m sure.” His gaze drops to my stomach. “This baby will be made of everything I have loved my whole life.” “I’m gonna get fat,” I mumble. “No, you’re going to get even sexier.” Coming close again, he wraps his arms around me tightly, rubbing the tip of his nose against mine. “How could I not want something made up of Trudy Wethers’s DNA?” “Still Bennett.” I grin. “You haven’t made an honest woman of me yet.” “You ready to hop that plane to Vegas now?” “A shotgun wedding. My folks would be so proud.” I laugh. “What do you want to do about the wedding?” he asks. “Move it forward?” “That would give me a matter of weeks to plan it. Why don’t we just wait until after the baby is born?” I see him quickly do the math in his head. “We wouldn’t be able to get married July twenty-first. You okay with that?” “I’m going to have a mini-Jake soon. Of course I’m okay with that.” “Or a mini-Tru,” he says. Then his expression suddenly changes. “Fuck, a girl. We might have to lock her up, Tru.” I scrunch up my face. “Why?” “Because, if she looks anything like you, I’m one day going to be fighting off horny teenage boys left, right, and centre. I’ll probably end up in jail for beating one to death if I find him with his hands on my baby girl.” He shudders comically. I let out a laugh. “Let’s hope if we have a boy, he’s doesn’t grow up to be one of those horny teenagers…or God forbid, as horny as you are. Otherwise we’ll have some girl’s dad round here kicking his ass.” “Then I’ll end up in jail for beating the shit out of the dad—fuck, this is a no-win, sweetheart,” he groans, dropping his head back against the rest. “I’m doomed to a future behind bars.” Laughing softly, I say, “Don’t worry, baby, we’ll figure a way to keep you out of prison.” I kiss the tip of his nose, then open the door, ready to get out of the car and into the house to bed.

In July 1964 an alleged incident involving Paco Rabanne rocked the model community to its foundations. The innovative Spanish-born designer had used black beauties in his Paris show to model his futuristic plastic dresses, a move that enraged the American fashion press. According to Rabanne in Barbara Summers’s book Skin Deep, things got out of hand backstage after the show. ‘I watched them coming,’ he said, ‘the girls from American Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. “Why did you do that?” they said. “You don’t have the right to do that, to take those kind of girls. Fashion is for us, white people.” They spat in my face. I had to wipe it off.’ Rabanne was subsequently blacklisted by the fashion cartels until black runway models finally became chic in the 1970s.

Teddy felt her in him, pressed at the base of his throat. He could see her sitting in the early July haze, in that dark orange light a city gets on summer nights just after sundown, looking up as he pulled to the curb and the kids returned to their stickball game in the middle of the street, and the laundry flapped overhead, and she watched him approach with her chin propped on the heel of her hand and the cigarette help up by her ear, and he'd brought flowers for once, and she was so simply his love, his girl, watching him approach as if she were memorizing him and his walk and those flowers and this moment, and he wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you'd been born for only one moment, and this, for whatever reason, was it.