March 5, 2008
Marilynity #2


My identification with Marilyn Monroe, I have explained earlier, helped contain the dizzying, fizzying power of my vulnerable sexuality. But she is not the only Marilyn at whose altar I have pressed my fevered brow.

The other is this, lesser known, one; the other is Marilyn Munster.

As an American figure, Marilyn Munster is a D-grade icon at best. The Munsters may have had a better theme song and vehicle, but it was 98 Degrees to The Addams Family’s *NSYNC. Both shows debuted the same week in 1964—The Addams Family on ABC and The Munsters on CBS—but while The Addams Family was the legendary mordantly witty Charles Addams’s acknowledged child, The Munsters had a coat of arms with a bar sinister to show its place as the bastard offspring.

Marilyn, though, she was The Munster’s original creation. Herman, Lily et al were not merely knock-offs of Gomez and Morticia, but also strange amalgams of Frankenstein/Dracula/Werewolves and their wives and children, yet Marilyn in all her Sixties sorority glory ironically stood out in her uniqueness. Poor cousin Marilyn, she of the alabaster skin, Sandra Dee haircut, twinsets and eternal matriculation at Westmore College, was the abnormal one, the sport genetic freak in the breast of the Munsters’ family.

She was pitied for her paradoxical abnormal normality. She was, to them, the ugly one, the inconceivable offspring, the one who with some caring, loving tenderness could be gently shepherded back into the family fold, to eventually take her place, hanging upside down, sleeping in the coffin, wearing gossamer black, sprouting pointy fangs, just like everyone else, just as she should be.

I know how she felt, I think, for I have been the poor cousin Marilyn in the nest of the ostensible freaks, over and over again in my life.

The first time it came to me, my second Marilnynity, was in the early ‘80s. I came home from work to my apartment in Dorchester, Massachusetts that I shared with my roommate Lauren. There was a party going on, and as a drunk, noisy testament to the status of Lauren’s and my relationship, not only had she not asked me if it was ok if she had a party, but she also had neglected to inform me that she would be throwing one.

And so I came home at about eleven at night to find my apartment filled to the rafters with punks, for Lauren and her compulsively LSD-taking Mohawked boyfriend were punks. Everywhere were Bobby Smith and Siouxie Sioux look-alikes, dripping black eyeliner and wafting Aquanet. To the audio backdrop of blaring Cramps and Scraping Foetus off the Wheel black murders of raven-haired punks glommed together, drinking some cheap beer or another, smoking cigarettes, talking about Art.

I wended my way through the groups, aware of my relatively natural blonde hair, my clothes that had matching pastel colors, my distinct lack of pointy make-up. I was the freak in my normalcy, proving that normalcy is nothing if not mutative and relative.

As I look back on it, that moment, that ‘80s punky epiphany, might have been the first moment I could see my Marilynity2, but it was not the first time I felt like the paradoxical freak of normalcy in the company of freaks. The first time was while in the company of my parents and their hippie friends. Surrounded by adults who were acting like children, wearing fanciful costumes and performing their own private fantasies, I took the role of the little adult: I dressed with care; I sat with my back straight; I used knives and forks with Victorian precision; I left the room to fart.

I had to hold it all together in my little body or I felt that I would spin out of control with the pure permissiveness.

And this role of poor cousin Marilyn, the pitiable carrier of the stanchion of dominant culture, fell to me again when I was stripping. I was the good girl, as I’ve said; I was such the good girl. In the fragrant augmented bosom of stripculture, I defined myself as the one who was most like everyone else, even though I knew I was not. For in the other world, I was a big freak myself, and I knew it.

Always betwixt and between, I find myself. Neither able nor willing to join whole-heartedly the two camps of culture, I ride the space between to this day.


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