Coal to Diamonds (19 page)

Malibu pretty much only has surf motels or David Geffen’s gruesomely overpriced luxury hotel, so we didn’t stay in town. Which is fine with me—Malibu is a town where there are NO DONUTS! Not a single donut shop, and believe me, we looked! Your only donut options are basically Starbucks or box donuts from the grocery store. Which became my food obsession while recording. Powdered Donettes and orange juice. Genius! Every morning we would drive a rented minivan from our hotel over a twisty mountain road lined by rich people’s houses. Listening to Grace Jones’s “Williams’ Blood” on repeat for inspiration, or working on our future side career of writing country songs. I’m dead serious—Nathan and I grew up with the genre and can bust out hilarious rhymes playing off each other. Garth Brooks, we’ve already written your next jam! Recording is fun and exciting and lonely and scary all at the same time, and these small rituals that develop over the course of working on a record really help get you through it.

After three months, the record was ready to be released out into the world. As with any project that you work on so closely for so long, there were parts I loved and parts I would do differently if I could go back. But it was an exciting moment, not knowing what would happen next, letting it go.

And that was the beginning of another year’s worth of firsts. My first fashion week—complete with meeting Karl Lagerfeld and Vivienne Westwood and getting to see some of my favorite designers’ shows in person. My first house, a little place in the same neighborhood where all my friends live, bought over the phone during that same fashion week. And eventually, buying my mom her first house, moving her out of her falling-down trailer! My first fashion line, getting to watch what seemed like magic as the drawings I gave to the designers at Evans came back as real live shoes, dresses, and tops! It was so amazing to get to make clothes that were exclusively for fat girls, to finally put everything I’ve learned over the years about dressing my body to work making things for other people to enjoy! Gossip’s first platinum records … WTF? Venue capacities that were firsts for us, each milestone size more perplexingly big than the last. My first time walking a runway, thanks to the extremely sweet and hilarious John Paul Gaultier. First time playing the Cannes Film Festival. Shooting the first cover of Katie Grand’s gorgeous
Love
magazine. Our first time playing Coachella and meeting my longtime idol John Waters!

Eventually truly crazy situations like these start seeming less weird, which is its own kind of weird. I don’t know who I’ll be meeting next in what strange locale. I don’t know how long Gossip will be getting to ride this excellent wave that has brought us out of our snug scene in Olympia and into the giant world. Don’t know when I’ll find myself over it, the travel and the pressure, and run off to fulfill my other dream of being a hairdresser instead.

Right now, I’m in a good place; I might be halfway around the world, but I have my house to come home to. Portland might have felt like the big city when I showed up there years ago, but after everyplace I’ve been since, it feels cozy as a hug, the place where my closest friends—my chosen family—live. I always have that, no matter what. I have the places I came from and all the shit I’ve been through built up inside me like the cells of my body, holding me together, making me who and what I am, and that is permanent
too. Nobody in this life knows what is in store for them, and all I have to do is crane my head back and see where I’ve been to know that anything is possible. And I know that who I am is a product of everything I’ve survived—all the good and the bad of my past. My gifts and blessings can’t be separated from my hardships and curses. It’s all one life, and I would not trade it for something different. I have Judsonia so deep beneath my fingernails all the mani-pedis in the world won’t dislodge it. I’m my mother’s daughter, no matter how imperfectly we’ve loved each other. I’m Akasha’s sister, and I know that without her quiet, constant strength I’d be dead. And I feel connected to all this, whenever I step onto a stage and see the impossibly huge crowd screaming, having come to hear me sing. To say I’m grateful sounds trite. It’s like I’ve won some crazy fucking lottery, and the prize has been my life.

My biggest priorities are to keep being creative in every way I can, which includes playing with my friends’ hair, putting together a lunatic outfit, acting stupid with friends—all the stuff that I love doing. I want to keep using this crazy life of mine as a way to change the world, but not in some major way like I’m going to solve world hunger or achieve world peace or something. What I want is the same thing everyone wants, the same thing you want—to hurl myself into this world and trust that it will catch me. That we all belong, and we’ll all find the places and the people we’ll belong to. I know we all have different magic inside us, and it’s up to you to figure what yours might be. Maybe your magic is looking fabulous, maybe it’s organizing a protest, maybe it’s making a zine or starting a band or helping your friends’ band go on their first tour. Take your inspiration and let it lead you out into the world, into your big amazing genius life. Voices in your head, echoes of people trying to hold you down—tell them to fuck off. You’re perfect the way you are. You don’t need to change anything but the world, so get to it.

BETH DITTO was born and raised in Judsonia, Arkansas. She is the lead singer of the band Gossip and lives in Portland, Oregon.

MICHELLE TEA is a memoirist, novelist, and poet. She lives in San Francisco.