Be My Friend

Dear Celebrity, I've seen you before and I'd like to make a case for friendship.

[wizpower]

Dear David Sedaris

Dear David Sedaris,

I don’t even know where to begin. I would say I vaguely imitated you in my senior thesis, but that sounds creepier than it was. I would say that I’ve been known to offer friends and family dramatic readings of your essays, specifically “Six to Eight Black Men,” and namely in efforts to talk constructively about gun control, but again, that sounds creepier than it was. Truth be told I come from a fairly conservative, pro-gun family and I simply wanted to express the need for a little self-regulation. The experiment didn’t work, of course, and I can all but hear my brother and father out there now, shooting at things.

You’ve essentially built an unstoppable career out of self-deprecation, and I have a lot of respect for that. I’m constantly underselling myself in hopes to set expectations so low I have no choice but to exceed them. A few weeks ago I went for an interview at a prestigious literary agency and opened with, “I have virtually nothing to offer you monetarily speaking, but I have a big hueart.” The interview went well, perhaps because the man hadn’t heard a pitch like that before.

While you live in France with Hugh and I live in New York with Sarah, I imagine we could still find things to talk about. Growing up with a lisp. Growing up with a mother who couldn’t be bothered to figure out how or why her child was so weird. Finding that social ritual was no help to haplessly awkward habits. I had not only an imaginary friend until I was nearly twelve, but I was also an imaginary friend back, essentially a real live avatar. Her name was Laura and my name was Megan and together we had a child, played by my doll BayO. I was unaware of my impending homosexuality when this fantasy played out, and as far as I know, my avatar was not in love with Laura, we just happened to mother together. My girlfriend and I are getting married next spring and she is on the fence with the idea of children. Often I’ll cite Megan and Laura as examples of happy parents. She looks at me crooked, furrows her eyebrows and says as gently as possible that in face holding a doll up to your flat chested t-shirt is not actually breastfeeding, and a shoebox under the bed is not a proper crib. 

When she says it like that I fear maybe I haven’t grown out of those haplessly awkward habits.

But then I think, I haven’t been an elf. Yet.

All best,

Liz

[wizpower]

Dear Justin Bieber

Dear Justin Bieber, 

Thank you for all you’ve done for lesbian haircuts. 

Very best,

Liz Parker

[wizpower]

Dear Sia Furler

Dear Sia Furler,

We could start with gchat and go from there. 

Inside voices, full hearts,

Liz Parker

[wizpower]

Dear Sue Costello

Dear Sue Costello, 

Hi, I’m Liz Parker. You know my girlfriend. You are so famous. We met at your stand-up at the Cutting Room a few weeks ago and I was bowled over by your fame. It was emanating off of you, like light off an angel, making you an angel of fame. A fame angel. Then when you did the headstand, all of the other angels of fame blushed because once again, you upstaged them. Well done, Sue, well done.

Your humor is like my humor: a lot of funny shit happens to us. Sometimes it feels super human. I’m not super human, not even a little bit, but if you take me out of it and put all of the stupid stuff that’s happened to me (or that i’ve done, because that’s how we are retrained to think, right? That things don’t happen to us, we aren’t victims) on paper, you’d think to yourself, “This all happened to one, single somewhat well-adjusted member of society?” The answer is yes.

I understand your point on people from outside Boston thinking everyone from Boston and the surrounding area is racist. Sometimes I think every white person is accused of being racist. Let me tell you my racist story. 

I grew up in a very white affluent town in Connecticut and I went to an even whiter, more affluent boarding school in Massachusetts. Despite practically no exposure to anyone not white, Anglo-Saxon, and protestant (I went to a single bar mitzvah and had a single black classmate), I was not at all raised with the sense that there was anything to be racist about. My parents aren’t racist, not in the least, and my brother and I both grew up like the wide-eyed little assholes most kids are. 

Fast forward to junior year of high school. I was studying American History and on this particular day, was reading The Life of a Slave on the soccer bus. We’d been to an away game, we hadn’t played particularly well. That also might have been me. I peaked at 12-years-old. At 12, I was unstoppable. By 15, I was getting my head stuck in the soccer net. In any case, I’m reading the book and annotating like a good student. I see a freshman teammate holding a sleeve of cookies. They look like good cookies. Even though I played approximately two minutes of the game, I feel like those cookies should be mine. I ask for them. She waves them over my head, making me grasp at straws like an idiot. She finally hands the sleeve to me. I take it as if I’m starving. I begin to take out a few cookies. She is suddenly waving her hands in front of me wanting the sleeve back. My mind says, “Oh, so you’re the beggar now?” My mouth says, “Oh, so you’re the n**** now?”

I looked around and as God laughed I made eye contact with the single black kid who had travelled on the bus - two hours each way - to cheer us on. I stood up. Started crying. Said, “I literally have never used that word before, I didn’t mean it, I don’t know where it came from I am so so so sorry.” I sat back down and looked out the window and knew that no 17-year-old had ever felt like this before. The bus stank of awkwardness, settling damply over the other passengers. I cried quietly.

When the bus returned to campus I promptly found my boyfriend and told him the story, bawling, asking what to do. he said he’d talk to the kid. I found my advisor and relayed the events; he said he would talk to the Dean. I cried some more. Time passed and the weight lifted.

Until a few months later on MLK Day. The entire school piled in to the large auditorium to talk about things like civil rights. And there’s the same student in front of everyone, with the opening lines, “But I never say that word. I don’t know where it came from. I’m sorry. Her empty words hit me like pellets, reminding me that this is still a racist place.”  He continued on, forever, and most of the junior and senior classes, and the faculty, kept awkwardly looking-not-looking in my direction. The speech lasted nearly fifteen minutes. He got a standing ovation. He was called brave. A few months later, I learned that I couldn’t be considered for a certain leadership position because they were concerned about “earlier events dealing with racism.” 

I tell this story all the time, mostly because it’s slightly more appropriate as a “most embarrassing moment” story than the time I was fired for unintentionally defecating on the floor. But then as my brother said, “Liz, the more times you tell strangers that you sometimes use the n* word, the more times strangers are going to walk away thinking you are a total and utter racist. At least everyone at some point in their lives has shit their pants.”

It’s a fair point. In today’s world, it’s more socially acceptable to shit your pants than to say the wrong word at the wrong time. 

To faking a limp sometimes,

Liz

[wizpower]

Dear Kate McKinnon

Dear Kate McKinnon,

I realize you don’t do social media (yet), so this letter may have trouble finding you, but if we didn’t hit on cute girls we’d never find the bicurious ones amirite?

Don’t worry, this isn’t an attempt to hit on you - just because we are both gay and both blonde does not mean we are supposed to date. 

Sometimes I have dreams where we are friends and then I wake up. I know it is a dream and we are not actually friends, but I would be lying if I didn’t say there are some mornings when I say to myself, “Liz, you’ll have another dream about Kate soon, don’t worry.” And that makes me feel better.

Full disclosure: these aren’t weird dreams. Usually we are at a park trading one-liners and making gay jokes. Also some about cats. I should also say: there are ALWAYS other people at the park AND sitting with us. We are friends within a group of friends. I am not dreaming about you alone in a park and spouting off gay one-liners. No, we are in the same group. Granted, these friends are usually vehicles to laugh at us - because in my dreams we are both very funny (versus just you), so it’s important to have that built-in audience. 

You won my heart very early on in your SNL career. This might be due to the fact that my brother texted me on Sunday morning (he literally never does this) and said: 

Truer words have never been spoken.

In efforts to encourage the beginning of this friendship, here are some thing we have in common:

We were both born in 1984.

We both played the piano.

We are both lesbians (that’s public, right? It is for me).

That’s all I have so far, but hopefully we will have some more things once you answer these questions:

Did you ever attend summer camp?

Did you ever get your head stuck in a soccer net by accident?

Did you ever keep a journal, ideally during your preteen into teen years?

Did you ever get caught checking out a girl at the rodeo without realizing it?

Did you ever play spin the bottle strategically with your looser female friends?

Did you ever attend a golf tournament and feel like you shouldn’t be there because it felt a little <i>too</i> comfortable?

I’m not Vegan, I’m

Liz