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Morgasma PAGE
THREE: I hate going back there. I loathe everything about it. Except visiting my amazing, poster-woman-of-co-dependence mother and my father whose rage has diminished drastically with each progressive heart operation. The triple bypass seemed to do the trick. I guess something about ripping that heart chakra open mellows a person right out. It's as if the doctors gave my dad a heavy dose of psychic Drano - the valves have been cleared and the love flows freely now. A couple of teachers called me aside after that momentous day and told me to keep my chin up and that this kind of thing happened sometimes. And my little sister became my best friend. My mother allowed me stay home whenever it was too difficult for me to go to school. I almost missed too many days to graduate. After leaving home and the prison that was my high school, I tied on my cape and flew directly to Emory -- a competitive college that specialized in breeding little doctors and scientists and had a legacy of suicide from the top floor of the library during finals. Here I heartily embraced the first two years of a pre-med degree. I wasn't going to be some dermatologist in a sterile Atlanta high rise with mauve wallpaper. I was going to be a Doctor Without Borders or something heroic like that. Well, heavy doses of sophomore calculus and organic chemistry proved to be way too much for a little head that was already swimming from sleeping with the president of my sorority, Missy. So questions of sexuality dimmed the superhero light for a short while -- until my head was able to hold both. (And I was able to catch enough late-night re-runs of The Bionic Woman to get that a real superhero needs to be able save the world and dress like a lesbian. Lindsay had it down.) By then, the doctor dream had slipped by, and I told myself that an English major reflected a more mature version of listening to my inner calling. That I was meant for more creative things than logarithms and fetal pig dissections. I've done way too many superhero stunts to recount. Crazy stuff like chasing burglars, saving kids and dogs, and stopping my friend's brand new car from rolling down a steep hill with my bare hands. I realized I had a problem when my little sister and I were being held up in a 7-Eleven by an angry guy with his hand in his coat pocket. "You so don't have a gun," I actually said to him. "Want me to show it to you?" he snapped. I backed my bad ass down right then and there.
For the first nine years I lived in Los Angeles, the biggest drawing of Morgasma -- a Technicolor chalk drawing -- hung over my desk in my living room. In it, her graceful naked body with a TV monitor for a head sits perched on the edge of a toilet at a table that looks like a checkerboard. She's reading a newspaper and eating from a plate partitioned like a peace sign. Her walls are decorated with nonsensical clocks (Morgasma is, after all, timeless) and crosses made of money and the American flag. Her videophone bears the image of some head of state, and she's smoking with one hand and reaching for the velvet toilet tissue with the other. This is Morgasma on a light day. But I know her power. Her potential. Surgeon, soothsayer, cyberwitch, prophet, magician, specimen of physical prowess, part human, all brain. In looking back, I miss the superhero I almost was. But I really don't want to get shot in the face. And I probably don't really want to live in a third world country, five to a room, under the threat of contracting weird diseases. Maybe for a long weekend, but that's about it. Last year my dad visited me by himself. A first. I was so nervous before he came out. I emailed him lists of fun, L.A.-specific activities to choose from: The Dodgers, "The Producers," The Rose Bowl Parade, The Disney Music Hall. Nix. Nix. Nix. Nix. He always wrote back that he didn't want to plan anything. I'd suggest; he'd reject. Finally, I gave up on the planning. I picked him up, and we spent the next two days driving aimlessly around Los Angeles, weaving in and out of neighborhoods, checking out open houses, taking in architecture. We people-watched at the Farmer's Market and drove to the beach, took each other out to dinner, and shopped for a nice piece of jewelry he was determined to take back to my mother. I've always enjoyed my father's energy when it didn't jump tracks into rage. At heart, he's a charismatic, funny, compassionate guy. And he seemed doggedly fixed on making his trip to Los Angeles a wonderful memory for me. It was. I've never really thought I'd trade any part of me for any part of anybody else. I wouldn't exchange my childhood for a more mellow one. I can tell you with certainty, I wouldn't trade my dad. Nor that venomous, redneck, baton-twirling, sequined flame flinger and her posse. Without the challenges, without those people who laid them out for me, I never would've known my own superhero strength. And the power I now understand I have to transform it into something truly heroic. I wish I could report an epiphany, some cathartic lightning strike, a laying down of internal arms, my own personal peace accord. Instead, I guess I've just mellowed. And learned a little something about letting the robber get away with the cash. Sometimes you've got to keep the cape under wraps and use superhuman powers just to stay focused, steer clear of drama, and get through the day. Which, to my surprise, has left all kinds of time for peace and creativity, not to mention the clarity to dodge the flaming batons that occasionally hurl my way. My bad ass, fighter instinct swoops down from time to time, but for the most part, I've realized that superhero strength is really about love. Not about what might have been. Or who might have been different. As entertaining as it is, even dreaming about being a bad ass keeps me looking backward. And tops on the Superhero Rules list is to look where you want to go. These
days, I dream less often about kicking ass. I wake up more peaceful.
I still run late, but not nearly as late as I used to. I know that
my superhero is still in there if I need her. Morgasma's on the
wall, ready to be my muse if she's summoned. I just don't have to
dream a fantasy to feel alive or safe. I can wake up, roll over,
brew a pot of green tea, then write my heart out. Life may look
a little less than heroic, but I'm awake now. And in the privacy
of my own breakfast nook, I'm still a bad ass.
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Mr.
Conner, toupee now ever-so-slightly askew, dragged Marcia Hayden
- rabid, crazed - out of the room. Somewhere in the fray, somebody
had turned the projector off. Marcia jabbed her hands through the
air toward me and screamed as he carted her out. He slammed the
door. Then the silence hit. And it never stopped. Until I left that
creepy school in that charming little stuck-in-time town where my
parents still live. 
I
enjoy drawing, and I often find myself drawing the same character
doing different things. Her name is Morgasma. She sort of emerged
from the chalk as me, my anti-self . . . my superhero. Morgasma
is impressive. She can perform home surgeries through cyberspace.
Like if you were trapped somewhere and you had to get your leg amputated,
she could do it. From her house. 
