Martin - Caca dolce: essays from a lowbrow life

also by chelsea martin

Everything Was Fine Until Whatever

The Really Funny Thing About Apathy

Even Though I Dont Miss You

Mickey

This is a work of nonfiction. However, some names and identifying
details of individuals have been changed to protect their
privacy, correspondence has been shortened for clarity,
and dialogue has been reconstructed from memory.

Caca Dolce

Copyright 2017 by Chelsea Martin

All rights reserved

First Soft Skull edition: August 2017

Goth Ryan first appeared in Hobart ; I Lost a Tooth at Work in Buzzfeed ;
and Voluntary Responses to Involuntary Sensations in Catapult .

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952067

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Martin, Chelsea, 1986 author.

Title: Caca dolce : essays from a lowbrow life / Chelsea Martin.

Description: New York : Soft Skull Press, [2017]

Identifiers: LCCN 2017009907 (print) | LCCN 2017019518 (ebook) | ISBN

9781593766825 (ebook) | ISBN 9781593766771 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Martin, Chelsea, 1986 | Authors, American21st

centuryBiography. | ArtistsUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC PS3613.A77783 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.A77783 Z46 2017

(print) | DDC 813/.6 [B] dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009907

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Printed in the United States of America

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For Ian

contents

a very special introduction
that knows its not
actually special

Many times when I was growing up, my nana would pull me into her bedroom, close the door behind us, and press a five-dollar bill into my palm.

Dont tell anyone, she would whisper, referring to, I supposed, my cousins, who were the only people who would possibly have been interested in the transaction, and who were usually playing in the next room. I agreed not to tell anyone because I loved and respected my nana, and because I didnt want to share the money with anyone, and, most important, because I would never have told my cousins in the first place. It would have hurt their feelings.

Youre my favorite, she would often say. Youre the baby.

It was a strange thing to say, considering I wasnt at all the baby. I was the sixth-oldest and eighth-youngest of all Nanas grandchildren, landing me somewhere near mid-eldest . I was the first child of her youngest child, which possibly could have meant something to her. I accepted my nanas words the way Ive always accepted compliments that I felt I didnt deserve: I smiled politely and told myself not to take it to heart. Maybe she said this to all my cousins. Maybe there was some alternative definition of the word favorite that I didnt know about. Maybe I was the opposite of special and this was her way of making sure I didnt find out.

I was often singled out by my teachers as an example for my classmates, which always seemed wholly unjustified. I was smart but never the smartest in my class, kind but never went out of my way to help anyone, creative but unmotivated, neither popular nor unpopular, attentive but nonparticipatory, and between one and fifteen minutes late to school almost every single day of my entire life. But almost without fail, I was the teachers pet. The one who never got in trouble even when I deserved it. The one who got second and third chances in the spelling bee because my teachers were more willing to believe that theyd heard me wrong than that I didnt know how to spell a word. I always felt that I had managed to trick adults without intending to, and was fearful that I would somehow reveal my true self to them.

Every compliment felt like a lie or a misunderstanding. When someone suggested I was cool, I couldnt help thinking, What the fuck is your problem?

But it started working the opposite way too. There was part of me that believed that I was the one who was wrong about me, that I just couldnt see my own greatness from my vantage point inside myself. When I was depressed, or felt like a complete piece of shit, or doubted my ability to do anything, there has always been a small but persistent voice saying, Youre actually kind of great . My self-doubt and confidence became inextricably linked, like a tessellation. One side couldnt exist without the other.

You have so much artistic talent, my nana told me when I was fifteen, after she heard I was showing an interest in art.

Oh yeah? I thought grouchily. Name one medium Ive worked in. I believed she had no idea what my work looked like or what artistic talent meant or what she was talking about. I was somehow mad at her for not believing in me in the right way.

Thank you, I said. I realized I believed in myself. Not because she said it, and not because anybody else (falsely, in my opinion) believed it of me. Despite all the concrete evidence I had to the contrary, and despite how embarrassing it was to admit, I believed in myself.

It has been with this embarrassing and self-inflicted confidence that I have written this book about myself, hoping to expose myself as the piece of shit I am, but also show how sweet and beautiful shit can be.

childs play

I had my first sexual experience while watching Childs Play when I was six. I felt a mysterious but not unpleasant tingliness in the area that I referred to at the time as my peepee. I had never felt such a sensation before. I think it may have had more to do with my position on the couch than with the content of the film, but because it was my first time experiencing the sensation, I attributed it to Chucky, the evil sentient doll.

I knew that this area of my body was somehow dangerous, because it was the part that was covered when I wore my bathing suit, and I had been told many times that the part of ones body that was covered by a bathing suit was off limits to anyone but myself and potentially the doctor.

Chucky is cool, I said to my cousin Jenna, who was next to me on the couch. Do you think Chucky is cool?

Its okay, Jenna said.

I adjusted my body so that a couch cushion rested against my peepee, and when Chucky was over I called my nana over and asked her to rewind the tape for me so I could watch it again.

I think Chucky is really cool, I said.

After a little while, I went to the bathroom to investigate the tingling area. Then I felt the urge to pee, so I sat on the toilet and watched my peepee, trying to figure out where the pee was coming from.

What is pee? I asked my mom later that day, after my bath, as she powdered me with baby powder in front of the fireplace. My aunt Lynn was watching Fox News on TV next to us.

Its just waste that your body doesnt need, my mom said.

Where does it come out of?

Your pee hole.

Your urethra, Aunt Lynn corrected.

Its not my poop hole, I said. I watched.

No, its a different one, my mom said. You have two.

You have three, if you really want to know, Lynn said, laughing.