I broke my arm and other news

In August:

• I quit my job with one day’s notice
• I found out I am moving to London
• I fell off a ladder and broke my arm
• My husband’s father died unexpectedly

All those events in one month would normally be a lot, but the last three on the list happened over just two days on Labor Day weekend.

I had surgery on my arm two weeks ago yesterday and now I have an external fixator until mid-October.* It looks very body horror-esque but it actually doesn't hurt aside from the skin around the pins, which I have to clean very morning. It's not unlike cleaning a very complicated piercing. The other good thing about the ex-fix is no incisions, so none of my tattoos were damaged in the surgery.

Right now I don’t have much more to say about any of the other things, except that I am so excited to be moving to London. More on that in a future newsletter, probably. Our estimated move date is mid-November.

While convalescing, I watched Chimp Crazy, which is just as… well… crazy as everyone says it is. Sidenote: did anyone else notice the massive cracks in the wood on the door jambs of Tonka’s enclosure (as seen in the pic above)? Yikes.

What’s fascinating to me about this documentary, versus, say, Tiger King, is that nearly every human featured in Chimp Crazy is a woman, from the exotic animal trader Connie Casey to Tonia, the focus of the story, to Sandra Herald, whose chimp Travis viciously mauled her friend Chandra Nash in 2009.

In reading this story about Travis from 2011, I was struck by how broken Herold seemed, and how attached she was to both her daughter and husband. Twice in the story, Herald has a breakdown after her adult daughter moves away to live her own life. It’s after the first move that Herald gets Travis, then an infant who needed bottle feeding and burping. It could be my own family dynamic coloring my interpretation, but there’s something here a little codependent: a baby needs you and loves you unconditionally, but babies grow up. Chimps don’t grow up… until they do. (After her husband dies, yet another abandonment, Herald begins dressing Travis in his clothes, and even notes in a letter to a rescue that Travis and Jerry “kiss alike.” Eww.

In interview after interview the women compare their chimps to babies, (the implication being that babies require care that only they can give). They talk about the similarity between human and chimp DNA, and Tonia even calls Tonka a “humanzee”. In the same breath, she tells us he “has an iPad” for "enrichment" to keep him company in his basement bunker. He gets Happy Meals for snacks, and Travis shared a nightly glass of red wine with Sandra Herald’s husband. The disconnect between helpless baby and poorly-fed plaything is never interrogated. As my friend Victoria put it, if you really believe chimps are that close to humans, and you’re keeping them in cages for the purpose of companionship, you’re basically a half-step away from doing slavery.

Much has also been made about Tonia’s over-the-top appearance: the bouffant-like blonde wigs, the heavy fake eyelashes, the over-inflated lips. Beyond aesthetics, I think it says something about Tonia’s headspace. After Tonka is finally rescued from his depressing underground bunker, another interviewee asks “Did she not see what the rest of us could?” Meaning, could she not tell this was an unsuitable environment for a large, middle-aqged primate?

It reminded me of a line from another, much different documentary, the Way Down, about anorexic Jesus freak Gwen Shamblin and her “weight loss ministry.” The more detached Shamblin got from reality, the more outrageous her appreance got, from crazy teased hair to 8-inch platform stilettos. A former member of her congregation confirmed: by that point Shamblin was so far into her own bullshit no one could talk any sense into her, not even about how ridiculous she looked.

Recommendations

We’re getting into spooky season and here are two horror books I read recently and enjoyed:

Camp Damascus, the first longform novel by Chuck Tingle. Very b-movie zombie monster thriller with the added bonus of having a non-neurotypical narrator, several queer characters, and a storyline that revolves around healing from religious trauma. Tingle, who is also neurodivergent, writes in a way that takes some getting used to, but once you get into it the story is quite fun. Early this year I interviewed Tingleabout his autism and the hot pink mask he wears in public to help manage his social anxiety.

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns, another debut novel about heritage, grief, and how women uphold community. This book was a slow burn but by the end I absolutely loved it. Just gorgeous. It reminded me in some ways of True Detective: Night Country, the best season in the series. Another thing i Love4d about this books is there are no male-presenting characters except for a few uncles and other relatives mentioned in passing.

I’m now looking for novels set in London, including historical fiction. Send me your recs in the replies!

• Much of Bad Cree deals with the after-effects of assimilation: in particular, two characters who try to prevent their prophetic dreams from occurring. I enjoyed reading this Texas Monthly story about a small group of people trying to reclaim their Native American Karankawa heritage after it was effectively erased by colonizers. (I did NOT love the author’s dubious tone and attempts to insert himself into sacred gatherings. Thankfully, the story’s subjects shine through in spite of that.)

“Neither I, nor anyone else, needs outside validation of my existence. Especially if that outside validation comes from people who historically and indisputably wanted my people exterminated.”

• Another TxMo banger is this story about Houston socialite Candace Mossler, who was accused of killing not one husband but trying to kill another, and having an affair with her nephew. Trust me when i say this story is juicy, including a sideline about penis implants. (Yes, it was published in 2021 but I just read it this weekend.) Candy seemed like a cool gal: a white woman of means in the 1960s in the South, she allegedy had affairs with both Sammy Davis Jr. and Chuck Berry and donated widely to art and social justice causes in the city. Except for, you know, that whole nephew-fucking thing.

“River Oaks residents were horrified that she had stayed in the neighborhood. They stopped inviting her to parties and avoided the events she hosted. “Please—I wasn’t about to be seen standing next to that hedonist,” Joanne Herring told me. “She was a murderer. She had sex with her sister’s son. I don’t know which was worse.”

• A timely read seven weeks before the election: Why I changed my mind about volunteering. Some of y’all need to really let this sink in.

That's all for now, thanks for reading. It takes love and effort to write each day and you can support that work by leaving me a tip at this link. See you next week. ❤️

*Please ignore the typos, I'm working with one hand.