[Letter Talk] Mail Bag #9 – The Clitorati Special

This week’s episode is a Clitorati special! The Clitorati is a monthly comedy show in LA and Baltimore consisting of exclusively women performers. The show strives to build a community among women in comedy to learn, grow and support each other. I’ll be performing on the March show in Baltimore, hosted by my good friend Nicki Fuchs (NickiFuchs.com).

In this episode, you’ll hear a letter to a woman I admired as a young girl, a thank you to a company for making an incredible period product (yep, that’s the lady period I’m talking about), and an exchange with a super cool lady (Traci L. Turner: TraciLTurner.com / artlifeconfidential.com)

Letters

Dear Chyna,

I wanted to write you this letter in appreciation of what you’ve done for me and many other women. I watched you on WWF Smackdown when I was a kid, and I always thought you were just so cool. I started watching wrestling when my childhood friend Leela got me into it. I loved the excitement, acrobatics, and dramatic storylines. Also, Leela’s mom was an obsessive neat freak, so watching wrestling was one of the only times we were allowed inside the house. I think I went inside her house maybe two times, and we hung out almost every day for probably 4 years. Most of the time we stayed in her family’s back yard where her dad built a small shed, so they wouldn’t have the displeasure of having children inside a house.

I remember that friendship abruptly ended when Leela’s next door neighbor’s cat came into the yard and got scared and ran under the shed. Leela’s douchebag dad screamed at us and said we had to wait until the cat came out from under the shed…because I’m sure nothing coaxes a cat out of a hiding place like two crying children who just got screamed at staring at it for hours. I bailed after maybe 15 or 20 minutes. I screamed that my mom needed me home for dinner and I didn’t want to get in trouble and just ran home, and never came back. And the cat is still under that shed, and Leela is still waiting for it to this day! I don’t actually know that, but I think there’s some romance in believing that’s how the story ends, and not ending the story with fact that the last time I saw Leela was in senior high english class where she was shrugging and saying, “Meh, I’m not going to graduate high school this year” … and being WAY chill about it.

Anyway, Chyna, I loved watching your storylines, because they gave me so much hope. You were a woman who was accomplishing things the men were able to accomplish. You competed in the Royal Rumble, and were the only woman to hold the Intercontinental Title, my favorite championship at the time. Watching you compete with the men was a very a powerful image to me that stuck with me throughout life. Hey, she’s a woman, and she’s getting treated as equals with men.

But of course, that’s was short lived. You definitely got shat on more for the porn video you released with fellow wrestler XPac, and to this day you haven’t been honored in the WWE Hall of Fame. And there are definitely worse people in the WWE Hall of Fame than one goddamn pornstar. There are literally murderers in the WWE Hall of Fame, and also Donald Trump … It’s absolutely insane that the WWE is butthurt that you got your rocks off on video a few times. I thought in America that was just supposed to set you up to have a make-up brand, a questionable music career, or become an anti-vaccination spokesperson or something.

I’ve always been routing for you. I read your autobiography when I was a teenager, and I saw a lot of myself in it. It was about a girl who grew up feeling like a misfit, who didn’t meet the expectations that society set out. It made me feel like I wasn’t alone. So, even during the times when you weren’t in WWF, or the times when I wasn’t watching wrestling, I was rooting for you. I remember hearing that you were turning your life around, and I was rooting for you. When you passed away I was deeply affected by it, because you had a huge effect on me as a kid. I learned so much from you. I think you broke down a lot of walls for a lot of people, and I hope you someday get the recognition you deserve.

Also, would you be able to tell me if when businesses die, they go to heaven too? Like is there a Blockbuster or a brick and mortar Wet Seal up there? Please let me know.

Love,

Alyssa

Dear Makers of the Diva Cup,

Sometimes, people like to ask shitty icebreaker questions like, “If you could live in any era, which one would you live in?” And I always think you’d have to be a maniac to not say “this one” or “the future.” I think when people ask that question, what they really want to know is, “Hey what old school era of fashion or music do you like the most?” JUST ASK THAT, let’s not beat around the bush. Because I’m never going to say “Yeah I would prefer to live in the 60s, because it was really cool how women and minorities were still treated worse than they are now and most people were against interracial dating.” What you really wanted to know was that, “Yes, I do like mod clothing, and recreational drug use is appealing.”

Another thing that’s great about living in the present is having access to Diva Cups. I bought one and it immediately changed my life for the better. I have been waxing poetic to many women I know about how much money they’ll save on tampons.

Like many women, the first time I put it in, I didn’t know how to get it out. Y’all have instructions on there, but I remember reading them and none of the methods worked. The solutions offered were to squat, or pretend to give birth to it, mildly coax it out like a scared kitten under a shed. I was trying everything, because I didn’t want to have to send in my Jack Russell Terrier, a dog who was bred to run down tunnels to find foxes. I finally turned to YouTube and found a girl named Sarah Tran (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ER80bNu_eM) who has a video with 73 thousand views about how to get your lady time catchers mitt out of your vajayjay. Turns out, this girl has many videos just talking about Diva Cups, and if I went back in time and told 23-year-old, fame-desperate Alyssa that she could get hundreds of thousands of views by talking about menstrual products on YouTube, she would have shit a brick with excitement.

Sarah’s method is to pretend like you’re pooping, then you can get a grasp on the tip of the cup and pull it out. Which was great advice, because telling me to act like I’m giving birth, doesn’t help, but telling me poop? Sure, I know how to poop. I do it all the time. When you tell me to pretend to give birth to my Diva Cup, it means I’m doing yoga poses in my tub (because I want this to be a holistic water birth) with a midwife nearby named Celeste rubbing patchouli oil on my stomach and placing energy crystals on my forehead, saying that this will give my baby “the freedom to find its way out.”

One of my favorite Diva Cup moments was when I accidentally dropped it in my toilet and screamed. “Nooo! That’s my new best friend! I can’t believe I dropped my new best friend in the toilet!” was the thought I had. You can’t drop your best friends in toilets, that’s no way to keep a best friend.

I’m struggling with what to do when I need to change it in public and don’t have a full bathroom to myself. I’m thinking the only thing that makes sense is to take it out empty it, put it back in, and then have wet wipes in your purse so you don’t come out of the stall with blood on your hands and people confuse you for the famous toilet murderer – an evil trans person out to find women in bathrooms so they can murder them. This is same made up character that inspires lawmakers to make bathroom laws so they can thwart the evil plots going down in women’s bathrooms. Not all heroes wear capes, that’s all I’m saying.

Anyway, I would love to hear your advice, and thank you so much for revolutionizing the way I handle my lady business and helping me improve my life immensely.

Signed in Blood,

Alyssa

Traci!

I was so happy to get your card! I love the design, and I’m a sucker for good heavy uncoated card stock.

Every time I think I might have been in the wrong era I think about how nice it is to be alive in this particular time. I read an Amy Tan book and it was about a half white – half Asian girl who has to be a prostitute because that was her only way to take care of herself. I finished the book and was like, “You know, maybe my apartment being small isn’t that much of a sad thing.”

AJ graciously accepts your pets and really appreciates them. I’m sure if you were here she would pee all over my floor in your honor. Dogs have weird ways of showing they appreciate you, haha. But to be fair I’m sure the first time I ever saw you walking around work, if I had actually been drinking water (a thing I never really tried to do until recently), I would have peed my pants, too. My immediate thought was like, “Oh man! She looks so cool, and I like her style!”

I’m definitely glad we got to hang out, too, and I’ll make sure to catch up with you if you’re in the area visiting again. I was so happy to see your residency at the Torpedo Factory. It was super cool, and I always love seeing your work. And it was really great to be able to have a beer with you and just hang out.

Baltimore has been wonderful! I definitely think it’s a better fit for me. I feel like I can actually breathe here and enjoy myself. DC was great for a time, but after a while, I metaphorically felt like I was just standing there saying “Omg! Excuse me! Sorry!” as a bunch of people pushed passed me. It’s funny, I actually have more friends in DC, but once I got to Baltimore, I felt so much less lonely. I see the same people in my neighborhood all the time: the people in my building, the people at the mini mart, the guy always buying lottery tickets at the mini mart. They’re all friendly. I find that people here are more willing to say hello to you on the street, and I don’t feel like I’m getting judged by type A’s because I walk my dog in my pajamas looking like hell.

I know in life we should be trying to “get out of our comfort zones,” but I don’t think that applies to normal day to day life, because fuck, it’s 6:30 in the goddamn morning and I need to make sure an animal doesn’t shit in my house. I want to be comfortable.

Thank you again for sending the card, it’s adorable, so it most definitely fits your vibe. I miss you, too! I’m so happy to have a good creative influence like you in my life. Thanks for making your podcast! I hope it’s helping you with your own creative process as well. Let me know how it’s going in your world!

Love,

Alyssa