tongue first: A Psychological Reaction to Physical Adventure by Gia C. Manalio www.lifeissurreal.com It is rare that I look at a book I’ve already read and think I would really like to read it again—my attention span usually doesn’t allow for that. And not only that, my to-be-read list goes on and on and on and the time spent rereading a book takes away from time spent reading something new. But every time I would see Emily Jenkins’ tongue first: adventures in physical culture on my shelf, I got the feeling I needed to pick that one back up. I had picked it up originally after reading a review in some magazine when I was going through a period of reading lots of sociology. At that time, I had decided I was going to discover the answer to what drives human behavior, mental and physical. I was going to make sense of what was going on in my head and in everyone’s around me. I wanted to know why no one seemed to think like I did, when I had always thought that my way was the only way to think. I was going to look for those others that did share my thoughts and ideas and could legitimize that in reality, I was not as unusual as people were beginning to tell me I was. Those people had to be out there. I read a book on Beatnicks. I read a book on the computer culture. I read a book on a Prozac nation. I read tongue first. I didn’t remember much about it, but knew I had been recommending it to friends for years. To this day, I would say it is one of my favorite books, although a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you why. I would have also said that I idolized Emily Jenkins. So much so that I finally decided to pick up tongue first and read it again. One of the first things I was attracted to was the author, or more accurately what she represents. Throughout this paper, I will refer to her as Emily rather than the more appropriate Ms. Jenkins as I feel a personal connection to her. Her photo on the back cover shows a very pretty, pouty woman with huge lips, cool hair, and an amazing tattoo. At the time of the writing, she was studying for her Ph.D. in English at Columbia—I got my bachelors from NYU and am currently working toward my masters. This was a woman I wanted to be like. And right from the start, I liked her attitude. Here was a woman who was willing to say out loud the “invisible institutional rules,” and examine how we “walk a twisted middle road between extremes that both frighten and fascinate us.” I liked her lifestyle: she had many friends with many different backgrounds: interesting people she was constantly learning from—people around whom she kept an open mind, even if she was not into what they were into. And here was this woman looking at the things that existed in my everyday life (the need to sleep, lipstick, drinking, focusing solely on my mind and attempting to escape my body), and giving me her theories of how these things affect not only our attitudes toward ourselves, but also the unbreakable connection between these physical acts and how they reflect the goings on of our minds. But she did more than spout theories and research results, she dove right in and discovered things for herself. I have very little respect for people who are all talk and no action. And Emily’s research was all action. Not only that, but before, during, and after each activity, there were no holds barred as she revealed how it affected her spiritually, emotionally, and physically.   The book starts with a section on “flying,” or getting out of your body and into your mind. Recently, in an attempt to slow down some of the things that were spinning through my own mind, I went to an energy healer. I believe that if your body’s energy is focused and balanced and that your charkas (the body’s seven energy centers) reflect this, your mind and life will follow. After an extensive question and answer period, I lied down on a table and let her go to work. She told me to focus on the soothing waterfall set up in the corner and to just let my thoughts pass—to acknowledge them and then let them go. I have already mentioned that I have a short attention span, and I found it very difficult to just make my mind go blank, especially with the healer infringing on my personal space. She began at my feet and coaxed my energy downward. I felt an odd tug from my head to my toes, but just chalked it up to the power of suggestion. From that point, she moved slowly around me, holding her hands above my aura, rarely touching my actual body. As she circled, she aimed to direct my energy into its correct space and balance me out, a process that takes much more than one session. When she felt she was done, she brought me back to full consciousness and we began to discuss what the experience had felt like for both of us.   Throughout the session, I wasn’t sure what to think. My mind was wandering from the date I had the night before, to what I was going to make for dinner, to how perhaps energy healing was the perfect career for me. And then there were those times that I internally yelled at myself to focus on the waterfall, which in turn created even less of a relaxed state. I had felt sensations, but I wasn’t sure if they were part of my energy moving, nervous reactions to being so physically close to a stranger, or just my mind playing tricks on me. I have yet to have another session to see if some of the same sensations return. When I tried to discuss what I felt with a friend who had a healing earlier that morning, the conversation was inconclusive. We hadn’t felt the same things at all. All my friend had felt was panic.   So, having just experienced this, during my second reading of tongue first, I was very interested in the variety of trials Emily goes through that alter her physical state in order to clear her mind, or at least send it into a different realm. She experiences sleep deprivation, isolation tanks, and even heroin to see how each has an effect not only physically, but mentally. It seemed to me the sensations she experienced such as everything from nausea, restlessness, and very slight hallucinations were similar to some of those things I had felt lying on that table. And we both seemed to have experienced this sensation of being unable to actually escape our bodies no matter how hard we tried. During my healing, I had hoped to reach a more spiritual level where I would almost feel as if I was having an out- of-body experience. Yet I was unable to do that. I was perfectly aware of the itch on my arm, the tingling in my toes as my legs started to fall asleep, my irregular breathing, and that I would start to doze off one second then want to laugh the next. I was as in my body as much as I could be. Emily confirms my suspicions: “It seems to me that to escape the body would mean escaping into the mind, or maybe even into the soul. Trouble is, no matter how I alter my state of mind, I find myself brought back to my body in some way. Heroin offers a sense of removal from the body while at the same time enslaving the user to it through nausea and fatigue. Sleep deprivation does a similar thing: it alienated me from my physical needs, and plunged me into a hostile relationship with this body that was playing tricks on me.”   Regarding the healer’s experience, she told me that when she held her hands over my heart charka, the energy would not let her lower their position. Demonstrating, she held her hands about 10 inches over my heart. She said that indicated my heart chakra was closed, that I wouldn’t allow her or anyone else to get emotionally close to me. She told me she never in her life felt such sadness. As if that wasn’t enough, the healer also told me I tend to live inside my head; that I need to bring myself down more into my body. Looking back, I realize this has been true for a very long time. I never really thought about my body. I only paid attention to it when I was sick, or hungry, or trying on clothes (none of which are really wonderful experiences). I just kind of saw it as something I’m stuck with that gets in the way of what my mind wants to do. It was always my mind that mattered to me. It would seem that a deep-rooted insecurity and awkward self consciousness has caused me to ignore my own physique and to be critical of those who put so much stock in their appearance. But here’s the irony: While I seem to be internally screaming, “Don’t look at me,” my physical appearance and the way I present it seems to be screaming, “Look at me.”   When I was a little girl, I was painfully shy. I walked around with a blanket on my head. I never thought about what that said about me; just that I didn’t want to see anyone, or more importantly, be seen by anyone. When I was in elementary school and junior high, I followed all the trends: high-top Reebok sneakers and jelly bracelets, leg warmers and neon sweatshirts. I wanted to fit in with the “in” crowd, but stand out as super fashionable. Later, I put on black clothes, ripped fishnets, and smeared black eyeliner. “Look at how ugly I am,” I was saying, “Don’t pay attention to what I look like, pay attention to my mind.” However, in each scenario, I was using my body as a vehicle to show what was on my mind, although I would never admit this. Now, I am beginning to see that in trying to take attention away from my body, I was actually drawing attention to it.   And that thought brings me to the heart of what really hit home in tongue first both times around: Emily’s studies on how we reinvent our identity physically through makeup and clothing. I had been doing that since I was a child, from my head-covering blanket to my Dr. Martens. I do it to this day: when I want to feel attractive, I wear dark lipstick, when I’m feeling sad, I wear a hat. Jenkins looked at clothing sold from Salvation Army thrift stores to upscale second-hand theatrical and celebrity-worn clothes. Once being a thrift store shopper of both varieties, I began to understand the significance in the purchases I made as well as the social connotations that accompany them. The Salvation Army clothes made me feel kind of rebellious. Sure, I could shop at the local mall, but these were worn, used—just the attitude of the young middle-class punk rocker I was trying to portray. On the other hand, the flashy, upscale clothes, which I rarely could afford, made me feel pleasingly extravagant. I would spend hours browsing in Love Saves the Day down near St. Marks, where it was reported that both Madonna and Drew Barrymore were often seen buying clothes, and more importantly, donating them.  In both cases, shopping for these clothes made me feel artistic, although to this day I can’t explain why except there seems to be the idea that only the artistic (and the poor, often the same group—the proverbial starving artist) buy second-hand clothes. Emily offers this suggestion: “Other people’s clothes carry their stories with them. They feel infused with history. Wearing them triggers imaginary memories of times I’ve never had, adventures belonging to the garment’s original owner. They remind me that there is no simple way my body is, or looks—I can take on a new silhouette, a new identity, by wrapping my frame in Auntie Lee’s many-buttoned suit, my grandpa’s old crew neck, or the favorite jacket of my younger man.” I was also fascinated by Emily’s look into the head of several drag queens. Honestly, I have never really known one. I see them at clubs, once in a while in a show, always during which I am incredibly impressed with how much more feminine, beautiful, and confident they are than I am. They live in a totally flamboyant manner, yet none of it is about style as much as it is about attitude. There was a boy in my dorm with perfect skin who used to wear his hair in a ponytail, light eyeliner, and gorgeous dresses. He too always seemed so much more beautiful and confident. But then I had a friend who while I never saw him in a dress, was constantly telling me that he wore them. His attitude was a bit different from the other cross dressers I had seen. In his constant need to surprise or shock me with talking about his wardrobe, he showed his lack of confidence in himself and how he portrayed it. It was as if he needed me to justify his choice of clothing, whether negatively or positively. On the other hand, the drag queens in tongue first took a much more active in-your-face position with their appearance, hiding their own insecurities and need for justification, even if the need never really went away. Perhaps when my friend wore dresses, it was a lot like when I put on my biker jacket: a much more subtle and less confident way of drawing attention to the physique as means of making it a messenger for what was on our minds. Emily delves deeper into decorating the body by means of permanent modification. Body art has always fascinated me, but in the last couple of years, it has become almost an obsession. In tongue first, Emily speaks with ThEnigma, a tattooed man, who talks about his lifestyle, explaining that “for him, self and art are completely merged.” I find this especially interesting as I have recently become involved with a fully tattooed man—one who I am having a great deal of trouble understanding (although this has nothing to do with the tattoos). In a subsequent chapter, Emily finally gets her own tattoo after years of wanting to do something, but never having the courage to do it—another thing we share in common as it took me 10 years to get my first one. As body art is a part of my social culture, I think a lot about it, and believe Emily says it best: “This [tattoo] transformed Rebecca from a meek woman living alone with a cat and six pairs of Birkenstocks into a mysterious person who underwent voluntary pain and indulged in secret moments of self display. She had defined her body as a site for decoration, even celebration. It didn’t make her pretty. Not at all. It made her visible in a way I had never imagined possible.” This was it. This woman understood what I was trying to tell everyone. A tattoo, when gotten for the right reason (in my opinion), says something about a person, about her beliefs, about her soul. It frustrates me when someone goes to a studio with a bunch of friends and they all get an identical pretty little butterfly somewhere where hardly anyone will ever see it. I think a tattoo is something to be proud of. Something to show. It is not something to do because it is fashionable or you think it will make you cool. It shouldn’t be the result of peer pressure. It is an expression. It is beautiful. Right now I have two. I have a combined sun and moon, surrounded by the rays of nature, between my shoulder blades. It is a pagan symbol, a symbol of my faith. It’s like I’m carrying the universe on my back. It’s also symbolic of my relationship with my brother—it’s his artwork. A purple and black band wraps around my right ankle. I got it in celebration of leaving what I plan on being my final abusive and controlling relationship. It was the first time I was the one to take control of my life and leave. The tattoo surrounds my ankle, binding it so to speak, to represent that I will never again let someone bind and control me. The design is also special. While the original drawing is something I pulled off the Internet, it looks very little like the image I downloaded. Armed with highlighter, Sharpie, and some Wite-Out, I drew lines, took some out, and changed the color. I then had someone scan it into a computer, then passed  it around to several of my artist friends who all made their own modifications. Then the tattoo artist, someone whose work I have admired for years and always had a great respect for, finished it off. With these two permanent marks, I not only feel as if I’m carrying a part of soul and my history, I feel as if I’m carrying around a part of my family and friends. Emily speaks for me when she says of her artwork, “I roll up my sleeve in pride and pleasure.” While I could go on and on about Emily’s various adventures and how each one spoke to me, I think I have covered the ones that most hit home. To this day, whenever I get dressed or put on my makeup, or even go to Yoga class, I think about what type of reflection it is not only of how I see myself, but also of the never ending connection between body and soul.