Phallic Noses and Sandra Bernhart

I was just driving home from work, (where my friend Tom-Tom, recipient of Teacher of the Year took childlike glee in turning my blog into a well-versed porno...thanks Tom-Tom) and heard a ad for Sandra Bernhard, the popular comedian, coming to CT on her tour and all of the sudden, my heart just stopped...and I froze up, beads of way too early summer heat flowing down my cheeks and my hand gripping the steering wheel in fear.

I had forgotten all about Ms. Bernhard and how, as a young child, I was deathly afraid I would grow up to look like her. 
Random, and awful, I know...but hear me out.  I remember watching Roseanne as girl growing up in Franklin CT, where the peculiar stench of the mushroom farm down the road would have you hallucinating snowstorms in the middle of July, (or if you were the pathetic bookworm like myself and just finished Stephen King's It at the impressionable age of thirteen...you were seeing clowns in your tree house and no, he wasn't going to give you a balloon animal.) Now, Roseanne was a funny and cool lady and I secretly wished that my dad would bring John Goodman home one day with him and say, "Now, Jilly, this is your Uncle John...he's been away all this time, and he's now here to visit. He's brought his tuba." and Uncle John would tell me jokes and his chin fat would wiggle with malicious glee and he'd play his tuba before I went to sleep every night. Ahh, it would have been fantastic!
I liked every family member on Roseanne and I was content with their little lives until....Sandra Bernhard started appearing. I don't even remember what character she played, all I know is that she frightened me and every time she appeared somewhere in the pit of my stomach acid began to churn and the sickly thoughts stretched across my fragile young brain..."You're going to grow up and look just like her!"  The harsh caged bird beak, almost phallic looking nose, it's tip the size and shape of a Christmas bulb. The protruding jawline and sharp cheekbones. Her lips were like two slabs of cardboard, a manic puppet whose words came out with such piss and vinegar. And that voice. I would go to bed sucking on life savers and jolly ranchers, praying my voice would never reach the rust kettle deepness of Bernhard's voice. Now Roseanne could be crude and at times weird, but Sandra as Nancy Bartlett (I just googled that tidbit) was just vulgar and mean. Her beady eyes would glare out from the tube, her face stretched out before me and I would sink back into the couch and just pray...please, please God, I don't want to look like her when I grow up.  How sad a shallow thirteen year old can be when you think about it.

I didn't even consider the facts that Bernhard was at the time an amazing comedian, flexing her funny bone way before Ellen or that poser, Sarah Silverman. She was like a female Lenny Bruce- harsh, crass, and demanding of her audience. She had her own one-woman show that was extremely successful and was in a Martin Scorese film (The King of Comedy). And she was cool, advocating for gay rights and equality during a time where my small-minded self was taping pictures of Jim Carrey to her ceiling and sucking life-savers in the comforts of her cocoon of blankets at night. If only I could have looked past this paranoid silliness of thinking I would end up looking like this woman- this brilliant woman- when I had the genes of Italian bulls and French Canadian geese in my blood. No, I was destined to have my father's stout bull-horn calves, and my mother's wide smile.

I guess I grew out of this fear, or maybe it was because Roseanne went off the air and I didn't have to worry about being plagued by Ms. Bernhard every Wednesday night, and I carried on.
In college I took a modern theatre history class and one day the professor put on a DVD of a one-woman broadway show called "I'm Still Here...Damn it."  The female comic was amazing, awesome, her voice seering through a crowd that ate her up with laughter. She was fearless and gorgeous, her plush lips an violent cherry red, her long brunette hair streaked with blonde highlights and justice. I was entranced.  When I discovered that it was Sandra Bernhard, the fear rolled up for a minute then replaced by shame, and finally awe. Sandra Bernhard was cool. And I ....I was trying to be.

I have a phallic shaped nose, well, at least I think I do. It looks like a penis, a small one, perhaps one of a Swiss banker.It curves down over my mouth, the tip shaped like a small Christmas bulb. It's the one physical trait I'm happy that Sandra and I have in common and I don't mind. It's actually quite pleasing.