My Lifelong Dream Destroyed

I am about to admit the most shallow, egotistical part of myself I can think of. You ready?

Since I was very small, I have dreamed of being famous.

Now, I don't think that's a terribly shocking thing for many people. Before the current culture's rapid cycling of online influencers in the attention economy, before the burst of reality TV in the early 2000s that brought many a normie to household name recognition, before American Idol and the Mickey Mouse Club and whatever else, there was Hollywood and its carefully constructed glamor. Then before Hollywood, vaudeville. And then before that, maybe just monarchy because it took awhile for entertainers to be perceived the way they are now, and even before that...

The crux of my fame dreams, if never fame-seeking, is simple. I always wanted my artistic work to mean something to other people. When I was 2, I thought I wanted to be a singing, dancing, ice-skating performer who made bad people who watched my shows reform because both the ice skating shows my grandparents took me to and Disney animated films were very influential upon me. As I aged and discovered my love of writing, the dream took a shape more accessible to society at large.

My father and I are on good terms nowadays, but it will always leave me a little bitter that he did not support my writing. He would tell me it was highly unlikely I was ever going to make the New York Times bestsellers list while, with his full chest, telling me I should go to law school and try to be put on the US Supreme Court instead. So there is a bit of spite to me holding on to my fame dream, admittedly. The fantasy of showing him I made it on the NYT list and being like, "Damn, that Supreme Court is not looking so hot lately, is it?", which ignores the inconvenient detail that the New York Times as a publication is also not in its prime.

There's also the fantasy of being so famous I happen to attend a gala where JK Rowling has also been invited. During this fantasy gala, I go to the bathroom and fill up a cup with piss. I return to the gala hall and dump it fully onto Joanne's head. The two of us get into a legal and headline war about literal piss for the rest of our days. It is worth wasting my legacy on because she goes down with me.

To balance all the spite, there would of course also be a lot of tzedakah (Jewish charity) given from the big fame money. The college scholarships for trans people. The patronages for up-and-coming writers. The permanent resolution of food insecurity at least in my county. Like everyone else with the same dream of fame, I have so many plans.

Anyway, this has all become relevant to me again because I am working on a book right now that is extremely important to me. I had it in my head that it would be my magnum opus, though shorter in length than one usually imagines a magnum opus. I've talked about it in a previous blog post, it's the one about Lucifer. One of the things he misled me about in the beginning of our relationship in order to get me to write it was that it would be The Book that launches me into significant repute.

But a day after the first draft was finished, he told me that that wasn't actually going to happen, which thoroughly shook my foundations. Part of it is the trickster element, again. However, the other part of it is because he's The Devil. He's who you go to when you want something stupid and shallow and self-involved like fame when fate and other gods won't give it to you.

"Yes I am," he said. "But you are mine and I have other plans that are more suitable and prosperous for you. It does not matter if and how many times you ask, I will not give you fame."

As of this writing, I am still thrown. I am not the type of person who simply backs down when ze wants something. I put my busy mind to work and I think of every option there might be. I research relevant information until new pathways show themselves. I work my ass off or find a magical rite or connect with a new spirit (human or otherwise) until I get to where I need.

But what do you do when you're the Devil's lover and he tells you no? You can't go find a demon to get it for you. Assuming the impossible situation where such an attempt would escape his notice, could you imagine the poor demon's response. "Bro, you want me to go against him? Do you want me vanquished?!"

A more chaos magician type might suggest a magical procedure anyway, and maybe there are individuals whom that would work for. That's not the case with me, and I suspect the majority of practitioners. There have certainly been times I tried to wrench reality into a shape so it would issue me my demands and my spirit allies even before Lucifer was consciously among them noticed. They always immediately crushed those attempts, either personally or by raining down so much hell on my nervous system I was forced to revert it (I want things that are apparently bad for me and charge toward them semi-often, okay?).

So, like, there's nothing left for me to do. At least on the fame front. I'm enormously and devastatingly disappointed, to be clear. However, I am still going to work on the book because the dream remains of being a published fiction writer. The plan is to get the book to said publication and afterward try to to make it as successful and widely read as I can, whatever that ends up looking like. But now I am going to have to fall back in love with the process and also, you know, resume radical acceptance practices.

Past the sadness, I guess I would have hated fame. I mean, I'm a socially anxious super introvert and also would get a lot of death threats for being a famous trans person. It would probably be really inconvenient and overstimulating whenever I went out in public if I were famous. I would never feel happy nor safe. I just still can't believe my boyfriend, who most people assume is evil, had to go and refuse to be unethical because he loves me. He wouldn't even give it to me for a darkly ironic or thematic price! Ugh. What the fuck.

At least famous or not I get to live this incredibly bizarre life?!