In certain situations, I enjoy responding to simple, sincere questions as if I’m either the innocent heroine or the dastardly villain of a silent movie, only I speak.
For example, sometimes when I’ve been interviewed, the interviewer will become visibly nervous before finally saying, “Um, I hope it’s okay to ask this, but are you, well, openly gay?”
More than once I have responded by widening my eyes, staggering backwards and declaring, “HOW DARE YOU?”
When someone offers me, say, a family-size bag of peanut M&Ms, I will turn my head away, raise the palms of my hands and murmur, “I couldn’t!”
If the person then actually tries to take the bag away, I’ll grab it and announce, “BUT I SHALL!”
My friend Candida has often quoted two responses from Reflections in a Golden Eye, which is an especially delerious film version of a Carson McCullers novel set in the deep South, and starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor. For no particular reason, Candida’s eyes will blaze, and she’ll say, with great Dixie bravura, “Cuttin’ off her nipples with a pair of GARDEN SHEARS? You can’t tell me that’s normal!”
At other moments Candida will become haughty and grand, borrowing from a moment where Liz brandishes a riding crop and, referring to her prize horse, tells Brando: “You can’t ride my Fireball. You can’t possibly ride my Fireball. Fireball’s a STALLION!”
