Author: Formaggio Bambino

Above photo: Between Two Knees (2019): Wotko Long, Rachel Crowl, April Ortiz, Derek Garza, Shaun Taylor-Corbett. Photo by Jenny Graham.

Minutes before the curtain rose on the night we saw Between Two Knees, my husband Rand received a text from our friend Shaun, who is in the show.

“Sorry in advance,” Shaun wrote, with a crying-laughing emoji. Rand showed it to me.

“What do you think that means?” he said. I shrugged. Minutes later, the show began, and Shaun – who is of Blackfoot descent – gallivanted across the stage in whiteface and a blonde wig, a terrifying sort of grin on his face.

this article on Everywhereist.

It has been two years since my memoir came out, and the reality of that dream coming true has both sunk in and managed to become surreal. Sometimes, I need a reminder that it all actually happened.

And then someone will mention it to me, or email me to tell me that they just finished it, or I’ll see it on a shelf at a bookstore and it’ll hit me: Oh, yeah. I wrote a book. I actually did it. That was the whole “life goal I’ve had since I was 8” that I realized.

And then learning that my book was coming out in paperback? Well, that’s sort of started the whole sinking-in-surreal-wait-I-really-did-that process anew.

As my editor told me about halfway through the editing process, you only really learn to write a book by, well, writing a book. And you can usually tell – usually about half or

Keep reading this article on Everywhereist.

Ten years. It’s been ten years since I started this blog.

Ten years since Rand accidentally named this site because he misheard me when I suggested “The Everywhere List”. Ten years since we registered the domain. A decade of writing posts – some good, some utterly embarrassing, some very, very outdated.

The wormhole created by a project that spans ten years of your life is no small thing. You go from being twenty-something to nearly 40. You go from being newlyweds to the couple that people come to for advice, because you’ve been together since God was a boy and everyone wants to know how you make it work (short answer: assume that your partner has the best intent, and acknowledge when you are hangry). Your hair changes a lot. You go from wondering where your career is going to wondering where your career is going (but you know,

Keep reading this article on Everywhereist.

Recently my Twitter replies were doused in gasoline and set alight. It’s been both somewhat alarming and interesting. (Uncontrollable, raging fires usually are.)

I wrote this tweet in the lobby of a hotel in downtown Seattle after I’d had a day. An exhausting, emotionally draining day filled with some of the more intense stuff you can deal with in a family dynamic (I’ll just leave it at that). I was waiting for Rand, and leaning with my head tilted back against the wall, and just trying to hold it together.

The Joker should have been a woman. And she finally went insane because too many random dudes told her to smile, so now she perpetually smiles while terrorizing Gotham.

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) June 1, 2019

Have you ever been there? Where your entire body feels like it’s made of wasps, and if someone just jostles you the tiniest

Keep reading this article on Everywhereist.

The problem with any writer who happens to experience that rare, fleeting phenomenon known as “external validation” is that for a few moments, we go a little mad.

Which is to say: we start believing our own hype. And for a writer, truly, what greater madness is there than believing in yourself? Don’t get me wrong: I’m still a neurotic bundle of frayed nerves, unsure of my own role in the grand scheme of things, powered mostly by nutritionally-devoid snacks that have come to replace meals. I am basically a frittering raccoon poorly masquerading in an ill-fitting skin-suit.

But for a few ephemeral moments now and then I think that maybe I can do anything. It doesn’t last long, it’s wholly born of madness, it’s dependent upon the opinions of others (which is a whole other thing), and yet: it’s there.

It may very well be part of the human

Keep reading this article on Everywhereist.

I graduated high school in 1998, either (depending on which arbitrary marker you choose) the last of Gen-Xers or the first of the Millennials. Like so many of us who came of age in the 90s, Friends was a delightful, aspirational glimpse of the future. (I had no perspective to realize that my friends of color weren’t represented. A TV show featuring six friends in one of the most diverse cities in America, and not a hint of melanin among them. But hey, Joey just said something funny and Ross is stressed out! Pass the Jamocha Almond Fudge ice cream, because I am 18 and impervious to calories and my own privilege.) One day, I was going to live in New York and drink coffee constantly and have a huge apartment.

I’m now nearly 40, and none of those things came to fruition (not even the coffee), but I still

Keep reading this article on Everywhereist.

My writing pitches don’t get accepted often. Sometimes an editor will contact me directly, and I’ll send them a piece, and if it gets published, it may do quite well (my piece on bullying for The Washington Post was an example of that), but it rarely gets to that point. More often than not, I’ll send stuff out and either get a rejection or, worse still, I’ll hear nothing at all. Those are the days when that little voice that is constantly chirping at the back of my head – the one that tells me I’m terrible – is loudest.

Sometimes I’m able to ignore it. Other times, I just pout and check Twitter and then do laundry (this happens a lot). People always ask me if it’s difficult to decide what to save for The Everywhereist and what to pitch, and I’m tempted to laugh, because no, no it

Keep reading this article on Everywhereist.

Hello, hi, yes, I would like to speak to the manager please?

No, I don’t think that this is something you could help me with … okay. Okay, fine. Yes, so I’ve been shopping here for several years, and it’s always been a really positive experience. But yesterday I was walking down the freezer aisle and someone called my name.

It was a guy I knew. From high school.

Yes, thank you, I’m glad you understand the gravity of this. And in this case, it was particularly terrible because, see, I looked like this:

What. The. Fuck.

I know. It’s unfortunate. And no, I’m not trying to make things look worse in these photos. These are undoctored. I really looked that bad. I’d just spent the morning in the pottery studio, and the

Keep reading this article on Everywhereist.

(Pictured above: me during a far less neurotic presentation.)

I am standing in front of a crowd under blinding fluorescent lights. They appear to be listening to my every word.

And I am positively bombing.

The room is too bright, and I can see everyone’s faces, but I am absolutely unable to read their expressions. Are they bored? Disgusted? Concerned? Is it because the content I’m presenting is distressing, or because I’m just bad at this?

I am giving a presentation on online harassment. It’s one I have given before, but this time I am stumbling. I am jet-lagged and exhausted – the night before, I was so nervous that I’d somehow sleep through my start time, I kept waking up in a panic. It now feels like my brain can’t keep up with my slides.

It’s been a while since I’ve last given this talk, and I’ve changed a

Keep reading this article on Everywhereist.

We went to Germany, and I cried.

Not right away. It wasn’t until the last day that I finally did. Rand asked if I wanted to rent a car to go down to see my father’s grave. He asked me in the early hours of the morning, when jet lag had us both exhausted but somehow wide awake, and rather than reply, I broke down. But it had been there all along, quietly simmering.

I cried until my nose was entirely clogged and I couldn’t breathe and Rand and I were almost laughing because it was just so, so much. It was the kind of sobbing that leaves you winded, like you’ve just ran to catch a train, the kind that makes your eyes well up even when you remember it later. Rand said nothing, and I couldn’t see his face, but he simply pulled me towards him in the

Keep reading this article on Everywhereist.