KEEPING A STRAIGHT FACE BRITNY C. KUTUCHIEF Bachelor of Arts in Journalism Baruch College May 2011 submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING at the NORTHEAST OHIO MFA and CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY May 2014 We hereby approve the thesis of Britny Kutuchief Candidate for the _Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree for the Department of English, the Northeast Ohio MFA Program and the CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY College of Graduate Studies Signature of Chairperson of the Committee here David Giffels Department & Date Signature of Committee Member here Mary Biddinger Department & Date March 19, 2014 Student’s Date of Defense ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am compelled to offer innumerable thanks and gratitude to my Golden Retriever, Darwin Tompkins Work-Kutuchief, who sat beside me for three long years while I stared idly at my keyboard working on this project. This is partially because I keep a plastic bag filled with Bil-Jac dog treats in my desk drawer, but also because I believe that he knows he is the only being in my life who will stare at me in silent understanding while I complain about Microsoft Word’s senseless standard document settings, unanswered emails and poor weather. I also owe thanks to Jon for bringing me Chipotle all the time, for actually believing that I am a good writer, and for understanding me in the deepest possible way, even when I am drunk and gushing over Iron and Wine lyrics (this happens often). And to my co-MFAers for convincing me to go out when I should have been staying home to work on my thesis — LeeAnn, Jimmy and Maria, specifically, and Sharon, for always answering my calls and 45-line Facebook messages mid-existential crisis. Special shout-out and extra thanks to my thesis advisor, David Giffels, who has the unique gift of assigning life-changing books semester after semester, for encouraging me to join the cult of nonfiction and for calming me down after I narrowly evaded being stalked by a jobless juggler. And to my family for being so weird, and for bestowing me with this unbearable sense of sentimentality that undoubtedly compelled me to write this meaningless acknowledgements section. iii KEEPING A STRAIGHT FACE BRITNY KUTUCHIEF ABSTRACT “Keeping A Straight Face” strives to uncover and unearth the modes of operation of a wide variety of subcultures, including juggalos, ghost-hunters, dog-lovers, nudists, jugglers and the author’s family. The goal of the work as a collective whole — in nine parts — is to highlight the unique ways in which individual subcultures interact with the world and the people who populate their own groups, and to shed light upon specific group members’ histories and personal stories. The author also takes into account her own experience with niche groups, including her family, which works to play against the other groups jointly, to help her observe each subset in a way that’s well-rounded and sincere. iv Table of Contents Prologue …….………………..………………………………….. Page 1 My Evening With Bronies…..………………………………….. Page 10 Defying Gravity …………..…...……………………………….. Page 27 Hunting For Ghosts ………..….……….……………………….. Page 43 The American Juggalo: A Case Study.………………………….. Page 61 A Series of Misfortunes.…..…………………………………….. Page 80 Bare Facts ………….…..…...………..………….…………….. Page 111 Cathedral of Tomorrow ………..…………..…………………...Page 131 People’s Parks and Dog Parks ……..…..……….………………Page 155 v Prologue You can tell that the residents inside are eccentric from the outside of their house. The dozens of wind chimes would be the first indicator if it wasn’t for the marble gravestone for Viola B. Jakim that sits in the garden next to the driveway. Inside, every inch of the two-story foyer’s white walls is covered in dusty oil paintings, photos of brown-haired girls in homecoming dresses, portraits of painted ladies on Alamo Square, strangers smoking cigarettes on park benches. A single Halloween decoration, a rubbery mask with mountains of fake blood, hangs lopsided over an antique lamp. Tiny, brass sailboats and ceramic dogs and cats rest on windowsills beneath salvaged stained glass. A sepia-toned portrait of a young woman who looks exactly like me hangs high on the white walls. I can tell, anyway, that the residents inside are eccentric, because the sepia-toned woman is my mother, and I was there when my dad lifted Viola B. Jakim’s gravestone from his trunk after a trip to Rex Salvage five years ago, and I knew not to even ask why or who, because the answer would be, of course, why not? I know, unlike most people who will bravely visit that house this October, that Viola’s gravestone is a permanent fixture, an off-beat year-round garden adornment, not a Halloween decoration. *** The Kutuchiefs, like most modern subcultures, have their own manner of dress and speak. I observed two walk up my front stoop last night, letting a distinct “woo-ooh- woo-ohh-wooh-ooh” escape from their inner bellies before entering the front door. They 1 wear stylish yet economical garb and have prominent Eastern European noses. They carry with them bags of old junk, the items inside you’re advised to only take if you’ll use. The elder Kutuchief, Richard, has stuffed each and every pocket of his second- or third-hand Levi’s jacket with Milk Bones for my Golden Retriever, Darwin, who he affectionately calls his “grandpuppy.” He takes at least seven photos between the trip from the car parked on the street to our front door. I resolve that I belong to them, whether by choice or by lineage, and decide to let them in. My family consists of a mother and a father, two siblings, two uncles and aunts and about four cousins. I use the word “four” loosely — one estranged cousin who bought my grandmother’s house from my dad and his siblings at a deeply discounted rate later invited us over to play Catch Phrase and then promptly cut us out of his life, so he doesn’t really count. I’m being ultra-generous by including him in the four. I had two sweet grandmothers who gave me syrup-covered vanilla ice cream and powdery Vitamin C tablets whenever I visited them, but they both died when I was in college. Grandma Katie, the matriarch of this Bulgarian family, was the proprietor of the home on the tree- lined boulevard where my rogue cousin now allegedly resides. The furnishings from her house, the oil paintings, the naked thinking man made of stone, now decorate my parents’ house, and I can still see vividly each and every square inch of the house on the boulevard in the exact way it was staged in 1999. I don’t want to wonder what that disaffected cousin set on the marble mantelpiece or in the built-in China cabinet. Probably the type of relics stupid people love, like Catch Phrase and beer pong trophies. The offspring of Grandma Katie are the baby-boomers of all baby-boomers, and my childhood memories include them sipping boxed wine and whispering sexual 2 innuendos while half-heartedly parenting. My father straps one or three Olympus SLRs around his neck each time he leaves the house, and he frames photos he’s taken of complete strangers rollerblading in Central Park on the wallpapered walls about my childhood home. “It’s art,” he claims. And as adults we’ve resolved to not question it in exchange for maintaining a relationship with this bizarre elder. Being that there are exactly nine people alive who share my bloodline (three of my family members are married-ins, the fools), we stick together like no one else exists. The oil paintings passed from Grandma Katie’s house to my parents’ house were painted by my Bulgarian uncle, Dimitar. Uncle Dim lived in Mexico with his bitch wife (this is what my outspoken Aunt Betty called her) where he ran a small painting studio and wrote books about his time living in the Amazon. Back in his prime, he painted portraits of Jane Goodall and was an active member of the Explorers Club. My father, the one who appreciated his art most, has become the archivist to these heirlooms, and he received dozens of rolled up canvases in the mail in the months before Uncle Dim died. Now, they rest frame-less against the piano on or on music stands in my dad’s study. I recently learned that Uncle Dim had a child out of wedlock back in the 60s who lives no less than 20 miles of my hometown. That makes 10 living Kutuchiefs, but I dare not try to find her. She’s probably not like us. If she were like us she would be decidedly snobby while simultaneously economical, with either extreme hoarding tendencies or extreme purging tendencies. Maybe she’d be like me and go through hoarding and purging cycles every couple of months, where boxes of unworn clothes stack upon one another on her devil strip. Devil 3 strip, I’ve learned, is an Akron, Ohio-specific term that means “curb lawn,” by the way. She would probably be a closed-minded liberal with a zero-tolerance policy for pro-lifers; and have a remarkable skill for extracting people’s comprehensive life stories within a few moments of meeting them. She would have to love yogurt and animals (to pet, not to eat) and consider herself at least mildly eccentric. She would have stubborn belly fat. A constant group text between my siblings, parents and me has allowed me to extract important, measurable knowledge about this strange clan.