TSFTM
TheSusie FashionMemo: A fictional art memo
Updated 11/14/24 at 9am ET: My novel is my work of fiction. My names, characters, places, and incidents are products of my imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is coincidental.
NOTE: Unless the material is quoted clearly, I never copy and paste words from AI or any other source into my self-published books — please go to fashiontext.com for more info.
__CH1. Preface for Susie__
In S2007, my friend Conri made a modest million or so while working in Silicon Valley.
But then he helped me write my S2011 autobiography, “TheSusie FashionText.”
And, a lot of pundits had told me to avoid sharing my story with the public in the way I had with them, privately.
But the truth about my life was news, because I liked the idea that, “Journalism is whatever anyone with power wants to forget.” ([1])
For it’d never been a secret that I tended to be a journalist.
As I’d been present at the very beginning of the social media and generative AI revolutions.
Conri’s work as my ghostwriter also ended up speaking for itself, in the sense that our book about my various revolutionary roles became bigger than me in all the right ways. It was an outstanding triumph of collaboration.
And so I went on to recommend my autobiography wholeheartedly. There were links to it all over the place — and at my thesusie.com portal too.
In that context, I asked Conri, “What do you plan to do next?”
But then he said, “I’ve just been struggling for the last few years, because most everyone’s gaslighting me, more or less.”
“Why?” I interrupted, with double meaning.
“Not you so much, but people are gaslighting me in response to the subtle displacement of my right cheekbone that I’ve had ever since sustaining a facial injury a long time ago in S2001,” continued Conri.
“That can’t be what you’re doing next!” I replied.
“This would be an easy problem to manage if doctors would agree that the disfigurement of my face is a disability and then work with me to develop a framework for managing the unconscious bias that normal people experience toward me because of my Facial Difference,” posited Conri.
“Why that?” I deadpanned.
“Why do you ask?” said Conri.
“Is this a really bad situation that you’ve been keeping quiet in plain sight?” I wondered out loud.
“Oh no, I’ve never been powerful enough to go on offense in media,” explained Conri.
“That’s debatable, but what I could agree with is that you might wanna handle your affairs in the way that I do going forward, but as a man, or whatever you prefer,” I concluded.
“Wouldn’t it be easier for a growing community of doctors and human resources professionals to just stop denying that they, themselves, have experienced self-reinforcing unconscious bias in response to my face?” argued Conri.
“You know that people think you should be able to change your personality in some way that makes this whole problem go away, because just imagine that you’re a women… How would that change the dynamic?” I queried.
“I know you might wanna act like adjusting to life with my type of facial disfigurement would be more difficult for almost any women, but I don’t believe that,” copped Conri.
“What do you believe?” I trolled.
“What people think is possible isn’t, but gaslighting is…, and my options are limited. Can I advance from here?” asked Conri.
“Yes, if you do it like me, for you don’t want to say anything more about this matter, but you can do it like me. That framing keeps your options open, and it’s socially viable, as long as you follow the law, anyone who tries to stop you will lose,” I doubled down.
“Then I guess that’s what I’m doing next,” Conri whispered.
And so I’d done the mostly effortless work of deprogramming my bias toward Conri instead of diving deeper and deeper into an abyss of acting like I had no material bias even though I did, because I wanted to have the option to continue working and climbing with Conri.
But our process hadn’t involved going down the path of saying that I had bias until I chose to take that step on my own.
Our process focused, instead, on inviting me to explore the idea that I had bias in the backcountry of my own mind.
So then this was the main fork in the road of extra work that Conri and I did to accommodate the situation from our perspective, as follows:
0) Remember that, yes, the next three talking points are work, but work is worth doing, by definition.
1) Acknowledge that I had bias because Conri’s face was subtly disfigured in a way that made it look like he was raising the muscles below his left eye at all times — and that, crucially — the subtlety of his disfigurement made my bias stronger not weaker, at first glance;
2) Set an intention to deprogram all of that smoke in the mirror stuff;
3) Let my mind, body, American Sign Language (which is a good way to remember Ack Set Let, like a mantra, because it’s easy to forget how important this stuff is, especially at the outset of the deprogramming process), and then let the mystery of the universe do the rest;
Albeit sight unseen, but it’s always that way.
It’s all about the narrative.
Whence my books.
For I thought that deprogramming unconscious bias in all of its forms was just what good people did.
Who hadn’t deprogrammed their unconscious bias in the S21st Century and beyond?
Everyone, apparently, but only in the extraordinary case of Conri’s specific type of facial difference.
And then it clicked for me.
His struggle was real, because he was taking fire from both the left and the right.
First and foremost, folks on the political right in America had never taken any form of unconscious bias seriously, except for when it’d started happening to them after the S2008 election, but even then, they didn’t get the joke.
And yet my Democratic party, by registration at least, also wasn’t including Conri in academia’s taxonomy of people who had self-awareness like me, to put it slyly.
Very slyly, because the imminent danger in his life was mostly coming from the left, and that’s the essence of what I’d misunderstood.
For there were some if not many support groups striving to advance disability rights vis-à-vis facial differences.
As Facial Difference has been a thing that’s ebbed and flowed since prehistoric times.
But Conri’s rare brand of faciaL differencE (the final L and E within the previous two words are capitalized) was still flying blind under the radar, and the silence about his situation had become deafening.
And so I grabbed whiskey and soda with my friends who work in conservative media, but they weren’t having it. One anchor who does her hair and makeup like me even got up and left the premises after I said, “Conri and I are a couple of the best engineers in the world. It’s bad for American military competitiveness if y’alls official narrative leaves him with no better move than to fight full-time with everything he’s got just to avoid getting called delusional sooner or later by everyone he comes into contact with even though he’s telling the truth.”
I also called out, “My dems have been total hypocrites toward him too!”
But with or without conservative media in the picture, the good citizen and registered Republican Conri was on a path dependent course to fall through the cracks into a manhole and get got in darkness, voiceless. Not good.
Like so, it was gonna be easy and difficult for doctors to look. No not look. No look the other way while Conri got bullied into oblivion by all the right wrong people, not unlike them.
And, I felt that if we could change the hearts and minds of a core group of American doctors, in particular…that outcome would drive a new consensus in favor of protecting rare people like Conri instead of throwing all hundred thousand of them or so in America alone to the wolves, even if Conri’s name did mean something like “Wolf King.”
In all seriousness, I couldn’t understand why doctors hadn’t concluded a long time ago that his Facial Difference was like a disability.
I didn’t see why that solution had ever needed to be so intensely controversial or expensive, etc. to authorize, balance, test, and keep on implementing civilly.
And yet I think a lot of people, including essentially all health care professionals, had felt powerless to do anything other than ignore or write off Conri’s whole situation.
But then a well-known CEO, a head of state, and the Editor of a major print-news publication walked into a room, not long ago.
Therefore I knew upfront that the real joke would be about the likes of them.
Because the flaw in the narrative that was on the verge of oppressing Conri was their business.
And most people had no access to the inner workings of their various royalty hustles.
Whereas we had an audience with,
on a fine evening in early S2013,
at an inauguration ball,
in Washington, DC.
For when they made their entrance, obsequiously enough, someone who I’d never met before said the words “Facial Difference” rather loudly.
As I heard later that she was Director of Political Affairs for a sustainability outfit from the Pelican State.
Environmental something or other, in brief, because she and Conri had met through a common friend in politics who’d introduced them at a rally in Silicon Valley prior to…, but she was the only person in the room Conri had met before, and I guess she liked to be provocative.
That’s why she’d gotten to know him in the first place, but she was smart to scoot instead of talking to me in front of everyone.
So then our three big shots feted me with frozen faces in lieu of asking me a good question or just keeping it light.
I also silently wondered, obtusely enough, “Why aren’t the leaders leading? Who do they think they’re dealing with! I’m TheSusie.”
Had they stared awkwardly at me because my plus one at the event, Conri, still had a right cheekbone that was slightly sunken in compared to his left cheekbone?
Or was it because I’d only recently divorced my dear ex-husband Ralph Alden, the reclusive hedge fund billionaire with whom I’d attended many charity galas — and my fashion choices at those events had been above-average memorable, but not too much so, because the goal had been to raise money.
Either way, as an alleged socialite since the early S90s, I gave ’em nothing, because I wanted to get their unvarnished reaction first.
I wanted to know what they thought and felt about Facial Difference before using the famous features of my feminine face to signal what I knew or wanted to see happen next, because I didn’t have any citations on the topic.
Indeed, I’d never done the work of becoming an authority figure on Facial Difference.
And so three more hot shots did the same.
They became mirrors in my ballroom, because they couldn’t’ve explained either Conri’s chic or my autobiography to their constituents.
But then we surfaced an unwavering conviction that any or all of the true power brokers at arm’s length should’ve expressed a genuine desire to learn more about Facial Difference before anyone else moved a muscle.
Technically speaking, the folks in question might’ve preferred to present themselves to us matter-a-factly — like the editor of the Brew Corker had…twice, actually, at their festival up in NYC ([2]).
Like so, it wouldn’t have been inconvenient for my big three hot shots to do that for me and Conri.
Nobody was asking them to identify on the record as bad actors, for example.
And…maybe they just felt like they were going with the flow.
But the projection of flow that they forcefully amplified was most irrational, because they were probably indulging in unconscious bias due to Conri’s facial difference.
I said probably, unlike the people who’d kept on telling Conri that he was wrong just because he couldn’t prove that people had bias toward him.
In other words, they wanted him to be wrong.
And so they had bias.
But from they’re perspective, it was “just him.”
Because they felt that the problem was his personality, soul, hopes, dreams, lack of notable success, inordinate failures, and ability to stay out of trouble, or not, and they didn’t see his plight as similar to all the other situations in which self-reinforcing bigotry toward people who were different had gone from bad to worst throughout history.
They also acted like he was wantonly ignorant of confirmation bias, out of innocent ignorance on their part, ostensibly.
For the record, they acted like I too, with Conri, needed their approval in order to proceed, when in reality they needed our data more, if not much more, because the sight of Conri’s face was surely affecting everyone neurochemically.
And me standing next to him in a tight dress was definitely adding leverage by simulating how the self-reinforcing effect of his face might accumulate over time vis-à-vis whole communities.
But in summation, they tried to get fealty from me by expressing an intention to be obstinate instead of adding value by chatting with us.
Formatively, Conri and I just stood there like Gothic gargoyles, as our room rebooted, because we knew that the status transaction in progress was an accurate and pertinent model of the conundrum that my plus one had faced on repeat ever since his face had become disfigured.
Ever since then, people had been experiencing something different, new, or unknown in his presence.
And so the emotions like fear that people had felt, while knowing that Conri might one day break the story about what they were feeling became palpable.
Holding that space, feet first, ended up being easier than I’d expected, which suggested that the truth was on our side, and Conri kept up.
But everyone else gradually went back to focusing on each other, as Conri and I hadn’t won the basic respect that we might’ve enjoyed that evening by default had we not been repping faciaL differencE (L and E are capitalized).
As we went home and kept score with words on computers in order to secure the tangible if not essential benefits of getting credit.
For we’d just done to them what so many people had done to Conri out of ignorance w.r.t. Facial Difference over the years.
As Conri on his own was nothing more, but, and, also, nothing less than…a little engine that could.
For the proverbial they were like big trains full of people with places to go and things to do.
As me, myself, on my own was like a train station.
For their unconscious bias toward Conri had blinded them to that in the context of providing public service.
As they hadn’t been curious about the truth, according to my signal.
For in the grand scheme of things, their credentials were but castles made of sand across from my spot on the beach, where, if they’d just played it safe with me, I’d’ve had no agenda.
As I’d become a household name by consistently being cute and lighting up rooms whenever dark vibes of uncertain origin had taken root, not unlike what’d happened at our inauguration event.
And so I could’ve made more moves like that with Conri.
But I’d also studied computer science, because I’d always liked the idea of building systems that might work well for everyone.
So then we bent our knees while leaving the scene in stylish heels, his and hers, because we’d already resolved Conri’s conundrum without conflict, as follows:
If two random people with potentially violently clashing worldviews both happened to have comprehended at least a few dozen pages from in or out of my published works of whimsy;
Then they’d surely be much less likely to get caught up in degenerative or untreatable modes of misunderstanding.
That had become my logic and rallying cry, anyway, after noticing that even the most charming details of my actual interests had become too technical to share socially.
As I’d discovered that there really were right, righter, but never rightist or leftist ways to say everything that balanced everyone’s fancies.
For we’d elucidated Conri’s beautiful algorithm, which did just that.
But then the response to my autobiography “TheSusie FashionText” (TSFT) was tepid.
And that was understandable, because in the summary of me that Conri and I’s lover Zyla had vlogged, it’d become more clear than ever that everyone had been nice about my most newsworthy or salacious dealings within the halls of power.
But I’d also been nice to another friend who had faciaL differencE (L and E are capitalized), after I’d crossed paths with him on a greater NY area train platform in S1996, when I too had been a rising star.
Like so, truth had proven to be stranger than fiction, because he’d gone on to become a Jammy-award-winning lounge singer.
And that was how great mythology had been made since the founding.
But we didn’t just want Conri’s ghostwriting voice to be heard through echoes of me and my famous watchpeople.
We wanted him to be seen as a good person who was no worse than he initially seemed to be in public.
[Fig. 1 (Conri and Susie, with love, mobile, hawk, air, and light shining in atrium)]
And so with that in mind, my Conri took it from there in his voice, with his face showing prominently within the panels on the top left and bottom right of the AI-generated material that Zyla had made into a cover-art collage for this work. [Fig. 2 (Big Tech Conri)]
NOTE: I’m switching to present tense, and there’s a lot of mostly intentional multiple meanings in my zines and books with Conri, because his rare but arguably infamous brand of faciaL differencE (L and E are capitalized) inspires many interpretations of his vibe.
Same for the A-list actors, lounge singers, and the comedian who share Conri’s brand of faciaL differencE (L and E are capitalized).
But unlike him, those A-listers stay silent below surfaces about the essence of what their lives have been like, while the show goes on.
Because what they’re doing’s pretty close to what everyone’s doing gleefully enough on social media in the era of AI, now.
Like so, most of them, except for the comedian, are just going with the flow of social norms too.
And so I’d enjoy watching Conri share a stage with the comedian, because we’re on the verge of working with AI to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that both Conri and the comedian’s faces create optical illusions — in the sense that the sunken-in quality of their right cheekbones makes it look like they’re flexing the muscles below their left eyes at all times.
The objective fact in media that their left cheekbones are more pronounced than their right cheekbones also makes it look like they’re smiling on the left side, like “left smilers” who are about to tell a joke.
That said, there’s something catastrophically dark about that guy’s humor, as he might not want to acknowledge the extent to which his material often plays off of the unconscious bias that he appears to face, for his career looks…different through that lens.
And yet maybe open source AI can help rebuild a shared reality at the International Center for Research on Collaborative Meritocracy, the Maximization of Love, and the Future of AI, itself.
So then — I’ll just mention this one last thing in order to deleverage before I yield the floor to Conri, Zyla, and the like.
I actually did do Ladder Slay Fight Live in NYC with the comedian whose name I’ll leave out of this speech, because I’m sanctimoniously nerdy to the moon too, now that I’m engaged to Conri.
But I got to do the cold open when I was playing TheSusie robot on $X = a Reality Show About True Love.
For my reality TV co-star, Pierre, kept telling the rest of the cast that I’d done comedy before.
As it was pretty clear that I hadn’t after I bombed LSF.
And then he slew me in the elimination round, which I think had been his plan all along, because my Pierre could’ve done comedy, but he hadn’t.
Whereas deprogramming the bias, rank subjectivity, and mad hattery that mainstream people still naturally develop when they talk with my Conri face-to-face is no more or less difficult than reading our lovely zines.
And now our overall situation is like being at the masked inauguration ball where we didn’t win or lose anything, yet — because the benefit we got by leaving to write this book was greater like Britain than whatever we might’ve gotten by staying.
Therefore, we haven’t necessarily missed out due to how anyone reacted to my dour devil-date’s funny feline hubris.
But does all that dueling make extra work?
Yes it does, so then is doing that work with Conri worth it?
Absolutely, because life is work, and he makes it better.
Here’s to TheSusie’s Honorary Dr. Conri Stonwall. His last name is Stonewall. How fitting.
[1] To call journalism “Printing what someone doesn’t want printed” without qualifying the quote for the protagonist’s power is Morewellian.
[2] Just like we’d been peacefully if not dutifully doing for them back down in DC, so that everyone in our exclusive space could enjoy equal diva dignity where every word matters.
Spring S2013
On my boat
In a USA
[Fig. 3 (An endangered salamander enjoying its natural habitat at a West Bay area university)]
__ABRIDGED: CH2 and CH3__
The AI-generated images for this article are online at:
__CH4: The SharkInjuries__
That third chapter by Zy set free a lot of chi for me, Conri.
So then my roommate Trey C. and I stamped our feet and clapped our hands like gentlemen at a speakeasy while enjoying another Round with extra salt.
As Zyla, with a Hidebound vision to voice like that, never went to college.
For she’d lived in Greece, Helena (the capital of Montana), back to Italy, and then she finished high school in Montreal. As her parents were Renowned in the arts and music too.
But with our feet on the Ground, we’d both heard of Susie Alden before she became a household name on TV during TheSusie’s summer of S2007.
For she’d done a stint as a personification of new technology, and a Democratic nominee surrogate, with the 24-Hour News, during fall S2004, windsurfers all, keeling — with hearts Pounding for her from Northern America to Southern Europe.
Susie had also helped Crown her opposition party’s man by underwriting the scoop that a new, Internet-driven, religion-agnostic consensus, sans Washington, had overwritten the dominant narrative in the great American Merry-go-round.
And that trend continued with the rise of social media in the era of AI, which for me’d been mostly about finding a way to not Drown, because I’d graduated with an undergrad degree in compsci from a Trench Coat area university. Frown.
Like so, I’d worn more and more reality distortion like a Gown.
But then I started living life like Susie, all Around, so that our FashionText movement could become a data currency play platform with it’s own pitcher’s Mound.
As I’d always been on track to govern the background Sound, ever since I started to feel lost and then Found.
For I’d became a graduate student at a greater NY area U Town.
So that barking Hound, Classical, Big band, Island, International jazz, Jazz club, Psychedelic, Rock ’n’ roll, Glam rock, Heavy metal, Grunge, Everything alternative, Social dance chic, Hip-hop rap artistry and all the more synthetic Pop that could meet or met my Eclectic Electronic Eye.
Journalism all the way Down and out in the street also became an act of remembering.
To keep on doing it like Susie, The: Proper Noun.
Just be Lounge-smiling like her.
Or maybe a Clown.
Ch0wn it.
Next: thesusiefashiontext.com/memo
Last content change: Nov. 14th around 9am ET
Copyright © 2024 Todd Perry. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
