There are certain parts of your past where you should not plant your flagpole. There are certain hills you don’t want to die on. There are certain dumpster fires in your life that will burn you so badly that your ashes will blow away like a fart in the wind. The other day I discovered one of mine that I’m probably going to regret sharing with the world. I signed up for a Letterboxd account so that I could have a place to post my movie reviews. One of those reviews was for the 1985 film adaptation of Clue. I wrote this review when I was thirty years old, so I should have been mature enough to not go through with this horrible shit. But in this review, I…um…I, uh…laughed at Miss Scarlet’s “fruit” joke about Mr. Green (who’s gay) and I…suggested that it’s okay to ogle Yvette the Maid before you realize what she looks like now that she’s older.
That Clue review was what I like to call a Monument of Cringe, of which I have thousands of all over the internet. I read what I wrote and I cringed in disgust. My face was the color of zerg piss. My body shivered like someone dropped a toaster in my bathtub. My insides melted into whale slurry at the thought of someone eventually finding this review and broadcasting it out the world. And then the internet celebrates my past mistake with the hashtag “Garrison Kelly Is Over Party”, although my writing career won’t be derailed because I never went far to begin with. I’m grateful to have a small audience. But what if it grows overnight and they wade through this museum of cringe together? All of my embarrassment broadcast for the world to see. Hell, I probably said some embarrassing shit in this essay right now that I’ll get raked over the coals because of.
So what do you do when you realize that you have Monuments of Cringe all over the internet? What do you do when you realize your own published books are Stonehenges of Cringe? What do you do when you realize you built an entire legacy out of being disgusting and horrible in the way you’ve written? Nothing. You don’t delete your entire social media presence. You don’t pull your books off the shelves. If you must apologize to your audience, do so in a genuine and heartfelt way. Don’t make excuses. Remind your audience that they deserve better behavior from someone they look up to. And when you promise to keep growing, keep that promise and be the best version of yourself that you can be.
Because the truth is, a lot of art from the past doesn’t age well. Remember Ace Ventura: Pet Detective? Remember how the audience hee-hawed when they discovered that Einhorn had a boner in her underwear? Well, if you’ve made any effort to unlearn that behavior, you’ll see that transphobia is more harmful than funny and should therefore stay out of comedy forever. Remember all those jokes you heard from Boomer comedians about how much they hate their wives? Remember when the ultra-fat dinner guest ate the “wafer-thin mint” in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and then exploded all over the restaurant? Do you know why these things and many other pieces of media are now considered Monuments of Cringe? Because we’re (hopefully) learning more about the world around us. The more we learn, the more we apply it. And the more we apply it and grow into better people, the less likely we are to hold onto piss-poor nostalgia. That’s how life works: it progresses into the future.
I’ve decided after spiraling into disgust at my own past, I’m going to keep my Monuments of Cringe up. Not only do I have so many of them out there that I can’t get rid of them all, but I continue to create them in the present day and there will come a time when they age badly too. Learning to be a better person isn’t something that stops happening when you get to a certain point. It keeps going and going until the day you’re lowered into a wooden box with RIP scrawled across it. You can’t change the past no matter how hard you try. Yes, people will willingly see the ugliest parts of you before they see the best. But for every zergling and goblin that eats you alive, there are even more people who love you. You have to go out of your way to find them, but love is there if you look for it. Hell, there are people who still love J.K. Rowling even though she’s a transphobic bastard. There’s hope for you yet if you have even half the number of Monuments of Cringe that I do.
Perfection is a myth. Everybody has something they’re not proud of. Those who work on atoning for their worst behavior will successfully do so. Those who can’t admit it when they’ve fucked up? Well, let’s just say the over party will be complete with a disco ball and a bowl full of cheese dip. I’m telling you all now that if you happen to stumble upon my Monuments of Cringe and you think the worst of me, I apologize with all of my heart. If it’s years after the fact and another person finds them, I’ll apologize again. And if the future continues to roll on and I get called out for it again, I’ll apologize again. And again. And again. And again. While it is true that you can’t please everybody, you should at least try to be a halfway decent person even if perfection is indeed a myth. You may feel like you’re being looked at under a microscope. I do too sometimes. But if you think you feel alone, try being in the shoes of someone you’ve disenfranchised with your worst behavior.
But if you must hold an over party in my name, at least bring refreshments. Bring lots of Diet Coke. Bring enough pizzas to touch the ceiling. Bring enough bags of potato chips to give me the heart attack you’ve always wanted me to have. While I am sorry for every horrible thing I’ve said over my lifetime, I do indeed have a life to live. Will I live it with you? Will we eat potato chips together and dip them in a wading pool full of sour cream? Will we shove giant handfuls of cake in our mouths and talk about the world together (not with our mouths full, of course)? When I’m done atoning for my sins, I want to party with all of you. The Garrison Kelly over party has a conga line that I’ll gladly lead. Let’s party like it’s…a year that hopefully aged better than whatever god awful nonsense the 80’s and 90’s were. But if you ask me, I’ve erected more Monuments of Cringe in the 2000’s than at any point in my career. Remember Deus Shadowheart and Dr. Scott Cain? No? Good, let’s keep it that way.
