Top Ten Moments

The Top Ten Moments In Jymi Cliche’s Life…

I’m gonna be 44 on September 11th, and there have been many memorable moments in my lifetime, to say the least, but I wasn’t sure if I could honestly come up with a list of the ten best, as I was asked to do for a writing prompt.

I kind of figured that most of my biggest moments were trauma related because there have easily been ten giant traumas that have fucked me up for a lifetime. . but I’m delighted to say that narrowing it down to the ten greatest moments was more difficult than coming up with those moments. I’m grateful for this prompt, which helped me reflect on my many good memories.

I’m going to combine a few things for some of these answers, which means I can’t put them in exact chronological order, but I’ll at least start with the earliest memory first, and end with the latest last.

TOP TEN MOMENTS IN THE LIFE OF CLICHE…

1. Several great things happened during my Freshman year of high school, no matter how incredibly difficult that year was, the good stuff is what kept me going. Besides the fact that I made friends with a group of older kids who liked me, treated me well, and helped protect me from the bullies in my own grade, I was also blessed to have my talents recognized for the first time, in a way that reinforced the idea that I was not a total failure the way I felt up until then. First, I had three of my poems published in the school magazine, which was pretty much unheard of. I was one of two Freshmen to be published in the school magazine that year and we were tied as the first two Freshmen to ever get published there. It was also incredibly rare that anyone got more than one poem published per magazine, and I had three. My bad reputation was turned around in an instant as I became known as one of the best writers in my school. Of course, my bad reputation came back when I had to leave that school to go into the psych ward the following year, but some people still remembered me for my poetry. I also tried out for the school play that year and while I didn’t get a part, I was assigned the role of assistant Director, which was what I wanted even more than a role but didn’t think I had a chance, as a Freshman. The director assigned the roles and came to the first two play practices, but then she left it entirely in my hands to direct until the dress rehearsal a month and a half later. I loved the feeling of directing a play and enjoyed every practice we had. I was so proud of myself and it helped show me that I’m a strong leader, which still surprises me about myself to this day. My name, Jymi, was given to me that year after Jimi Hendrix and the lyrics “Move over Rover, let Jimi take over,” because it was my “thing” to take over as a leader wherever I was. The positive recognition I received for both of those accomplishments was incredibly important to me and helped to keep me going.
2. For this one, I have to go with my first Pride March in 1994 and then Youth Pride 95. They were a couple of the best moments of my early life as well. My first Pride was just mind-blowing to me, that so many queer people existed and were there to celebrate that part of themselves. I was always told it was something to be ashamed of, and to see so many queer people all gathered together like that was amazing. Youth Pride 95 was especially awesome because a group of kids from my high school went together and we entered a contest for school spirit where we put on an improvised mock lesbian wedding (before gay marriage was legal). We won a giant rainbow flag that my alternative high school hung proudly in the front office. I was beyond blessed to get to go to a school like that, where diversity was celebrated and I was accepted for who I was. I also happened to meet one of the stars of my favorite TV show at Youth Pride. It was Wilson Cruz from “My So-Called Life,” and he marched with me and my school for the entire parade. It was all an amazing experience that helped shape me.
3. My high school graduation was another top moment. I won the “Creative Voice and Vision Award” and gave a speech that made people laugh and cry. All of my friends and family came to my graduation party that summer and it was a huge accomplishment because I’d almost dropped out of high school when I went into the psych ward at fifteen. I failed most of my Freshman year and missed six months of school, yet still managed to graduate on time, at seventeen years old. There is a part 2 to this moment, which I have to mention as well. Twenty years later, our high school reunion was also one of my greatest moments. The kids and teachers at that school were like family to me at a time when life was messy and I was ready to give up. After graduation, however, I lost touch with them all. They were from different towns and had all kinds of different lives. Occasionally, we’d run into one another while hanging out in Boston, but I had to accept their loss for ten years before MySpace came along and many of us got back in touch. Since then, they became like family again, and seeing them at the twenty-year reunion changed my life for the better because I was incredibly broken until we reunited and something inside me finally healed. Now we try to do a reunion every year, although the last few years have been hard with Covid. They’re some of my best friends to this day due to what we went through together and the way we were taught to accept and celebrate one another. I will be writing a fiction book based on it soon, plus there are also 7 chapters in my autobiography “I Write The System” about my real-life experience there as well.
4. For this one, I have to say that I’ve been to many great concerts in my lifetime, and it’s hard to pick just one. Music is my life. I realize I’m not really a musician. I’ve tried to be for a while because I love music so much. I listen to it all day long and I’m a big collector of an eclectic mix of genres on CD and vinyl mostly, as well as a small cassette tape collection. I’m listening to music right now; a song by a rapper named Dumbfoundead is playing. Now it’s over and “She Bop” by Cyndi Lauper is playing. I listen to everything…as long as I like it. I guess I have to say that the concert that gives me the most “I had the time of my life” vibes was Lollapalooza 94. I went with a couple of boys who treated me like one of them and I spent the car ride there getting to know the Beastie Boys’ music. Then, I spent the entire day crowd surfing all over the military base where the concert was held. I was thrown on stage with The Breeders and the Flaming Lips. The Breeders were a headlining band, so their security people threw me back off the stage, but the Flaming Lips were hardly known at that point and they let me dance under a giant bubble-making machine. I completely let go that day. I was free. The Beastie Boys were amazing and the highlight of the event for me but I also saw George Clinton, A Tribe Called Quest, Smashing Pumpkins, and other great acts. That’s probably the number one concert as far as how much fun I had, but as far as the best performances I’ve seen, Roger Waters performing Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” at Fenway Park was probably my number one pick… I’ve also seen Ani DiFranco fifteen times and she’s always brilliant, but the time I went with my mother and sister was probably my favorite for her. The other best concert was just a few years ago when I went to see The Violent Femmes with my former high school teacher. I’d always wanted to see the Violent Femmes. They were one of my top five bands of the 90s, and being there with my favorite teacher and mentor to this day was something I needed.
5. For number five, I guess I wanted to mention that I grew up going to the beach every summer for at least a week, sometimes two. I love being in the water. Swimming and riding waves are my favorite things to do, but there are no exact moments I can pinpoint as the best when it comes to swimming. I loved all of it, but I also enjoyed going out on a boat when I occasionally used to do that. The summer I graduated from high school, my family went to Lake George NY instead of the ocean on Cape Cod and it was a kind of awful vacation, but I talked my dad into going parasailing with me. We each took our turn. We took a boat out onto the lake with a group of people and we all got to try. I was lifted into the air, high above the boat and lake, above the trees, in a parachute just sitting up in the sky, enjoying the view. I cannot picture myself doing something like that now or even thinking that I’d like it, but I was a brave kid and I loved the free fallin’ feeling of being high up in the air like that.
6. This one is kind of a strange combination, but two of the best times of my life were my weddings. I had what my friends and I called a “Brain Wedding” with my high school boyfriend when I was 14 years old. I still love the man who was once my slightly older boyfriend (by two years). He is one of my best friends to this day, even though we don’t talk as often now that he has a wife and kids. When we do, I know it’s the same person I’ve always loved and I know he still loves me, even if it’s no longer romantic love, we are soulmates for life. Our wedding was a blast. It was just a small group of our best friends and we each brought a sister as a witness, but it was a really happy day that I enjoyed tremendously. That was 1993; the same year my new book “Good Catholic Kids” takes place. Although the book is based on me, it’s fictionalized and the boyfriend is not supposed to be the same as the one I married. It’s more based on the boyfriend right before him. Part 2 to this is when I married my ex-wife in 2003 or 2004. I don’t even remember now, but it wasn’t long after 2001, and it was on 9/11 (my birthday.) We thought it would be a great day for a backyard wedding because the weather is usually perfect that day and we thought it would be nice to give everyone we loved a happy memory of 9/11. While the marriage didn’t last and she pretty much destroyed my entire life while having fun doing it, our wedding was amazing. All the people I loved were there. My best friends, my teacher, my ex-husband/soulmate, my social workers from the hospital where I met my wife, and my family all came. We had music and Italian food and everyone was happy. It was one of the best days of my life even though the choice to marry her was one of the worst decisions I ever made. At least the wedding was awesome.
7. The next thing on my list is gonna have to be my swim out to the island in Spy Pond in 2010. It’s appropriate to be #7 because as the Boston-based band the Pixies said “If man is five, then the devil is six, and if the devil is six, then GOD IS SEVEN!” My swim to the island was during a manic psychosis in 2010 when I’ve never felt closer to God and the rest of the Universe as I did during that time. I miss it, but I was locked up for a quarter of the year because of it and they completely broke me out of that happy place and turned me into a suicidal zombie, which is why I’m so afraid to let go now. I let go completely in the Spring of 2010 and the results of doing so nearly destroyed me. It also saved me, though, and I’ll always have the memories written in my books. My swim to the island is kind of the peak moment in “The Godchild 1: My So-Called Delusions”. The whole experience paved the way for me to write my trilogy. It was a story I had to tell. I’m grateful that I experienced it. I swam out to the island three times that Spring. Two of those times, I spent the night there alone. These days, I’m afraid to go outside. I miss my bravery even if I was kind of stupid brave, but I’m glad it gave me the motivation to start writing my story.
8. When my parents turned sixty, almost a decade ago, my sisters and I threw them a big birthday bash at a hall with all their friends and family. I was petrified to go, for several reasons. The reason that was easiest to explain was that I hadn’t seen most of my parents’ friends since I transitioned, and I wasn’t sure my parents had even told them. In fact, I hadn’t seen most of them since I came out as a lesbian as a teenager. Once I did that, my parents stopped taking me to their friends’ parties and cookouts and graduations and all that. I grew up with my parents’ friends and their kids being like family to me. Then, they were taken away from me because my parents didn’t want me to humiliate them by being openly gay. The other reason I was scared to see them was because of the two Bipolar Psychoses I went through and some of the things I said during that time that put me in a bad position with some of them. I was petrified to attend that party, but it turned out to be one of the best nights of my life, as I got to hug and talk with all of the people I’d lost touch with for years after having grown up with them like family. It was very powerful to me. I was so proud of myself for going that night and getting through it.
9. I joined an art gallery called Out Of The Blue Gallery in 2017 when they were trying to bounce back from losing their prime location due to gentrification. The gallery went on to find a new spot (which we are currently struggling to hold onto, again, due to gentrification) but so far we have survived it all, and in that time, I’ve shown my art in several spots around the Boston area. I’ve attended all kinds of art shows with live music, poetry, theatre, dance, story-telling, comedy, and more. It’s been one of the best things to ever happen to me. I worked in an art museum as a guard in my early twenties and dreamed of being a real artist someday, and while OOTB Gallery may not be a big, fancy gallery, it’s one of the most important galleries in Boston, in a lot of ways, and we are very close with the family who runs the Middle East Nightclub, which is easily one of the most important venues in Boston for live music. Just yesterday, there was news that The Middle East got bought out through gentrification and they’re turning it into a fucking modernized hotel! The Middle East has been the home to all the musicians and music lovers of Boston for decades, so this is very sad news, but I’m blessed that I got to hang my art there twice, for two or three months each time, and I had a big event for both of my showings. The first time I had a show there was when I was still rapping and I was told I could perform four songs at the event. It was fucking awesome. I got to be a rock star, even if only for about twenty minutes, it was a dream come true. My art was hanging on the walls of the venue when GZA from Wu-Tang and Talib Kweli were there too… two of my hip hop heroes go to see my art in the place they were performing. All of that wrapped up together was such a gift from the universe.
10. Last, but not least, is the most recent thing on the list, my 42nd birthday party. I wanted to celebrate my 40th birthday, the way people usually do, but I was falling apart that year. I was doing a ton of amazing shit like art shows, open mics, birthday parties, reunions, concerts, and I was even a guest on a TV show, but I could feel myself slipping into psychosis and was petrified I was going to go catatonic again as I did in 2008. I decided that having a big party for my 40th was just too much to take on, and I said I would have it when I turned 42 instead. I love the number 42 because of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy, and I thought it would be cool to wait till then. Unfortunately, I was turning 42 in September of 2020 when no one was leaving the house. At first, I was devastated that I’d have to cancel my plans for a party again, but then I got an idea to throw an open mic party through Zoom and hold it at a time when my west coast friends, as well as friends in Australia, could all attend. I’d just published my first book and I had about 35 people show up at the Zoom party from all over the United States and Australia. Many of them talked about how much they loved my book and how they were so impressed by my prolific art and songwriting. Some of them showed my art hanging on their walls at home, and my books on their bookshelves, and they all sang Happy Birthday to me at once, from all over the world. A lot of the people who came were people who’ve been friends of mine online since the LiveJournal days (pre-MySpace.) I’d known them for twenty years and never met them in person until my birthday party. It was amazing to have all of my top friends in one space supporting me. I’ve had a few Zoom parties since, and I’m planning another one around Halloween, but that first one, for my birthday, was the best for me. It was the only culture we could access then, and so everyone was extremely appreciative of being invited and getting to perform or just watch the performers. It was special, and I won’t forget it, even though I accidentally deleted the recorded event because it was a huge file and killed my old computer.

So, those are the top ten moments in my life, I guess. I’ve had some other great ones too, but those are the ones that stood out when I decided to make the list.

To many more fun times and great moments ahead… “Cheers.”