Tonya Harding Should Buckle Down
I was thinking about the sad and tawdy life of Tonya Harding yesterday. I heard on the news that she’d just been ordered to pay her former landlord $20,000 and that she’d lost her professional boxing debut. She got married again only to get divorced quickly. Throwing hubcaps at said husband. Ill-advised eye makeup. Celebrity Boxing. Banishment from skating. Clubbing Kerrigan.
Harding’s list of humiliations is staggeringly long and funny. The judgement was for unpaid rent. The boxing debut seems like a stunt, but it’s not. Harding says, “I have put a lot of effort into boxing. This is not just a one-fight thing. I am making it my second career. I am not working eight-nine hours a day for nothing.” But she lost. And, in general, she seems to lose a lot.
It’s all her fault of course. She finds and marries losers. The spotlight she craves so terribly seems to always find her when she’s at her worst, in court or in scandal. I think most people who have endured so much would have gotten the hint by now and maybe learned a useful trade. She would probably be a good travel agent, beautician, or bank clerk. It would be a quiet life, though. But she’s determined, through bad choices and laziness, to rise to the top of the shitpile.
She’s a fool, but at one time, she was the best in the world at something. Harding was the first woman in history to do a triple axel in competition. That’s amazing. Think about what that means, to do a triple axel: Skating very fast on a razor blade, leap, rotate three times, and land on tangled feet. All to music and in front of a crowd. That’s got to be amazing. She figured out a way to be the best in the world at seconds at a time. Flying, dressed in sequins, in a spotlight.
Who can blame her for trying to be that again? To be that girl everyone was proud of before her life became ridiculous. I thought she was a hoot at the time. A working-class girl with way too much makeup, thighs like Virginia hams, and not an ounce of that gap-toothed Kerrigan grace. I hope Harding pulls out a victory somewhere and does something classy with her life. There’s nothing better than a come-from-behind win. Something excellent, on earth, with tangled emotions, and no crowd.
Loving: The chocolate Snackwell’s in the vending machine. Damn you, Nabisco. Damn you to hell.
Reading: Empire Falls by Richard Russo. I am a quarter done and really wish it would pick up the pace.
All About: Waffle fries at the Deluxe Diner on Devon and Clark. Boy, howdy.
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