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Ripe for the Picking
My original essay for the zine when I'd misunderstood the theme
After two phone calls in which I provided my insurance information to two intensive outpatient programs in Boulder, I decided to log into my Tubi account on my laptop to watch the 1980 film Stir Crazy, directed by Sidney Poitier, starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. I liked the leading men, and I thought it was peculiar that Sidney Poitier had directed this comedy featuring Pryor and Wilder donning big-bird-type costumes on the film poster.
I had known Poitier from his dramatic acting in critically acclaimed films, A Raisin in the Sun and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
Stir Crazy was recommended on my homepage because the previous night, I had watched Pryor’s autofictional film similar to All That Jazz, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling. This film had been on my radar since I saw it at Videodrome, the DVD rental store in Atlanta. Because my trips to ATL are usually too brief to watch more than one or two DVDs, I decided not to rent the DVD but instead added it to my watchlist on Letterboxd.
Richard Pryor had been on my mind latently since then, especially as I thought about details of some memories I was trying to farm for this piece. In early high school, I had watched a TV special with my late dad about the late comedian featuring the newer generation of comedians he’d inspired. “His mom was a prostitute. He had a very sad life.” I still remember my dad solemnly saying this — he seldom acknowledged the struggle of others and frequently served as the source of my own.
I thought about this because in the last year, I had realized the relief of telling the humiliating truth.
Richard Pryor was about the same age when he had a similar “epiphany,” as his Wikipedia page states, when he decided to shift from being a, family-friendly Bill Cosby-inspired (obviously! before! everybody learned he was serial rapist) comic to one who used profanity and told people the truth about his tumultuous early life: his mother being a sex worker and his dad being a pimp. Pryor had this epiphany shortly after his mother passed away, when he was 26, the same age I was a year ago when my father passed.
Over the year, I’ve had to gradually come to terms with the “don’t-make-people-think-they’re-watching-Dr. Phil” narrative of my life I’d have rehearsed in my head if anyone asked. I had a few versions, adjusted for different friends, personalities, occasions. Perhaps you’ve heard some of them if you’ve met me.
For years I so badly wanted it to sound normal, funny, easy for people to understand and relate to. Hell, I wanted, no, needed a palatable story for my own sanity. Sometimes it was heartwarming, but it mostly wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t. It has been the reason for my severe insomnia, anger issues, dissociation, and overindulgence in certain vices, and the reason for the calls I had mentioned earlier.
I imagined people nervously laughing and slowly backing away from me if I told them the story about how my dad stole my mom’s green card and tried essentially to “return her” like a lifetime warranty L.L.Bean sweater, back to India so he wouldn’t have to go through a divorce in the US and have alimony and child support obligations. How that totally did not work in the modern year of 2008. So, in the evening a few hours after my dad and I had excitedly waited in a long line outside the rec center near my elementary school for him to vote for Barack Obama, Mom appeared at our front door with a chic new haircut and divorce papers in hand.
And so the brutal custody battle ensued, one which involved 9-year-old me being convinced (coerced) by my dad, my aunt, and other complicit adults into lying and exaggerating stories of abuse to lawyers, judges, social workers, and counselors.
Hours spent preparing a convincing facade and believable, but not too rehearsed, testimony because they could catch that, as my dad and aunt explained, for job of the guardian ad litem in Fulton County Superior Court was, in their own words, to unfairly always take the mom's side in custody cases, even though my dad was a good man. (For the sake of this piece and noting the synchronicity in my life, I can’t not mention this court is coincidentally located on Pryor Street in downtown Atlanta.)
My aunt, who was like an Indian Janice Soprano, instructed me to “provoke” my mom during my visitations at her apartment twice a week so she’d hit me and it could be used in court.
At school I was expected to present normally, as any “acting out” could also be used in court. So I did just that. Just tried to be a normal kid in public school. I proceeded to get elected student council rep, I humored my peers at lunch quoting Sam Puckett from iCarly, and I got 2nd place in the spelling bee. I messed up the spelling of “onerous,” subbing the “e” for an “o.” Just another day in the life of a 4th grader.
Then I’d go home and onerously rehearse my tone and argument to commit perjury in divorce court with the occasional reward of a cotton-candy-explosion ice-cream cone from Bruster’s. You can imagine the damage this Pavlovian conditioning and “your mom is evil and crazy” propaganda would do to my impressionable 4th-grade brain. I’m 27 and have only recently pulled these memories from the recesses of my brain.
For Pryor, his new confessional style would launch him to stardom. Freed from the constraints of safe palatability, he was able to grow into the legendary comedian we know today.
I like to think that at this moment, similar to how I feel, he was stir-crazy, embarking on the next chapter of the consequences and rewards of telling the truth. I’m not worried about the consequences though, because the worst has already happened.
EPILOGUE: This was a difficult piece to write and it still feels weird to share, at least in writing because I have shared snippets of these moments with the people I'm close with and in PHP. Maybe I'll wake up a month from now and delete it. Reading back on this right as I'm about to "publish" it, I still feel there's vestiges of my wanting to be relatable. Hell, even adding this post-script might be indicative of that.
I've tried to write the pieces for this "project" (the Ripe extended piece) close to the style I physically speak and think out loud, but at times veering back into that elevated personal essay style I'm accustomed to reading by others. There is something to say about the experiences of being trained at that young age to be convincing and persuasive to adults. Or basically exaggerate or play down the narrative to the particular audience of lawyers, guardians ad litem, family friends, teachers, etc.
When I read this, it feels like a confident person who is finally "over it", "did the work" and is now living happily ever after in Upwardly Mobile Personal Essayland and able to forever look a dark period of life with equanimity and objectivity. In some ways I am. It's not terrible putting that stuff to the side and living in the moment. Maybe it is also because essay writing to me can sometimes feel finalizing, even stifling. Like here's the objective truth, this is who I am and who I will be.
Bu-bbut it's not me! I'm not just another woman shares trauma for clout I swear I swear! I like dancing and going to the club and knitting and movies too! However, I am a woman, and I'm still subjectively angry at the people involved (as well as fearful ocasionally), irrationally and contradictorally sad about the death of someone who loved me but saw my existence as a means to an end and selfishly sequestered me from having a relationship with my mother.
So now what? I still feel guilt regarding my mom and anger and sadness about my dad. It is very lonely to deal with. Am I allowed to have different feelings about things? Be unsure? Misspeak sometimes? Can I speak hyperbolically? Can I not want to talk about it sometimes? Can I be cringe and sentimental? Can I evolve as a person? Can I be forgiven? -MB, August 15, 2026
literally me (fun fact: one of the actors in this scene was born in the same city in Cape Cod as I was)