Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black - A Book Review
This little-known book has gripped me. I’m passionate about giving under-served books a chance, and upon discovering my love, Cookie, knew I just had to devour her memoir. And devour I did.
I discovered the “Hippy Vagabond” through my intoxication of Nan Goldin’s photography. A favourite of mine by far, Goldin uses her photographs as a visual diary, snapping candid shots of her friends and life at random intervals; smoking on a train to Berlin; leaning over a besmeared bar top in nothing but a pair of bleached jeans; pasting on grainy makeup, reflection barely evident in the plaquey mirror; deep in the throngs of sex, back curve just shimmering for the photograph. She was very close to Cookie, publishing a surfeit of beautiful, amatory and darkly unforgiving images of Mueller. Upon Cookie’s untimely AIDS-related death, grief-struck Goldin opened an exhibition of Mueller’s life in pictures. I was pulled by the gravity of her crudely kohled eyes, rat-tail mane and warm, yet intimidating features. I was impressed with the life she packed into her short time on earth and galvanized by her fearless approach to her chicken-fucking role in John Waters’ Pink Flamingos.She was an underground actress, writer and Dreamlander, referring to the cast and crew of regulars John Waters used in his films. Born Dorothy Karen Mueller, she developed the sobriquet Cookie in early childhood. Cookie began writing at age 11 when she wrote a 321-page book about the Johnstown flood of 1889. She stapled it together, wrapped it in butcher paper and Saran wrap, and placed it on the shelves of a local library in what would have been its proper place. The book was never seen again.
With a swath of pivotal events in Mueller’s life, she went on to pursue her writing, and in high school hung out with the hippie crowd. One of Mueller’s idiosyncrasies as a teen was that she constantly dyed her hair: “Whenever you’re depressed, just change your hair color,” her mother always told her, years later, when she was a teenager: she was never denied a bottle of hair bleach or dye. In her closet there weren’t many clothes, but there was a surfeit of bottles.
Mueller traveled across the country, living with groups of vagrants, and settled in places such as Provincetown, Massachusetts; British Columbia; San Francisco; Pennsylvania; Jamaica and Italy. In 1969, Mueller first met film director John Waters at the premiere of his film Mondo Trasho. Mueller subsequently starred in Waters’ films. After her underground film status had faded, she moved to New York and put down stakes as a writer, journalist, and columnist.
As one can imagine, her colourful life meant for a rainbow of a memoir. A gem of a book, I imbibed like a vodka shot, all in one go. It’s hard to sip this book and with only 150 pages, I’d glugged it in a manner of hours. Her tone is consistent throughout, making for an elementary read, but her stark bluntness never fails to amuse, shock and tease you. The informality of Mueller never escapes the memoir, and curling up with it felt like curling up with her, reminiscing about past events in a darkly humorous, impish light. Anyone who starts off their memoir with, “I had two lovers and I wasn’t ashamed.” you just know won’t disappoint.
The only inkling of a blurb comes from the quote haloing a picture of Cookie: “Cookie Mueller wrote like a lunatic Uncle Remus- spinning little stories from Hell that will make any reade
r laugh out loud” and John Waters couldn’t be more on point- there is no way one could sum the book up better.
r laugh out loud” and John Waters couldn’t be more on point- there is no way one could sum the book up better.
I don’t know how else I can encourage people to give this little cluster of tales a go other than describe it in my own quote: this memoir is a technicolour trip of magnificent life experience, its exuberant descriptions, juxtaposing stark informality and brutal honesty stand it out as one the most breathtaking memoirs I’ve read.
You can open it on any page and I promise you there’ll be something hair-raising to read. As such, I have opened on a random page and this is the extract it bares:
“That was the last day I worked as a go-go dancer; I never wanted to see any of those sleazy joints again. I didn’t want to writhe on another floor in my life. I didn’t want to be forced to talk to any more creepy dummies in dark smelly dives; I was perfectly capable of finding creepy dummies on my own time. I didn’t want to be in the same room with murderers or birdbrains or desperate people anymore.
After all, I’d made my first fifty dollar bill that day. Not a bad way to finish up.
When I got home I hung up my pink sequined G-string, and there it hangs to this day, gathering dust. It still sparkles just a little when the sun hits it.”
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