An Entire Community of Bastards

And Why It's All Bullshit

A bit more on bastards. And Jesus. A little MC Hammer thrown in there too.

Shwana here - back again. That was not what I had planned, but I’m down to keep rolling with it just a little longer. My intention was to move on from all my bastard business. I figured I would just go on back to my real name, since everyone can pronounce it these days. BUT, the craziest thing happened last week. I wrote a little ten minute introductory essay, with some insight into my name, where it came from and what it did and didn’t mean - and the bastards crawled out of the woodwork. From everywhere. Bastards. Are. Everywhere. Humans, who just like Shwana, were born into a situation of someone else’s doing and yet, they were labeled as illegitimate. They showed up in droves: in my Messenger, in my Facebook comments, direct contact - you name it. All ages. All sorts of colorful stories - with their own fucked up names. Let me tell you - the bastards came. They came and they told.

They told of shotgun weddings, sudden stepdads, and of never knowing their dads. They shared their own desire to just have their birth certificate signed by the man who helped create them. And their anguish when he wouldn’t. Many spoke of not meeting their own father until they were in their twenties - just like Shwana! They told me about fathers who came and went, fathers who never were, and fathers who weren’t really theirs and they never even knew - until it slipped out or they picked up on the innate disconnect. They told me of sitting on their grandparents porch, hearing the old women talk, when they thought the kids couldn’t hear. Word was that some little child didn’t actually “belong” to some man. Their dirty little family secret. All these people and friends wanted or needed to share their own un-fittings, their own bastard business.

There were different kinds of bastards too. Others who knew their fathers, but felt illegitimate nevertheless. They were physically tended to, given a legitimate name, but fat shamed their entire life. Even though they were thin. They were left alone at sixteen to finish the rearing job themselves, they were sent away, and they were abandoned. They were, they were, they were…..they saw themselves as illegitimate in a gazillion different ways. The stories. My god, the stories. The other kinds of bastards with the real names - they were ignored, they were ridiculed. They were bastardized by parents unwilling to walk them into adulthood in a way that they deserved. These are the ones that had the Olan Mills family portraits on their wood-paneled walls, but with an entirely different truth behind it. Illegitimate. They too, felt illegitimate. Never mind the fact that there’s a bastion of lies behind every family portrait that ever hung on any wall - the gold-leafed, snazzy wallpapered ones and the thin ones that get shared with a neighbor, alike. The ones that house the churched, the ultra-educated, the super famous - all those folks have walls that hold family pictures just brimming over with lies. Full of illegitimacy.

I am here to attest to the fact that we are most definitely not alone, my fellow bastards. Whether we have been delegitimized by birth to an unwed mother, shamed by her neighbors and society, or born to a complete set of two parents that just sucked, we are everywhere. Human people, carrying around the myth of illegitimacy. The kind that either falls under the dictionary’s say-so or the fake kind that they carry heavy in their hearts - the weight of such, created by those who didn’t love them well. An entire community of bastards. WE. ARE. ONE. And holy hell, we are many.

Listen, to be clear, there are boatloads of real true bastards in the world. Legions of them. Legit bastards. I know them. You know them. We’ve worked for them, we’re kin to them and we’ve damn sure alllllllllllll dated them. I’ll tell you who they’re not though - they’re not the mama that poured everything into her kids, but was herself, born to an unwed mother. They’re not the man, nursing his aged and demented mother through the end of her life, with compassion and grace and dignity - but he himself, born to her, unwed. They’re not the givers, the doers, the lovers. The bastards are not the good guys. The bastards are the ones who spew hate or abandon their babies or shoot up a school or sell their soul for money and power. Big deal bastards. There is an entire community of them too. The real bastards of our world are NOT the ones born into an unchosen situation, carrying around undeserved shame and confusion - but still doing their best work in the world and in their families. Websters needs an edit. Pronto.

Leonardo Di Vinci was born a bastard. Oprah Winfrey? Bastard AF. You know who else entered this world as a bastard? The single most influential man to ever walk this earth, encountered it as a bastard, born to a young unwed mother. A fella named Joseph stepped in and took over as his Daddy. He wasn’t even born in a charity hospital. He was born in a damn barn. Or so says the book that gave us his story. And his story is one we love. We cling to it’s absolutism. Many will swear that he carries the destiny of all mankind in the belief of his very name. We absolutely adore this bastard. Those whispering neighbors, those old bats on the porch, gossiping about a baby’s legitimacy - they almost always really, really love his story. They sing it, worship it even. They inhale his name every Sunday morning and Wednesday night. They exhale it at their will. No matter how bad their breaths smell from the grotesque regurgitation and misuse of it.

Putting aside whatever one believes about Jesus the Nazarene - whether or not you think he’s divine or a really wise teacher man or a prophet or a farce - one thing is certain, no one has changed our culture and policies more than that baby, born in a barn, to an unwed mom - new man in tow, ready to step up and raise the child. Like my Daddy, Johnny or my other Daddy, Gary. Like Audrey’s Daddy, Brian, that she got when she was five. Like Sheri’s Daddy, Milton, who took over for the real one she hardly ever saw. Jesus, and everything he is to humanity, encountered it, initially at least, as a bastard. Illegitimate, according to the term the people assigned that sort of thing. Surely there’s a connection there. Surely there’s a story, a metaphor, a SOMETHING that was possibly intended to teach us to be better humans - you know, to not be bastards. As far as I can tell, there’s got to be more to that little detail of the birth story than the standard stairway to heaven ditty. I like to leave that to the bible scholars though, and the folks who love to argue about that stuff. Full transparency: I open the bible and all those many and multi-translated stories harken the same anxiety in me as the assembly instructions to a shitty piece of Ikea furniture. My eyes glaze over a little bit and my head starts to swim after about ten minutes, tops.

My religious ignoramus-ness aside though, the truth remains: Jesus, him-very-self, was a legit bastard. The bible tells me so. Holy, sacred, beloved bastard. That’s what it says. Pied Piper to the rest of the bastards - the ones in both groups - those born to unwed mothers and those that are just assholes. From what I hear, he loves them all. His very DNA in all the bastards who ever lived - holy, sacred, beloved bastards. Every last one.

I guess the humans just need a little help connecting those dots. I better leave them to it.

Signing off and…..

Too Legit to Quit