being janet

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You know how names make you think of everyone else you know with that name? You want to name something - a dog, a baby, a fish - and you realize that even if in parallel universe you liked the name Gabby, you can’t use it in this life because the person who bullied you in elementary school was called Gabby. That’s how I’ve always felt about my name. It never suited me.

It came with accusations. Stop being mean to your brothers, Janet. Did you cheat on your test, Janet? (I did, many times. And I cheated on my homework too.)

It came with assumptions. Oh Janet, that’s so you. That’s so Janet. We know Janet.

Negative.

Grumpy.

Sarcastic.

Dry.

Interrupting in the middle of prayer at youth group-janet, using a recycled Jim Gaffigan joke (“AMEN, ALREADY!” I got no laughs… maybe a snicker).

It came with disbelief.

Hi, I’m your server today, can I get you some water to start?

Oh but what’s your name? (Waiting on people who pretend to be magnanimous is truly irritating). Whats your naaaaame? They’d say. We want to think of you as a person!

Janet, I’d eventually mumble. Every time I said it I had to convince myself it was my name.

Janet?!? But that couldn’t be your name.

Ok, I’d reply.

Is it really? Like the singer? They’d say.

Yes? I’d reply. My smile becoming pasted.

I just can’t believe it. I don’t know anyone your age named Janet.

Ok, I’d reply. But can I get you started with some water?

There was quite a long phase where I would just explain my nickname to people, in the middle always, never committing. “I could never call you Janzy,” my long time friends would say, “it’s just so… odd!” For a long time I believed them. How strange for them to feel so connected to an ectopic piece of me.

I’ve had many nicknames over the course  of my life: Jan. Janny. Janay. J-dawg. J-par. Janeezy. JP. Janita. Janjan. Janz. Janzy. They always felt much more home-y than janet. Maybe this is why I love coming up with nicknames for people.

Of course I’m only now realizing the parallel between my name and my gender. When a person isn’t comfy with what they’ve been labeled by society, it used to be tough shit. It used to be, get over it. But now we get to dissect. Now we get to transform.

When I began going by Janzy professionally, I didn’t feel as small. Besides randomly deciding to go by my middle name in 8th grade (an early clue that I wasn’t a janet), my first manager was the one who inferred that I didn’t need to stay in name jail. There aren’t a lot of Janzys, he said. It’s memorable. At the time, enough people called me that already. On sets, in emails, hearing people refer to me as Janzy gave me something. I could be more. I could be the myself I made. Not the myself others made for me.

My paternal great grandfather did the same. Our last name would have been Tsusumi, but the family converted to catholicism and replaced it with the Filipino surname Paraiso: paradise. I suppose for very different reasons, my great grandfather and I both felt name claustrophobia.

Janet was taken. It was taken by Three’s Company (you’re much too young to know what that even IS!) It was taken by MISS JACKSON IF YOU’RE NASTY. It was taken by Rocky Horror. If I had a dollar for every DAMMIT! I had squawked at me, I would own a house. Being culturally sheltered in youth gave me no foundation for understanding what any of this meant. I just knew people seemed to have an idea, and even if they liked the fact that I was a Janet too, they had to reframe it in their minds. For me, they reframed it as cute, kitschy, retro. A process.

I think of Janet frozen and dying in sparse memories of people I knew in childhood. It’s bloated with my young parents, their strife, and the mobile home park we lived in when my life began. It’s undeniably girlish. It’s heavy with elementary shyness and bullying. It means GOD IS GRACIOUS in christian-y name books. It belongs to somebody else, the stone cold bitch on my drivers license. It’s wielded by people in my family in a way that suffocates me, in a way that is somehow literal name calling, in a tone that sounds like INGRATE or TRAITOR or HEATHEN.

Have we learned yet that names are powerful, that the words we use to describe ourselves and others can shift our mindset? Words can give us opportunities we didn’t know we had.

What words are wielding? What are we calling ourselves?