Sometimes a similar conflation of real-life events and the gonzo, gemstone-lovely slapstick version of it going at all times in my own head is directly linked to the Edies. Take the time I fluttered into the Genius Bar and had to explain, when the expert asked why my computron was so waterlogged, that it could have perhaps quite maybe just possibly have been the result of my habit of watching Grey Gardens in the bath three nights a week on my laptop. After that first time I watched the documentary as a teenager, I had gotten into the habit of balancing my computer on the back of my toilet amid two candles and tendrils of steam and cigarette smoke to entertain and vitalize me as my hair masks sank in. (If this sounds absentminded or reckless or just entirely lacking in common sense: It was; I am.)

“Did you consider that you might be damaging your MacBook?” the technician asked.

“No—truthfully, it didn’t occur to me.” I wondered how I could afford to pay for computer repairs—or, my God, what if I needed a new one? I had always been broke, and living on my own in a city certainly hadn’t helped that. My own personal Jackie O., similarly fashion-forward in his economy-grade, store-issue blue polo, reviewed my shabby outfit and college ID and decided to fix my own expensive, inadvertent wreck for free. My computer, of course, doesn’t hold a cat piss–scented Yankee candle to the splendors of Grey Gardens (and it’s v. Seinfeld2000 to even compare the two), but I still thought it was an apt circumstance under which to realize, yet again, that I sometimes feel like these women are my psychic ancestors. Excuse me as I change my name to Edie Rose Spiegel or Amy Rose Beale or… to hell with it, I’m just Edith Beale III now, if that’s cool with everyone?

If you’re as yet unconvinced, please also consider the following: One morning soon after landing my first Business Professional Career Job at a media company, I decided that the best costume for the day was a bathing suit, a silk scarf which I had clamped onto my head with a garish gold brooch, and a floor-length ancient fur that, if pressed to guess what animal bore its skins, a layperson might say, “Rat?” I strode through the newsroom, the tatters of my varmint-coat ribboning and trailing like parade-float streamers behind me before I flung it over the swivel chair at my workstation, ready for a productive day at the office. Not long after, I was called into a private meeting with one of the organization’s bosses to “discuss,” she paused tactfully, “…your attire.” What have I done wrong? I thought. As is obvious to seemingly everyone but me, it turns out that swimwear isn’t appropriate for the workplace—not even when it’s for the purpose of doing a Little Edie makeup DIY while you’re on the job, as I was that day:

I continue to disagree with my boss’s dress code. A better one: EVERYONE WEAR WHATEVER THE HECK YOU LIKE IN THE NAME OF DOING YOUR OWN PERSONAL EDIE-STYLE FREAQ-FLAG-WAVING DANCE! My admiration of the Beales is shared by some of the artists with the tightest harness on the idea that freakishly outsized sentimentality—I guess that’s what all this is, really, and I don’t fucking care, I love it, I will weep over the collected works of Oscar Wilde on any/all of your conference calls, bruh; please understand that, to me, rose petals are legal tender (and also just TENDER) currency—and stately elegance are far from mutually exclusive. Just ask my fellow Grey Gardens enthusiasts, the swooning singer Rufus Wainwright, who wrote a song with the same title as the film which samples Little Edie, and the EXCELLENT drag queen Jinkx Monsoon, who won the TV reality competition RuPaul’s Drag Race partially on the back of her uncanny Little Edie impersonation:

They get what it’s like to live inside an intimate, lavish, shambling Grey Gardens in your own head—and to find each day a “goddamn beautiful” one, even if you’re tripping over garbage as you sing your operettas. Maybe you do, too. Sunny-eyed hermits, introverted showboats, and sapphire, staunch people of the world: Let us be galvanized by a final quote from Big Edie. Let us honor it as our rallying cry—a call to arms about the steadfast DOING OF YOU 100 100 100:

Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale: “The cat’s going to the bathroom right in back of my portrait.”

Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale: “God, isn’t that awful?”

Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale: “No, I’m glad he is. I’m glad somebody’s doing something he wanted to do.”

The Edies weren’t always traditionally glamorous or polished, but they were essentially, gutsily themselves, cat shit and all. ♦