I recently saw The Who in concert, provoking the titular question. Specifically, who is Suzy Marmalade? That’s the question that many people reading Southern Vapors have on their minds. She is described in the book as one of my personas. In the first draft I called this persona “Suzy Creamcheese” and described her this way:
Suzy Creamcheese was a fictional character on one of the Frank Zappa albums that I listened to in college. Somehow I developed my own take on Suzy, that she was naïve, good to go in her own world but clueless anywhere else, sort of an upper middle class white cheerleader parachuted into 1960’s Harlem. I could relate (except not the cheerleader part).
Nobody got it but me, which I found profoundly puzzling. Maybe I’m the only one old enough to remember the TV footage of 1960’s Harlem. Fraught with racial tension, drugs and violence, it was not a place for Maybelle right off the farm. Reminds me of the time I moved to New York in 1985 and fell in love with the East Village. I wanted to rent a loft there in the worst way and move in immediately. My friends insisted on taking me down there at night, to see the deserted streets and the junkies, and asked me, “Now what do you think would happen to you when you went out at midnight in your mink coat to walk your fluffy little Shih-Tzu?” I had to admit that they were right. I wouldn’t have lasted long. That was Suzy—total edge with absolutely no street smarts to back it up.
So how did Suzy Creamcheese become Suzy Marmalade? Check in later this week!