At birth I was given the name Laura Ann. When I was old enough to ask my mother why she named me Laura, she didn’t have much to say. “I liked it,” was her reply. Ann was just the middle name you give little girls in the 80’s. My sister got her favorite actress’s name and my brother got a family name. I got something that was maybe a passing fancy or something she saw in a magazine. Desperate for an interesting backstory, all I got was a shrug.
At 20, when I met Dave, it was a no-brainer that I would take his last name. Between my mother and my father, I didn’t know who I hated more at that age. Dropping my dad’s surname for my new husband’s wasn’t something I lost sleep over. In 2004, Laura B. ceased to exist and I’ve now lived half my life as Laura H.
My husband never called me Laura, though. He called me many things instead: Tiger, Bigfoot, sweetheart, the worst wife in the world; he was fond of nicknames. For the first few years of our marriage he addressed me with rotating terms of endearment, but “Chicken” was where he landed and eventually stayed. He stopped calling me Laura some time in 2005 and I rarely heard my name cross his lips again.
I adopted the nickname, I told myself I thought it was cute. Much like mom, he never adequately could explain why he called me that. I used it in my instagram handles and I responded when he shouted, “Chicken!” across the record store. Variations included, but were not limited to Chicky and Chicky-poo. “Chicken of my heart” was how he addressed his suicide letter.
I can’t help now but see how much of a dare that name was. How diminishing, belittling, how quintessentially ~him~ of him to call me that and tell me it meant he loved me. I eventually started telling people that I didn’t like the name Laura, and I auditioned other nicknames, though I felt that none fit me.
I didn’t know who I wanted to be. I didn’t like any of the derivatives of Laura. “Laurie” and “Lori” were not for me. “Aura” was out, because the woman we bought the store from was named Auralee and I didn’t want to be confused for her.
I was forever jealous of those that could transform themselves, that had the courage to introduce themselves by a name not on their birth certificate and credit cards. I once found out my friend Jack’s name was really Jordan, and I pressed him into a dark bar corner to pepper him with questions.
“But how? How do you just change your name?”
“You just do. You just start telling people whatever you want your name to be.” So simple when you’re not afraid. I refused from then on to call him Jack and referred to him only as “Jordie,” which he did not like and I did not stop. He seemed to possess some alchemy I lacked.
“I think I want to change my name to Lulu,” I told Dave. I thought it was cute.
“You can’t be Lulu, you’re the Chicken,” was his response. “I worked with a Lulu once, so it’s taken.”
I didn’t know the Lulu in question and started telling people my name was Lou to see if I liked it better. I didn’t.
I contemplated LuAnn, but Dave said it was “too North Dakota.”
And then there was Julie, the dissociative episode I went through in 2020. She arrived when I joined Twitter, known affectionately as juliebeans. She was always smiling and flashing you in a sundress. She was someone I wanted to be, the secret social media version of myself. A staunch feminist and defender of abortion rights, always hilariously roasting and posting to publicly shame any man stupid enough to send an unsolicited dick pic. She was funny and mean and never afraid to speak her mind. She was unfiltered and silly. Surprisingly dirty. My dark side, my shadow self.
It was Julie that made it to the top of Onlyfans, not Laura. Laura would never. I think of her as a separate person than me, someone I can have a conversation with if I’d like. She’s funny and raw and doesn’t give a fuck about the opinions of anyone. She’s flashing you and flipping you off on Twitter because she thinks it’s funny. Go ahead and call her a slut, I dare you. As Julie, I made unforgettable friendships with people I will never meet. Julie existed only in my heart and on Twitter, I told no one in my life about her. Online, I met handsome married men who made promises about crossing Lake Michigan for me. Julie was someone you fell in love with.
And she is fun, truly. Stepping into Julie’s shoes is becoming my most cherished self, the person that was completely unseen by him at all. I joke about her being a dissociative episode, but I’m not sure it’s a joke. I retreated to Twitter to write posts in that happy place that exists where nobody knows who you really are and you can have any name you’d like. She belongs to the aether of anonymity. There’s no intimacy as intense as that which is shared between strangers. Everyone who’s ever had an unforgettable conversation on a late night in an Uber understands.
The kind of brutal honesty I could have with strangers was life changing. I felt alive having a place where I could be myself and make jokes about and write posts and speak authoritatively on how badly lit someone’s penis was and not worry he was going to be angry about what I posted. He was the tone police on my Facebook and instagram pages, objecting if I posed anything other than positive content about our happy lives together. Our public persona and appearance was very important to him. He wanted everyone to know how happy our lives were.
Now, it’s been almost 2 years since he died. I’ve taken “chicken” out of my instagram handles. I still play Juliebeans sometimes, but Julie is transforming. When I joined tinder and started dating, I put my name as Lulu. Partially because I was hoping to remain semi-anonymous and also because I still think it’s cute. It suits me. He’s not here anymore to tell me what I can’t be.
I love that I have had so many names. I know that my struggle with finding a name that fits me means I am still working on accepting myself for who I am, even when I don’t know who I am or who I am becoming. I’m grateful to have space from him to learn about myself. To know and understand myself. I try to think of myself as an ever evolving Pokemon.I am so excited to meet the new version of me, whatever she is named. I can’t wait to see who I become.
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.” 🖤