Boots Girl (Why I Made Her Literature)

Dear Reader,

Boots girl began with a detail so insultingly simple it still makes me laugh.

When I first met her real-life counterpart, I had no language for her. I had gay panic, certainly, but mostly I had the unnerving experience of being deeply affected by someone whose whole presence felt far too complete. She was polished in a way that made me nervous, beautiful in a way that made me stupid, and so buttoned-up and composed that the only reasonable response, obviously, was to make her literature.

The actual inspirational was small, alas there is no climax or thunderclap to report. We were sitting in a meeting at work when I noticed the frayed hem of her jeans where they fell over her boots. That was it. That was the crime scene. Her clothes changed constantly, and always well. She could shift aesthetic like it was effortless. But the boots remained. The frayed jeans came back often enough to become part of the pattern. That fixed point, those boots, that hem, became the easiest way for me to write toward something I could not yet say directly.

So I made her into a problem.

More specifically, I took a woman who, in real life, was very controlled, very precise, very socially intact, and I made her completely unhinged on purpose. I gave her cigarettes, bad lighting, prophetic one-liners, thresholds, recurring entrances, and the general behavior of a woman who should not be allowed near other people’s emotional infrastructure unsupervised. In the earliest pieces, now gathered as Boots Girl: The Neon Saga, I turned her into a smoking oracle on a detox center floor, which is still one of the funniest things I have ever done. If she knew that version of herself existed, she would either laugh or have a stroke. Possibly both.

I also have made her capable of outsmoking the Olsen twins at this point, because once I had committed to the bit, I saw no reason to behave with restraint.

After those first stories, I shelved her for a while. Then months later, after my writing voice had grown much stronger, I came back. That return happened while I was away from home, working as a travel nurse, usually on second shift, during a stretch of life that has not been especially gentle. Writing after work became one of the ways I decompressed, and one of the most reliable pleasures in that ritual was deciding where boots girl would go next. What setting would be funniest, strangest, or most spiritually incorrect? What job would she somehow be doing there? What could I make her say that would be devastating, ridiculous, or both?

That has become the fun of it.

Because boots girl is not meant to be a fully realistic person so much as lore. A fever dream. A recurring blonde problem with task management skills. She is not always serious, and one of the best parts of revisiting her has been letting her be funnier. Her real-life counterpart is extremely intelligent in a way that can feel, at times, a little obnoxious, and she is often in a position where she has to watch people repeat the same mistakes. That translated beautifully into fiction. Boots girl became the woman who keeps appearing with cigarettes, administrative clarity, and no patience for preventable nonsense.

She is eerie. She is symbolic. But she can also be very funny in a way that catches you off guard. She can insult you sideways with devastating precision and leave you feeling both offended and, regrettably, a little grateful. No further comment on if this parallels to the real-life inspiration. I will be exercising my Fifth Amendment rights while the Constitution still exists.

Over time, I’ve kept building out her mythology in increasingly specific and unreasonable ways. The cigarettes stayed. The fever-dream logic stayed. The practical competence definitely stayed, because one thing her real-life counterpart has always had is the energy of someone who is forever somewhere “just helping,” which is both lovely and, in fiction, extremely useful. Boots girl can show up in a reptile house, a salvage shop, the desert, a coat check, or the edge of someone else’s terrible choices, and somehow it still makes sense because she is always, allegedly, just helping.

I also gave her a dog, and the reason is very simple: I love this character, and I wanted her to have a dog.

All of the Catholic symbolism is on purpose. There is a very specific real-life reason for that. I will be in therapy unpacking it for the rest of my natural life. Moving on.

Another thing worth saying is that these stories can be read in any order. I do not usually write them by asking what happens next in a strict timeline. I write them by asking where it would be funniest, strangest, or most spiritually incorrect to place boots girl next. Some of the stories are emotionally heavier than others. Some are little more than me indulging a setting I like. The alien story is, in many ways, about nothing except the fact that I like aliens. This is not a flaw in the system. It is the system.

Still, if you want to start at the beginning, Boots Girl: The Neon Saga is the best place to begin, because those first pieces were written on sheer gay panic and contain the rawest version of where she came from.

And yes, for the record, one time I told her real-life counterpart that I like to write weird things: fever dreams, mirages, etc. I, then, immediately panic-unsent the message. Because what exactly was I supposed to do after that? Keep typing and explain that I had already started turning her into boots girl?

Absolutely fucking not.

xo,
Missy