Men in Dark Alleys
1993
“Hey honey,” said a man in an alley we were walking by.
Now, I’m an expert at pretending not to notice things. This is not always a good skill, but it comes in handy when strangers shout things from dark places. My friends, L & J, however, turned and looked down the alley; consequently, they were the ones to give the intimate description of the man to the police.
It was L’s idea to call the police. I’d encountered the local police before and was in no hurry to do so again, but I told her it was a great idea to call. Then a police officer showed up at our apartment, and after he listened to her describe the flasher, he said, “Guess you didn’t see anything you liked.” And he laughed in a way that a man you’re are counting on shouldn’t.
In real life I notice a thousand things but acknowledge few. I can pretend no one in the room made an unfortunate sound, that no one threw out an insult, that an argument didn’t happen next to me, that someone didn’t tell a lie. But fiction requires that you look. That you acknowledge. Even that you get closer. In my writing I feel that I am still not close enough to be a good writer, but far enough away to stay sane. There has got to be a way to do both. Right?
What scenes do you find hardest to write?
Stupid and Imaginative
at a party... sigh
T. didn’t want to leave the party. She’d met a guy and she wasn’t going to ruin her night by having to take me back to the dorm. It was 2 in the morning.
I didn’t know who to call. My roommate was out of town. My neighbors didn’t have cars. One did, but she probably would refuse to get out of bed. Other phone numbers I didn’t know–and this was long before cell phones besides. I could walk back into town down the highway for several miles. I could find a sofa and sleep in the fraternity house.
A guy standing nearby with a group of friends said, “You need a ride?”
I didn’t know him. “I’ll figure something out,” I said, thinking if I were someone else I’d make T. take me back.
“I’ll give you ride,” he said.
“That’s okay. Thanks anyway.”
T. nudged me. “See? He’ll give you a ride.”
He nodded. “Let me help–I’m nice. Ask anyone here.” He was also sober. The other guys were all drunk.
If I told T. that since she brought me, she ought to take me home, she’d get mad and refuse. If I told this guy no, I still wouldn’t have a ride home, and I would insult him and be stuck in the house all night with him and his fraternity brothers. I reconsidered walking.
“Hands to myself,” he said with a grin. “Scouts honor.” Behind him his friends vouched for him. Then I felt vain for even thinking he had an ulterior motive. This guy looked like the cheerleader type–bouncing girls with cleavage and fake fingernails.
“All right,” I said. “Thanks.”
T. waved me off happily and I followed him out the door and decided that if he took one wrong turn, I’d get out of the car no matter where we were.
He was an alumni, 25 years old, in town for a reunion and he worked as an engineer at a big company in Indianapolis. He had a girlfriend too in fact. How old was I? 19. Was I hungry? He’d take me to get something to eat.
Just home, I said, imagining a clutter of scenarios. One–he took me straight home, dropped me off, and that was that. Two–he didn’t take me home and I couldn’t get away from him. Later with the police they’d laugh at me because I had, after all, gotten in his car. Three–he didn’t take me home but I did get away from him only to left stranded in an alley. Four–he took me home, dropped me off, and then had a good laugh with friends about how I thought he found me at all attractive. Five–he took me home, I became possessed by some wild, wayward, self and invited him in shocking the hell out of everybody.
He pulled up in front of my dorm, parked, and turned off the engine. He turned sideways so that one arm was behind me on the back of the seat and the other arm in front of me along the dash. I am so stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid, I thought.
“So, this is it,” he said. “See my hands? I’m keeping them to myself.”
“I see that,” I said. “Well, thanks for the ride.”
“Can I come up?”
“I don’t think so.” I actually felt ungrateful and anxious at the same time. He leaned in closer. “You sure?”
I wanted out of the car with as little fuss as possible. I put a hand on the door handle and then kissed him. I opened the door and pulled away. “Bye,” I said, and slipped out, slamming the door before he could reply.
Last night I was working on scene in my latest novel that made me feel uncomfortable–I can’t write that. Ugh. What the hell am I doing? Someone might read this! Writing certain scenes, no matter how often you remind yourself that the character isn’t you, not you-you, not really, it still feels like exposing yourself. Like admitting to something you’d rather not.
The next day when T. got home, she asked me if I had kissed that guy. “Of course not,” I said, not even entirely sure why I was lying. “I just met him.”
But in writing fiction, you’ve got to tell the truth–never mind that fiction is all made up. And telling the truth takes practice.
How honest are you in your writing? How easy is it to tell the truth? Why?
Christmas Girlfriends
3rd grade ballerina wannabe
The first girlfriend after the divorce was British and blonde. Beverly went back to England soon after Christmas and I sat in the backseat of dad’s Chevy Nova and cried. I was 5 and wanted dad to marry her so that I could have a mom with an accent. Another Christmas was spent with the woman with Margaret Atwood hair and two sons. The sons ignored me and I played with Barbies in Connie’s living room. Another Christmas was spent at Mary Lou’s house. Her children liked to lie down in the street and make cars come to a screeching stop.
One Christmas my dad’s second wife took all her presents, unopened, and put them in the trash. Dad snuck outside and rescued the gold chain and jade pendant he’d gotten her. He gave it to me. “Hide this in your room,” he said. “You can have it but don’t let her know you’ve got it.”
I hid it, but she used to search my room when I was at school and I didn’t have that many good hiding places. She was very thorough.
I find it difficult to put Christmas in fiction. Holiday stories veer too close to cliche. How do you make a holiday real, not maudlin or syrup, or meaningful only to the writer and no one else?
Have you ever read a good Christmas scene in a novel? Remember it?
Celebrate and Look to the Stars
a partridge in a pear tree--or a self-portrait of my mother in a card
Happy starry nights to all. Now go do something fun.
Fear and Deadly Combinations
I opened the bathroom and there he was in the hallway waiting for me. I slammed the door shut to keep him out, but knew he could easily get in under the door. Or he’d wait me out. I’d think he’d given up and he’d be around the corner. My temperature rose and my heart panicked in its cage. Tears began. This is what it is like to be arachnophobic. Let’s get our words straight. Phobic, not afraid.
being a college freshman makes one a little undone
I was 16 years and it was close to midnight on a Friday and my dad would not be home until Sunday. If I wanted to get out of the bathroom, I’d have to rescue myself. The spider was almost 4 inches from the end of one leg to another and it was about in the middle of the wall.
I got up on the sink counter in case the spider crawled in from under the door. Without putting another foot back down, I rummaged through the bathroom cabinet and under the sink. I poured all the shampoo out of the squeeze bottle into a cup. Into the bottle went X-14, Old Spice, windex, rubbing alcohol, and mouth wash. Still on the counter I braced myself and slowly opened the door. The spider hadn’t moved.
I flipped opened the top of the cap, took aim, and squeezed. The blast knocked the spider to the floor. The mixture splattered in all directions. I stopped and looked down. A leg twitched. I blasted it again and it spun around on its back.
When my dad got home on Sunday, he saw the wall before he noticed the dead spider. The mixture had taken the paint off the wall.
Putting my work out in the world causes fear. Sometimes sharing my work even stirs that same panic inspired by spiders. I’ve been driving to work and I’ll think about my novel and I’ll remember that it is out in the world and that maybe, just maybe, someone is reading it. The desire to change into another person overwhelms me. I want to be anyone except the idiot who put words on a page. I’d like to blast my novel straight out of existence and memory.
But perhaps that is overreacting. So, what scares you?
Hey, you remind me of, you know,…
mom and grandma
Mom used to look at this picture and wonder if anyone could see a resemblance between her and her mother. She never could.
I try to see which writers have most influenced my writing, but I can’t see any resemblance though I know it is there.
Which writers have influenced you? How do you know?
It is easy to disappear.
Uncle Scott & Jill
“We don’t know where he is,” my aunt said about 7 years ago, and we still don’t know. She was talking about my Uncle Scott.
Here is how he vanished. Nearly deaf and with plenty of other issues piled on top, he grew up in and out of group homes. He could carve perfect tiny dogs out of wood and not recognize women he knew. One time he ran down the street to get away from my mom because he didn’t know who she was.
Eventually he became a ward of the state. Grandmother visited him on holidays. The last time I ever saw him was Christmas 1989–a month after my mom died and 3 months before grandmother would also be dead. The rest of the family decided those 3 months later not to tell him that his mother was dead. “He won’t notice,” they said. “He’ll forget she ever visited.”
A few years later my aunt called me to say that the yearly check she sent to my uncle’s group home had been returned. She sent the check as a gesture–a little money meant for a Christmas present or something. The check came back because the group home had closed.
No one could tell her where the residents had been sent. Out on the street? To another group home? Seems if you are a ward of the state and someone wants to find you, you have to give permission to the state to give out that information. Now, if you do not know someone is trying to find you or you can’t remember your family’s name, well, all the better to disappear.
If I were a character in a novel, I’d go to Florida and search for my uncle. I’d look group homes up and knock on their doors. Perhaps I’d come across a coverup and learn my uncle had been used in a terrible experiment that involved Jeb Bush and I’d end up on the run from the secret service.
Okay, no. If I were a character in a different novel, I’d go to Florida to search for my uncle, and I’d find him living on the streets of Tampa and I’d experience an epiphany about the frailty of family,a nd unable to save my uncle I’d devote my life to saving homeless people.
Or maybe if I were a character in a novel, I wouldn’t go to Florida to search for him, but he would come and find me. He’d knock on my door and wreck revenge on my husband and son because I’d failed to save him from the horrors of life on the streets.
Or he’d come here, find me, and save my life and teach me the value of family with his words of wisdom learned from the street.
In novels, the plot possibilities are endless. As a writer I can make anything happen on paper–have a happy ending and be a hero! This is a silly question but when you are out in the world living your real life, do you ever daydream that you’re a character in novel–your own or someone else’s? If you could jump into any book and become a character in its pages? What plot line would you jump into?
Virgins and Pizza
stuffing cups for the July 4th parade
My manager waved to me when I walked in through the back door. I looked at the address of the next pizza to deliver, slipped the cardboard box into the blue, insulated delivery bag, and turned around to head back out. “See you soon, Virgin Pelrine,” my manager said. He called everyone by his or her last name with Driver put in the front. Until this moment I’d been Driver Pelrine.
I thought I misheard, but he’d gone back to flipping dough. I was 18 and delivering pizza was my summer job. The only other woman who there came bounding in. “Two dollar tip on that one,” she said.
“Good job, Virgin R–,” our manager said with a grin. I had a pizza to deliver and rushed out.
I ignored this new name for days, not wanting to be uptight or in trouble. One evening I walked in for my shift, and the manager said, “Hey Virgin Pelrine!”
I smiled. “Hey, Virgin B–! How’s it going?”
Several of the other male drivers laughed. I called him that every chance I got. Even at the end of the evening when I was in his office turning in my slips and getting my gas money. “Here you go, Virgin B–,” I said and handed him the right forms. “How were sales tonight, Virgin B–?” I glanced over at the Samantha Fox poster he kept on his office door. The poster had been smeared with anchovies.
“All right, all right,” he said and gave me my money. “Driver Pelrine.”
Sometimes I think it would be great to have no need to work. I could stay home and write all day! All freaking day. But then what would I have to write about?
Sell Yourself
“I saw your light was on,” P. said. He had moved into a house across the street, and so he knew when I was home and who came to visit. We had broken up a month before and I was seeing the tactophobe.
I didn’t want to talk to him, but I didn’t want to be rude. I thought of turning off my light, but decided that would be too obvious. “How are you?” I asked.
“I thought you might want to come over,” he said. It was midnight.
“It’s late,” I said.
“Hey, if you come over right now, I promise you’ll be asleep in 30 minutes,” he said.
If you want to sell your book or your art, you’ve got to make a pitch. Why should anyone plop down their money on your work? Some people say they won’t sell out, but does sell have to mean sell out? Where is that line? How do you pitch and not sound like a jerk?
The List Is Understood–But Breast Implants?
at my rehearsal dinner
in the mall parking lot
L. liked to tell people everything. J. said we should teach her a lesson. We made stories about ourselves and told them to her. She repeated them, and she was livid when she found out the truth. She didn’t speak to us for a few weeks.
Seven months later, L. said to me, “D’s such a gossip. We should make a story up and tell him.”
“And you think that’s okay?” I asked, still feeling guilty for making her cry 7 months earlier. “You think we should lie to a friend to see if he’ll talk about us?”
“It’ll be funny,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, L.” I said. “D. might get upset. You know?” She let the subject go. Or so I thought.
A few months later we back on campus from summer vacation. I noticed that certain friends were looking at me strangely. Well, that is, every time I talked to one of my male friends, I’d have to check to see if I’d spilled something down the front of my blouse.
L. did make up a story to tell D. She told him I’d had breast implants over the summer.
Another time L and I were going on a double-date. Before the guys picked us up and told her all the things she shouldn’t tell my date about me. (The breast implant story being on the list of course. Never you mind the rest.) In the middle of dinner, L. said to my date, “Marta gave me a list of things I can’t talk about.”
“L!” I said.
“What?”
“You don’t say there’s a list.”
“You didn’t say that. The list wasn’t on the list.”
“The list is understood!” I said.
She turned to my date. “What do you think? Is the list understood or does the list have to be on the list?”
The guys exchanged looks and changed the subject. L. and I continued the argument in the bathroom.
In fiction, characters need to behave in believable ways. But yet you don’t want them to be predictable. Well, predictable in some ways, but able to surprise and interest you in others. You don’t expect Ahab to suddenly say, “You know, why don’t I forget this whale for a day and go on a picnic?”
Or Miss Havisham to decide to go out for a coffee with her old bridesmaids?
Or James Bond to ask a beautiful, willing female to play Scrabble and discuss his stamp collection?
Who knows what novels those would be.
How do you make a character who is surprising but doesn’t break the spell of the story?
