You Are Not Like Other People

The garbage disposal was broken. The maintenance guy and I were sharing stories of growing up without garbage disposals. As a kid I carried my plate outside, walked to the side of the house, and scraped whatever was on my plate into the cow pasture. Mr. Maintenance asked me where I grew up. Florida. And he asked what my parents did.

“My parents divorced when I was little,” I said. “I was raised by my dad–a single dad in the 70s.”

Mr. Maintenance looks thoughtful. “I can see that,” he said. “That really makes sense to me because you carry yourself differently than most people.”

I laughed. Other people have asked me what country I was from, and when I’ve said I’m American, they’ve acted surprised. “You seem like you’re from somewhere else.”

A few times I’ve even had people say, “Your English is really good!”

“Well, it should be. I’m American.”

“Really?”

Once when I worked at Barnes & Noble a customer–who turned out to be French–said, “You don’t seem American to me.”

I’ve tried to figure out why some people say these things to me. Might be my name, which isn’t a typical American name. (Sometimes when people hear my first name, they say, “Funny. You don’t look Mexican.” Which proves to me they don’t know that many Mexicans, but still, I’m not Mexican.) Might be my height, but Americans aren’t known for being short, so that doesn’t seem to be it.

Many times in life I’ve felt I was missing some essential aspect of girlness. Not that I could tell you what that is. But I wasn’t one of those girls who got along better with guys either. I wasn’t a tomboy. I didn’t have mostly guy friends.

So when the maintenance guy said I carried myself differently, I wondered what that meant. When he and I had chatted other times–usually when I was walking the dogs–what was different? Maybe it’s that we are both Doctor Who fans. Or maybe it’s that I always stop to chat with the maintenance guys.

I’m probably never going to know.

But I wonder too, of course, when people read my work, what they will think about me. What assumptions will people make?

Wouldn’t someone like VS Naipul guess I was a woman writer? When you read a story without knowing the author’s name, what do you think you can guess about them? Gender? Politics? Ethnicity? Religion? The parent they were raised by?

Have you ever been startled to learn who a particular writer was? Really? A woman wrote this?

It’s not what you think.

How often do you look back on a past moment in your life and wonder if you missed what really happened?

I am very good at this.

thankfully there aren't that many pictures of me in high school

The other day I was reading about some hubbub going on over a storyline on a television series. I don’t watch the series but the issue of writer responsibility caught my attention. In the show a teenage girl has an affair with her teacher. And instead of the usual this-is-very-bad point-of-view, the show seems to have a let’s-hope-they-get-away-with-it point-of-view.

This reminded me of a chemistry teacher in my high school.

I was terrible at chemistry. Half the time I couldn’t even tell if a questions needed a sentence or a formula for an answer.

My chemistry teacher suggested that if I wanted extra help and to take the most recent test over again, I could come to school on the upcoming student holiday—-the teacher work day—-and I could take as much time as I needed to redo the exam.

This wasn’t a class-wide announcement. He stopped me on my way out of class to suggest this. I assumed he stopped other failing students too, but I didn’t ask. I did show up. I was the only student there. But how many students want to go to school on their day off?

I took the test. He and I chatted. He was one of the younger teachers and it was his first year at our high school. Lots of girls thought he was reasonably cute. He was tall and funny.

I never thought teachers were cute. They were teachers. Girls who had crushes on teachers were inexplicable to me.

So as I was gathering my things, my chemistry teacher said that a few months before he’d found a bracelet in the room. No one had ever claimed it, and since it had been such a long time since he’d found it and he wanted to clear out his desk, perhaps I would like it.

Several things occurred to me in something of a muddled order. Things in lost-and-found aren’t supposed to be given up on until the end of the year. Teachers aren’t supposed to give students presents. It wasn’t really a present. It wasn’t like he bought it. Wow, my teacher trusts me enough to give me a present and not get him into trouble. Hmm, maybe I’m not supposed to take it. Well, I can’t say no to a teacher. I’m overthinking. It is just a lost bracelet after all.

I took the bracelet—-a thin gold chain with fake pearls.

I did feel slightly strange standing there with the bracelet in my hand, but I was also flattered. He was a popular teacher after all. But it seemed weird to stay any longer, so I thanked him for the bracelet and left.

Later when I wore the bracelet, he didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t exactly think it was wrong to have it, but at the same time I told only one friend that the teacher had given it to me. She was impressed. I told her it was only a forgotten bracelet about to be thrown away. Still, part of me wanted to hold my wrist up to others and say, “Mr. So-and-so gave me this.” But I didn’t.

I did get a much better score on my retaken exam. My grade went up to a B!

A few weeks passed and my teacher announced to the class that he was leaving. He’d gotten another job—-a better paying job and he needed to money. He wasn’t even able to stay until the end of the school year.

He stopped me after class to tell me that he thought the company he’d be working for was down the street from my house. Honestly, all these years later I can’t remember how he knew where I lived. I may have told him the day I came in to retake the test because I lived out of town away from everything. But there was indeed that one small company at the end of the road. He told me I could come by and see him there at work.

I thought about it. I passed by that company building a lot. It was in walking distance of my house after all. But I also thought, surely a grown man doesn’t really want to see some silly sixteen-year-old girl show up at his office. I never went.

I still think of him when I drive by that building.

Part of me wants to believe he was just a friendly, helpful teacher. My dramatic writer mind puts a different spin on it. Ah, that crazy writer mind.

My point isn’t whether or not my chemistry teacher was innocent and foolish in his thoughtfulness. My point is—-I don’t know. I rarely trust myself to know, for sure, what someone else is really up to. One little voice says, things are not what you think. Another little voice says, you’re over-thinking again, you just want there to be a story here. Stop imagining things.

But I’m always imagining things.

Anyway. When people tell me they like something I’ve written, at first I believe them. Then I don’t. Then I do. Then I can’t decide.

An agent has asked to see more pages of one manuscript. Said agent may or may not feel enthusiastic about me. I can’t tell. So far I could believe this agent has a particular type of personality and is very busy and I shouldn’t worry too much. Or I could believe that this agent is just being nice, making a little extra effort to be sure, and isn’t really that interested. That when it comes down to it, said agent will look at my work, pause, and say no.

And if said agent says no, I’ll spend a lot of time trying to figure out what I did wrong. I won’t be able to decide if it was me (my novel isn’t that good) or the agent (my novel just isn’t that individual’s thing).

I’m sure to keep the rejection letter though. After all, I’ve still got that bracelet.

Faking

I got through high school and college without a boyfriend. I had a few dates, but no one you could call a boyfriend. (By boyfriend I mean someone who would actually refer to me as his girlfriend.)

those college days

So after dating (and I use the term loosely) guys who seemed incapable of anything resembling a actual relationship, I was willing to be someone else.

A friend set me up on a blind date–the reason she decided he and I would make a good pair was that he was taller than me, the general belief being that no relationship begins when the woman is taller than the man. Fine. All my blind dates had been based on height.

We went on a double date to see a play, and while sparks didn’t fly, when he called me to ask me out again, I said yes.

The thing about seeing a play is that you don’t talk much. And when you’re on a double date, you can let the other established couple do all the talking. You can end the evening not revealing much about yourself at all.

He showed up for our second date wearing running shoes, jeans, silver belt buckle, and a plaid short-sleeve shirt. I wore a copper-colered silk blouse, dressy black shorts (pleated and almost to the knee), black stockings, and black flats. And he said, “It’s too bad that’s not a skirt.”

My roommate said to him, “The thing you want to say is, ‘You look great.’”

He looked back at me. “You do. You do look great.”

This, I thought, was going to be a wasted evening.

But okay. Open mind! Positive thinking!

Then I had to climb up the steps of his oversized pickup truck with gun rack.

Open mind! Ooo! Look at that red flag! Isn’t it pretty?

When we pulled into the Denny’s parking lot, my mind made a foolish decision. I decided to barely speak to him and to tell him next to nothing myself. I decided not to be me. I would be the way I thought a desirable girl was supposed to be.

I’d be rubbish at it, of course, and he’d never want to see me again.

All through dinner he talked. I’d ordered a salad, which I’d never done before on dates because salads are too girly and I like to eat. I nodded, and said things like, “Really?” and “Hmmm.” and “Oh, interesting.”

He said, “So, you’re working on some kind of paper thing?”

“Yeah. My Master’s thesis–but you know, I like have to do it.”

He changed the subject. “You’re thinking of joining, what is it, the Peace Corps or something?”

I shrugged. “I’ve filled out the paperwork and had my interview.”

“But you might not go, right?”

I shrugged and changed the subject.

At the end of the evening, I let him come upstairs. My roommate wasn’t home. When he said I was amazing, I assumed this was just talk to let him stay until morning. He told me I was the most interesting girl he’d ever met. “Maybe so,” I said, ” But you’re still going to have to leave soon.”

He said he thought I was “the one.”

He said a few more ridiculous things. They were things no one else had ever said to me, the sorts of things a lovestruck boyfriend ought to say. But he wasn’t my boyfriend and after a while I made him leave.

And that, I thought, was that. I’d talked about almost nothing and let him think the night would end differently than it did. And he lived over an hour away. Surely he wouldn’t call back.

Well, he called. A lot. He sent flowers. He sent a teddybear. He sent a poem. He told my friend that he knew I was the right woman for him.

When my friend asked what I had done to the poor guy, all I could say was, “I wasn’t even me!”

I did feel bad I’d led him on, but I hadn’t thought it would actually work.

I was angry though that apparently the only way I could get a guy to pursue me was to lie. From the moment I’d ordered that salad to the moment I kissed him goodnight at the door, I had been faking who I was. The fake me was called amazing.

The real me…not so much.

All these years later I remember this and wonder about my writing. All the rejections and no agent calling me, I wonder–what about my writing should I change? What would make my work desirable? Maybe I should write about completely different things in completely different ways.

I worry that I would have not to be me.

And then! And then I would have an agent.

But it might be an agent who likes teddybears holding heart-shaped balloons.

Slippery Little Bastards

I really good at not writing sex scenes.

I was, after all, raised not talking about lots of things. In fact, by my teenage years, I was an expert at figuring out what my family was not talking about.

The more I didn’t talk about the things, the happier everyone was with me. There have been times in my life where attempting to talk about certain things has rendered me unable to speak at all. And relationships ended badly—-or strangely—-because I would look at them silently. Well, look away from them silently.

Girls are supposed to love talking to their boyfriends about the status of their relationship, right?

If I felt that a relationship needed discussing, I just stopped talking to him all together.

But okay. I’m a writer.

I wrote a fair number of letters. It is my fervent wish that these letters have since been thrown away by the recipients.

So I don’t write letters anymore. I write stories. And in stories certain things must be written! Deep emotions and thoughts and reactions must be expressed!

Such emotions, thoughts, and reactions can be expressed in small gestures—-like handing someone a cup of tea. Or, you know, in sex scenes.

The last few days I’ve been working on a difficult short story. I hate admitting to that because if you read the story you might be mystified as to why I think it is difficult, but my way of looking at things has mystified a lot of people. One more won’t hurt.

But why is the story difficult?

The main character is cheating on his girlfriend. And the story is about his emotions, thoughts, reactions to his infidelity. So, it kind of seems necessary that the infidelity is in the story. Am I wrong about that?

Am I finding the story difficult because I find writing such scenes difficult or because the story is rubbish? I could give up.

But I don’t want to.

Here is where I pull out my hair, hit my head on my desk, and shout, “Stupid words!” Sigh. No. Words aren’t stupid. They’re slippery little bastards.

Women Are Awesome. How about if We Stop Murdering Them?

I don’t remember when I started to care about women. (And I’m not going to say women’s issues because it’s not a self-contained status sort of thing. We’re half the population—-nothing special interest about that.)

In grad school I complained about a professor who told the class his favorite bar was called “The Silent Woman” and out front it had a picture of a woman with her head chopped off. I was told he had tenure and to go away.

In college I complained about a physics professor who said, “You ladies with your pressure cookers will understand this…” I was given extra points on my grade and told to go away.

In 10th grade a male classmate who sat next to me in the computer class told me repeatedly how he was going to find out where I lived, force his way in, and show me how he was “a real man.” I complained to the office. They told me to avoid him and try not to provoke him. (Even by sexist standards, I failed to understand this. I was a flat-chested, make-up-less bookworm. Short of not existing, I didn’t see how I wasn’t going to provoke him.)

In 7th grade I was sent to the office for slapping a boy. He had me pinned to a wall and was about to punch me. He wasn’t sent to the office. I didn’t get into trouble because, as the guidance counselor said, everyone knew I was “really a nice girl.”

In 5th grade I had a button on my person that read, “A woman’s place is every place.” I’d found the button in a bowling alley parking lot. I think it had already been run over. But I pinned it to my purse.

In 3rd grade I complained to teachers about a boy because, “He shouldn’t be talking to girls that way.” He had looked up my skirt and asked me to kiss him. I kicked him really hard. I was told to play nice. He got in no trouble at all.

And those are only the moments I’m going to share.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of about violence against women around the world and in school shootings. And today I read a piece riffing on the famous quote, “Well-behaved women seldom make history”.

And another piece about having The Right Reader.

It’s funny how everyone agrees with the saying, “You can’t please everyone,” until they’re the one not pleased.

Recently a male facebook friend made disparaging comments about the Duchess of Cornwall–Camilla Parker Bowles. His main complaint wasn’t that Charles had cheated on his wife. Sure that was bad. But the bigger sin was to cheat on his wife with someone ugly, and he hoped the if William ever cheated on Kate, it would be with someone pretty.

I am insecure about my looks, and I had to ask my friend if he really thought that women judge unattractive were underserving of loving relationships. Really? Honestly, while I think Charles is a cad, I reluctantly admire his ability to devote himself to a woman whose looks are constantly insulted in the media. Here is a man who ignored his pretty, young wife for an older, dowdy woman. How cliche breaking is that?

In most places a woman is only as valuable as she is pretty. And virtuous.

I think one reason I had trouble killing a character in a short story recently was because that character was a teenage girl. Before her death, she had not been virtuous… Gosh, now I’m rethinking the ending again. Don’t we have enough violence against women and girls? Then again, because it happens, shouldn’t we write about it?

So, I realize that my “right reader” would be someone who cares about women too.

Do you ever consider how your characters reflect the culture or an issue that matters to you? And I don’t mean being didactic about it. Just, do you consider such things?

My Narrow View Is Sharp Enough to Stab Him in the Eye

I spend a stupid amount of time worrying if my writing is good enough. But apparently what I needed was a good old-fashioned sexist attack to make me know my writing is a damn well just fine.

Have you seen the article about VS Naipaul?

NPR picked up the story from The Guardian. And Naipaul said that

He felt that women writers were “quite different”. He said: “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me.”

He also said women can’t write at his level because they have a “narrow view.”

My head spins.

And yes, I think labels such as “women’s fiction” encourage this kind of thinking.

But as women do make up half the population, I’m not sure how anything that concerns them is narrow.

Really, I’m too irritated to write. I’m glad, however, that I’ve now been relieved of the effort of ever reading one of Naipaul’s books.

What do you think when you read stuff like this?

Maybe Characters Do It

Many things may befall your characters, but one of those things, eventually, somewhere, in some story, unless you’re writing for children, surely—-implied or direct (have I drawn this out enough?), good or bad—-is going to be sex.

And I’m going to avoid the euphemism “love scene.” Plenty of characters aren’t in the story for love.

Now, I don’t know how many officers are in your troupe of morality police or how much control these officers have in your world, but unless you’ve found a way to get rid of them all together (locking them up in a dark corner of the mind), they’re watching over what you let your characters do.

And maybe they’re going to call your parents, your children, your friends, your partner, your students, your boss, somebody, anybody, who will look at you in shock or dismay or in some way you aren’t going to like.

(On the other hand, you may well like that sort of thing. If you’re the sort of person who doesn’t know what all the fuss is about then this post isn’t for you. Go take your giggling and smirks elsewhere and come back tomorrow. And I’d like to point out that being comfortable writing about sex and being good at writing about sex are not the same thing. Lots of folks can talk a good game, but…)

There is the less-is-more philosophy. Sometimes true and sometimes the cowards way out. All depends on the story. What does the reader need to know to understand what the characters are going through? How a character treats a lover or spouse and how the character allows themselves to be treated speaks volumes about them.

This may be an area where the common writer mantra, “Show; don’t tell” is most tested and abused.

Have you heard of The Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award? Now there’s a reward you don’t want to win! Read some nominated passages (at your own risk).

You can’t possibly write anything that bad!

All the same, I find myself thinking–how do these guys get published and I don’t? My morality police isn’t nearly as upset as my foolish Libra sensibility. It isn’t fair! I can write better than that!

And I’d like it noted that out of the nine nominations—-only one is a woman. You could either conclude that women write better sex scenes or that even this award panel takes male writers more seriously.

So. Do you write love scenes? Do you have a watchful morality police force?

*

Well, I don’t have any sex scenes in my short story for today…but such a thing is implied…

Maybe a Boy

I may bend those gender lines successfully. I may not.

Story number seven for Story-a-Day jumps from the mind of the girl to the mind of the guy. The stories before that I spent a lot of time in the male character’s head.

Writers should be able to put themselves into any character, right? Put yourself in the mind (heart, soul) of someone not like you. What is the biggest leap? Different social class, race, religion, political party, gender, sexual orientation…

You could write a story where everyone shares the same social class, race, religion, politics, and sexual orientation. And you could write a story where everyone is the same gender. But gender seems to be the first difference. I mean, the others you may not even think about or care to approach, but having characters of the opposite is hard to avoid. Even stories that have only men in them have characters who at least spend a certain amount of time thinking about wives or girlfriends or the lack thereof.

So. How do you feel writing a character of the opposite sex? How often do you try to get into the opposite mind?

Be Careful What You Wish For

When I was 8, I asked God to help my dad find a wife. Dad did find a wife. And she proceeded to turn our lives upside down with her madness and cruelty. When I was in high school, I tried to make this deal with God, “I don’t care if I can’t get a boyfriend, but could I please go to Prom?” I ended up with no boyfriend and no Prom and the boy who said he’d take me decided not to because–and this is a quote–”I wanted to take someone who will impress my friends.”

My list of such stories is long. And after a while I figured the lesson was something along the lines of–stop asking for stuff. (And that when I didn’t get what I wanted, I was lucky.)

So I try really hard not to pray or wish for an agent, publication, or to hobnob with Neil Gaiman and Audrey Niffenegger because if I had any of these wishes answered that way, well, it would end in tears.

I keep working. Writing. Biting my tongue when the urge to wish stirs in my heart. But I slip up. All these wishing scars and still I find myself in a bookstore wishing…

Is there such a thing as a wishaholic?

Anyway, an agent has asked to see more pages. Consider how much time it takes to read/edit pages, get an agent, get a publisher, get a publication date, get into stores, and I figure that I could conceivably have a novel reach bookstores in time to see the bookstores collapse. And don’t talk to me about ebooks.

There a hundred good things about ebooks. I know. But I didn’t grow up wishing–yes, I said it–for people to turn on a computer and see my book. The digital world is just so much ether, so much nothing to hold on to. Everything one stroke away from the delete key.

A book published only online would be fine. That would be okay. Sure. It is better than nothing. And having a romance strictly online is better than nothing. With a webcam it’s like you’re in the same room! Except, of course, it isn’t.

Then again, the things I’ve wished for don’t exactly work out anyway.

Do you believe in wishing?

Curtains and Mind Tricks

a view from my father's house

Memory is a trickster. Your memory is likely not what you think. Mine doesn’t half tell me what I want to know, and sometimes it holds my present mind hostage.

You may know that old post of mine about the man at my window. Like with many life stories I’ve posted here, I did not included every single detail. Some details dragged a story down and didn’t not add anything to the telling. Some details made no sense or would be so tedious to explain, I didn’t bother.

Now, as my obsessive mind goes back to that night (or very early morning), there is a detail that bothers me that I’d often left out of the retelling because it made no sense to me and I could not see how to include it in a concise and interesting fashion.

When I woke up that insanely early morning (between 4 and 5), what I really noticed first, what made me think something wasn’t right, were my curtains. My grandmother had made them, and she made them with these two-inch wide tiebacks made from the same cloth as the curtains. I think that is what you call them. Whatever they are called, I used them to keep the windows open. Since it was a Florida summer night and I wanted as much of the slight breeze as possible, I had used the long strips–each with a plastic circle at the end to hook to a nail in the wall–to keep the curtains open while I slept and also so that if the curtains should flutter in an ever hoped for breeze, they wouldn’t hit me in the face.

But when I woke up, the curtains were hanging straight. The tiebacks had been removed.

And as hard as I try to remember, I can’t remember if the tiebacks were still hanging from their nails, dropped onto the bed, or gone all together.

All I remember wondering was–why would a burglar untie the curtains and take the ties?

I did tell the police the man had undone the curtain, but they acted as if curtains were definitely unimportant. And I often left the curtains out of many retellings because they made no sense–a thief who bothers with curtains. Absurd.

But the curtains are bothering me. All these years, and you have to wonder why I need to think about those tiebacks at all. And perhaps I am imagining things. Maybe my writer’s imagination is making a fool of me.

Why should anything from so long ago disrupt our dreams now anyway?