February 21-May 9: Rough draft complete
And now it's time to—um. well, hmmm!!!
When Addie and I had coffee with Maurice Ruffin in New Orleans, I listened for a stretch as the two of them traded words of wisdom, frustration, and excitement about the memoir form. Ah, this is exactly the sort of conversation I’ve always wanted to be next to two awesome writers while they have, I thought, blissed out beyond all description. Then Maurice turned to me and asked, “So when’s your tell-all coming out?”
I think I said, “We’ll see,” but I was definitely also thinking “nobody wants that,” which having any number of subscribers to this thing at all (thank you!) belies, but you have no idea how boring I grew up thinking I was. It’s hard to really get across the depth to which I truly believed that I would disappear — literally disappear — without the worthy people, which is to say everyone else, confirming that I was useful to them in some way. This wacked-out conclusion was largely drawn from a lifetime formed by the actually-brainwashed notion that my body isn’t real.
More on that someday, but for right now, I would like to announce that the rough draft of Why Am I Telling You All This? is officially complete. It’s not two books, it’s two parts, which, at the moment, are Depths (part 1) and Heights (part 2). One of the many ways you can scratch your unsuspecting fingertips on the roughness of this manuscript is by how readily the metaphors bleed into one another. Wait, why is this scene under Depths? And why is this one in Heights? Isn’t this…and isn’t that…?
I’m hoping that what I have here is a thought-provoking metatation on gendered conditioning and other issues and not a “IF I DON’T HAVE SOMETHING TO SHOW FOR ALL THE SHIT THAT WENT DOWN BACK THERE I WILL GET VIOLENT” which, I mean, if my whole thing is being honest, that’s true too. When I find myself in the grips of doubt, though, worries that it might be self-indulgent etc., I remember why I wrote this in the first place. It’s because the close friends and even new but trusted acquantainces I talked to about inciting events kept getting caught up in the dialogue. (I tend to give my time to people who have really great lines.) And various supportive listeners from differing walks of life told me, “This would make a really good book.”
So I ran it by a couple of author friends. Would it? The book would go like this.
And they said yes, the collective voice was advising me wisely. This indeed would be a wortwhile read.
So, it’s time to test that theory. I’ve been lightly editing as I go but I’ve also been riding the unparalleled high of “I can write whatever the fuck I want, it’s a draft, and I’m also writing my own feeeeeelings and what I remember which means I don’t have to stop and think about what kind of novel this would make” even though Peter Selgin told me that every memoir is a novel. (I saw this truth as soon as he said it, but I was skeptical when he told me that every novel is a memoir. Then he asked me some questions about metaphor for my novel-in-progress and wouldn’t you know it, yes it is, even though it’s about bank robbers in 1974.)
One plot point I was not expecting is Fucking Dramatic Illness. Some weird symbolic shit happened during the week that I had COVID, and I thought, “Do I actually include this?” I didn’t ask the friend I told about this weird series of things, I just said, “You will not believe what happened to me just now,” and he said, “You should put that in the book.” Which I already had, I just hadn’t been sure if I should.
I’m in the process of learning that you can get almost anyone to care about almost anything if you grab them early and hard enough that they decide to stay with you. Here’s another thing I’ve learned: everyone is all ears for the romantic lives of people they barely know. They just are. I am too. I am not sure why this is. It’s cross-cultural, too, less we forget this unforgettable moment I had at a shop in Malaysia:
I was walking around, and Ian was looking at a specific rack of clothes, far enough away from me that he couldn’t hear the woman working ask me, in a conspiratorial whisper, “That your husband?”
“Yes,” I said (unmarried couples were expressly forbidden to stay in the first hotel Ian and I stayed at in Malacca, so we were man and wife for the whole of that trip.)
She looked at me with a knowing half-smile, and her voice took on a deep smokiness. “Good husband, eh?” she said.
Ian’s high cheekbones and dark curls and 6’0 height go over well most everywhere, but in Malaysia he was basically a celebrity. Actually, there’s a definite respect for redheads in Southeast Asia, so in a lot of respects, so was I.
And I’m thinking about that because most of Milledgeville, GA’s leases don’t start til August 1st! annnnnd I don’t have to be in town for my Writing Center job’s orientation until the middle of the month.
“So why don’t we get out of the country?” Ian exclaimed last night. “We can just disappear for the summer.”
I initially felt overwhelmed by the thought, but now I’m getting excited. Yeah, let’s. I have no idea where we’re going, but we’ll figure it out.
We’ll figure everything out. So will you.
