I hit a roadblock in my uphill battle to just finish what I damn started in November with my novel, trying to turn a scattered, fragmented mess of words into something I can actually stand by. Separating the wheat from the chaff, I have found that a lot of those 50,000 words were chaff, and that even worse, I can't even fit a great deal of the wheat into the new version of my book. Cleaning up this thing is hard because while I love chopping off the unusable parts, I have trouble not falling in love with the parts I can no longer use, but meant a great deal to me when I wrote them.
The roadblock came about as a result of trying to write a sex scene. I had no trouble with any of the other ones I had already written because unlike those ones, this one has not happened to me in real life. I have written about all of the sex I have had so far in this thing, and the end result is I don't know how to create something new. I can take my life experiences and rework them into fiction, share every humiliating moment that actually happened, and do it with total abandon. What I can't do is write a character I don't already know and then have my main character have sex with them without criticizing my every creative impulse. If I make the character too good-looking, I criticize myself for thinking the fictionalized version of me would deserve someone that good-looking. If I make him too funny, or tall, or nice, or anything else, this little voice in my head tells me what I assume anyone who reads it would think, that I think I deserve that. I trust myself when I write about things that actually happened because I can point to the past and say, "See? That's how it really went!", but when it comes to inventing something, I am judgmental to a point that might be handicapping me.
Fiction is tricky, especially when it's the mundane kind that is just about dating and being a girl and stuff. I don't imagine writing fantasy, or mystery or sci-fi is any simpler, but it must free you up a little to just let your imagination guide you in a specific genre like that. My "fiction" is so reflective of my own life, it barely passes as fiction, and that comes with its own set of complications. As much as this piece of writing is fiction, and my fictional avatar is not me, I pass the same judgments on her about what she deserves, and I end up punishing her because I have come to the conclusion that I deserve nothing. If I deserve nothing, that means she deserves nothing. I have little sympathy for her because I feel that I have earned every bit of mistreatment I have been handed, and any time I try to just give her a fucking break, I have to ruin it for her and make it weird.
I kind of chickened out, and barely wrote any sex. I talked to my sister about it a few days after, and she and I agreed that when you have sex, you don't remember every single thing, and every thing going into a thing, you remember snippets. I don't want to get too fruity with my explanation, but I don't think in terms of what was happening in my vagina all the times I had sex, I think in terms of what was happening in my head. I've given myself permission to not muddy up my book with, "and then this happened... and then THIS happened."
I've decided t's okay for me to not be gross about it, that I don't have to come up with twenty different words for penis, because I'm not writing Twilight fanfic here. I get flinty whenever I bring up what I am writing in conversation, especially with other women, because they always giggle and ask, "Is it like Fifty Shades Of Gray?"
No, you idiots, it isn't like that awful book. My character never says, "Argh!" and her boyfriends aren't control freaks who nag her about eating and make her sign a contract that stipulates getting her vagina waxed. I try to be supportive of all writers, but Jesus Henry Christ that fucking book is doing something to the book-reading public. The lines between erotica and literature have blurred, and while that can be good because sex doesn't have to be brown paper bag/bottom drawer any longer, it can also be bad. It seems that if I want people to ever buy what I create, I either have to force more grossness into my book or just make it sterile; dirty it up or clean it up, respectively. For a book to be marketable, it seems, there has to be a hook, and I don't know if I will ever be able to get published because I don't have that hook. I'm not trying to get anybody hard with my writing, and I doubt anybody would get hard when reading it, not even accidentally. Sex can be useful in writing, especially when it's not about that. It can be informative and funny and sad. I only write it into my fiction, and into this blog, because of all of those uses, not the other ones. I made it weird, but that's kind of okay because it usually does get weird, even when I'm not the one making it weird.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Nope, No, Not Right Now
I spent Patriot's Day at work, despite the fact that the office was technically closed, getting my boss ready for trial the following day and dealing with the craziness generally associated with that. I was too busy to check news websites or generally be aware at all of what was happening outside of my cubicle. When I heard the news about the bombing in Boston, it was in passing, and though I wanted to read about it and find out what the F happened, I still had hours of work to do and knew it would take twice as long if I stopped to check Gawker for an update. It was as if my mind said, "Nope, no, not right now, not while you have 300 more pages of exhibits to Bate stamp."
After getting out of work, I had a dinner to go to, and by the time I got home it felt too late in the day for me to get into what actually happened, how many people were affected, and all the things I wasn't doing to help. I was right to wait. If I had gotten into it late Monday night, I might not have ever fallen asleep. I didn't watch the raw footage until Tuesday morning, look at the photos of the blast victims being wheeled away on stretchers, see how much devastation had come to my state's capitol while I was doing stuff that seemed less and less like it actually mattered. Nearly the same thing happened when 9/11 happened. I was in Nova Scotia at the time, living in a house with no television, so I was insulated from how huge that event was. Everything I saw was after the fact, over a month later, and by then, it was old news. I was protected by distance, far from the panic that overtook the entire nation at that moment in time.
I hate how a tragedy like this makes me feel. It's not enough to acknowledge how unthinkable this madness is, I have to think of it in terms of how it is affecting me. Me, who had no loved ones anywhere near the blast site and has little affiliation with Boston as a city. I hate that I turn it around and use a dark mirror like this to reflect how small my problems are, how fortunate I am to have two legs and arms and a beating heart. It takes three deaths and upwards of one-hundred injuries for me to see how lucky I am, that I deserve no pity, and that there are people so much worse off. It is pathetic that things only come into perspective for me when something as tragic as this happens.
Despite all the perspective or focus or whatever bullshit name I can ascribe to it, I have been anxious this week about my parents moving back to the Berkshires. When I say that, I don't mean that I am anxious because I don't want them living near me, I'm just not sure yet how I feel about it. They have been living so far away for eleven years, basically the whole time I have been becoming a tolerable person, and now they are back, and I know it's going to take me a while to be a normal-ass person around them. I have gotten used to seeing them only twice a year, and being my happiest, wackiest, funniest self when they are around, trying not to burden them, being me but with the volume turned up. It's a happy thing, a good thing, but of course it's manifesting itself as slight mania. I now have the freedom to disagree with them, fight with them, have a real relationship with them that is not just a bunch of stops along the way. I stopped over to see them the day they got in, and I had to keep reminding myself that they are here for good, that I don't need to cram in all the time with them that I possibly can before I don't see them for another six-to-twelve months.
The distraction of anticipating their arrival and the panic over how and why and who set off the bombs at the marathon has kept me from thinking about one more thing that would probably bother me more if I had time to think about it. This week, Friday, in fact, would be my fifth wedding anniversary. Five years ago, I was looking at the man I was about to marry, thinking I was going to love him forever, no matter what. That hasn't changed, really. I will still love Gino forever, just not the way I planned. We're still present in each other's lives, still mean something to each other, but there is a bitter edge to our friendship that might never go away. Thinking about how giddy and unbelievably happy I was the day I got married, I can't help now thinking about how broken I was when he told me he wanted a divorce, and I wonder if I ever will be that hopeful again. I think I will, but who knows? These days, yon can't predict anything and at the same time have to prepare for anything. Nothing is certain, except for the certainty that things like this, life changes that come from out of nowhere, are not insurmountable. Nothing is, really. If I haven't learned that by now, I might not ever learn it. Right now, my heart is not breaking for myself and the fact that my wedding anniversary is just another day, it is breaking for everyone affected by the marathon bombing and what they will have to deal with for the rest of their lives.
After getting out of work, I had a dinner to go to, and by the time I got home it felt too late in the day for me to get into what actually happened, how many people were affected, and all the things I wasn't doing to help. I was right to wait. If I had gotten into it late Monday night, I might not have ever fallen asleep. I didn't watch the raw footage until Tuesday morning, look at the photos of the blast victims being wheeled away on stretchers, see how much devastation had come to my state's capitol while I was doing stuff that seemed less and less like it actually mattered. Nearly the same thing happened when 9/11 happened. I was in Nova Scotia at the time, living in a house with no television, so I was insulated from how huge that event was. Everything I saw was after the fact, over a month later, and by then, it was old news. I was protected by distance, far from the panic that overtook the entire nation at that moment in time.
I hate how a tragedy like this makes me feel. It's not enough to acknowledge how unthinkable this madness is, I have to think of it in terms of how it is affecting me. Me, who had no loved ones anywhere near the blast site and has little affiliation with Boston as a city. I hate that I turn it around and use a dark mirror like this to reflect how small my problems are, how fortunate I am to have two legs and arms and a beating heart. It takes three deaths and upwards of one-hundred injuries for me to see how lucky I am, that I deserve no pity, and that there are people so much worse off. It is pathetic that things only come into perspective for me when something as tragic as this happens.
Despite all the perspective or focus or whatever bullshit name I can ascribe to it, I have been anxious this week about my parents moving back to the Berkshires. When I say that, I don't mean that I am anxious because I don't want them living near me, I'm just not sure yet how I feel about it. They have been living so far away for eleven years, basically the whole time I have been becoming a tolerable person, and now they are back, and I know it's going to take me a while to be a normal-ass person around them. I have gotten used to seeing them only twice a year, and being my happiest, wackiest, funniest self when they are around, trying not to burden them, being me but with the volume turned up. It's a happy thing, a good thing, but of course it's manifesting itself as slight mania. I now have the freedom to disagree with them, fight with them, have a real relationship with them that is not just a bunch of stops along the way. I stopped over to see them the day they got in, and I had to keep reminding myself that they are here for good, that I don't need to cram in all the time with them that I possibly can before I don't see them for another six-to-twelve months.
The distraction of anticipating their arrival and the panic over how and why and who set off the bombs at the marathon has kept me from thinking about one more thing that would probably bother me more if I had time to think about it. This week, Friday, in fact, would be my fifth wedding anniversary. Five years ago, I was looking at the man I was about to marry, thinking I was going to love him forever, no matter what. That hasn't changed, really. I will still love Gino forever, just not the way I planned. We're still present in each other's lives, still mean something to each other, but there is a bitter edge to our friendship that might never go away. Thinking about how giddy and unbelievably happy I was the day I got married, I can't help now thinking about how broken I was when he told me he wanted a divorce, and I wonder if I ever will be that hopeful again. I think I will, but who knows? These days, yon can't predict anything and at the same time have to prepare for anything. Nothing is certain, except for the certainty that things like this, life changes that come from out of nowhere, are not insurmountable. Nothing is, really. If I haven't learned that by now, I might not ever learn it. Right now, my heart is not breaking for myself and the fact that my wedding anniversary is just another day, it is breaking for everyone affected by the marathon bombing and what they will have to deal with for the rest of their lives.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
My Stupid Hurt Feelings
I don't know what is wrong with me today, and really, every day since my birthday, but I reached some kind of tipping point in terms of what I am able to suppress, roughly at 10 am. It struck me, in the way I all of a sudden notice something that I have been trying to ignore, that my ex never wished me happy birthday, and that really started to piss me off. It set off my Anger Avatar, which just happens to look and sound exactly like Krazee-Eyez Killa from my favorite episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Outwardly, I looked pretty placid, but inside, my inner monologue was just a constant scroll of, "Muthafucka, whatthefuck?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC8V7uLoVko
I sent Gino a text message wishing him a happy birthday this year, and I invited him to my party, which he did not attend. I assumed he was too busy watching the Bruins-Canucks game, which was not surprising, but I was hoping I would see him since I hardly ever run into him anymore. I did everything a friend does for another friend. I got into an argument with my father wherein I defended Gino. I told my father that he was wrong to pass judgement on someone he, truly, barely knows, and how I know he doesn't understand, but that Gino was my best friend for seven years and how I don't want to just let go of that because everyone thinks I should. I know it's just my hurt pride taking over, but god, it's really embarrassing to tell a 68-year-old man, "You're wrong! We can still be best friends! Everything is FINE!", and then find out a few days later that he was right, that Gino and I can't be as close as we used to be. My father is always right, and it still annoys me. My dad makes up for it, though, by never pointing out that he is always right, and then doing something adorable, like leaving a Facebook post on my timeline that begins, "Hey, girlfriend-" and then sending me tulips at work for my birthday.
I sent Gino a text, not so much angry as it was passive-aggressive, and he responded with a confused one, a message that basically amounted to, "What?"
Come to find out, he was distracted this week. A friend of his passed away, a friend his age, from cancer, and he didn't think to congratulate me on, oh, being born. Surprise, everyone, I'm a jerk.
I did my best to lower myself to the floor, tell him I'm here for him, and if he needs anything, please tell me. I called him out for being a shitty friend and acted, in turn, like an even shittier one. I overreacted, as I tend to do, and now I'm just trying to get him to forget that I did that. It isn't easy. Nothing about this is easy. Getting older and finding that I still act like a child is not easy. Hoping for some kind of acknowledgement from the person I used to expect it from, and not getting it, is not easy. Admitting that my father still knows best is not easy. I'm pretty good, though, with not easy. At least, I think I am. I'll keep finding out if that's true.
I sent Gino a text message wishing him a happy birthday this year, and I invited him to my party, which he did not attend. I assumed he was too busy watching the Bruins-Canucks game, which was not surprising, but I was hoping I would see him since I hardly ever run into him anymore. I did everything a friend does for another friend. I got into an argument with my father wherein I defended Gino. I told my father that he was wrong to pass judgement on someone he, truly, barely knows, and how I know he doesn't understand, but that Gino was my best friend for seven years and how I don't want to just let go of that because everyone thinks I should. I know it's just my hurt pride taking over, but god, it's really embarrassing to tell a 68-year-old man, "You're wrong! We can still be best friends! Everything is FINE!", and then find out a few days later that he was right, that Gino and I can't be as close as we used to be. My father is always right, and it still annoys me. My dad makes up for it, though, by never pointing out that he is always right, and then doing something adorable, like leaving a Facebook post on my timeline that begins, "Hey, girlfriend-" and then sending me tulips at work for my birthday.
I sent Gino a text, not so much angry as it was passive-aggressive, and he responded with a confused one, a message that basically amounted to, "What?"
Come to find out, he was distracted this week. A friend of his passed away, a friend his age, from cancer, and he didn't think to congratulate me on, oh, being born. Surprise, everyone, I'm a jerk.
I did my best to lower myself to the floor, tell him I'm here for him, and if he needs anything, please tell me. I called him out for being a shitty friend and acted, in turn, like an even shittier one. I overreacted, as I tend to do, and now I'm just trying to get him to forget that I did that. It isn't easy. Nothing about this is easy. Getting older and finding that I still act like a child is not easy. Hoping for some kind of acknowledgement from the person I used to expect it from, and not getting it, is not easy. Admitting that my father still knows best is not easy. I'm pretty good, though, with not easy. At least, I think I am. I'll keep finding out if that's true.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Thirty For Thirty
Today is my thirtieth birthday. I keep expecting to feel some way about it, but I kind of don't, really. The more I think about it, I'm just one day older, and it's thirty, for the love of god, not ninety.
I think one of the reasons I don't really care about getting older is that I lucked out with genetics. I look younger than I really am, which won't last, but most of that is because I am the height of an average fifth-grader, which will last. I've watched most of my friends cross over into their thirties this year and the issue that keeps coming up with those of them who have a hard time with it is not being where they "expected to be" at their current age. Dudes, I wanted to say, no one ends up where they want to be at thirty except maybe Alexander the Great. Or Mark Zuckerberg. But he's still not there yet. There is time for him to fail.
When I turned twenty, I was in a very different place. I was living with my sister, I was unemployed, and I hadn't even had sex yet. I hadn't even met Najwa, who is now my closest, dearest friend, and hadn't yet reconnected with Tony, who is my other best friend. Still, I'm pretty much the same person I was. I'm single, just like I was ten years ago and I like to dance inappropriately, even more so than I did ten years ago. The only big changes are that I've stopped grooming my eyebrows so obsessively and I've stopped wishing my ass was smaller. I want my old eyebrows back, and I want an ass you could balance three or four cans of Coke on.
I am definitely not where I thought I would be at thirty. I thought I would still be married and I thought I would have at least one child by now. But, that wasn't the plan for me, and it's stupid for me to even make plans. When I make plans, the world laughs, and I have to learn to improvise. This whole past year of my life has been about improvising, because I have no fucking idea what I'm doing, and that's not just when I am at work. I've gotten comfortable with not knowing what I am doing, even when I'm just walking down the street or having a conversation. I'm pretty hopeless, but maybe I'll learn to not be so hopeless in my thirties.
I am lucky to have a best friend like Najwa, who threw me my very own dance party. In the months leading up to when I would have to either plan some way to celebrate or just decide not to do anything, I kept hearing that voice in my head, which happens to sound just like Regina George, saying, "Stop trying to make your birthday happen. It's never going to happen."
Every time I have tried to put together something for my own birthday, I have failed. I am not including my last birthday, which was, of course, hosted by Najwa and Gabriel, in that assessment, but I have bad associations with it now. From that party is the last photograph that will ever be taken of Gino and I as a couple, and Jesus, does he look unhappy in it. It was a fun party, but now it's got this pall over it, and I am still having trouble remembering it as fun.
I might just have bad luck with parties that I am in any way associated with in any other capacity than as an attendee. Any time I try to put together any party, it has been an epic let-down. There must be something about me that just makes some people say, "Uhh, no thanks?"
I still feel guilty about Gino's thirtieth birthday, two years ago, when I tried to organize a surprise party for him and only a handful of people showed up. Planning an event doesn't always work the way you want it to. In your head, you make the list, the people who say they want to come all show up and you have cake and everyone has a nice time. In reality, people say they will be there, but then at the last minute they forget or they find something better to do or they just don't feel like it and they assume they are the only person on the list who did so.
My birthday party this year was not a failure, even though I was competing with a Bruins-Canucks game and two other parties, so some people were absent. I saw the people I wanted to see and I got to dance and I ate too many cupcakes for my own good. And today, I don't have any papers to file or laundry to do or knitting classes to teach, and I'm sitting on my bed drinking water out of a martini glass because why not? It's my birthday, and I can do what I want.
I think one of the reasons I don't really care about getting older is that I lucked out with genetics. I look younger than I really am, which won't last, but most of that is because I am the height of an average fifth-grader, which will last. I've watched most of my friends cross over into their thirties this year and the issue that keeps coming up with those of them who have a hard time with it is not being where they "expected to be" at their current age. Dudes, I wanted to say, no one ends up where they want to be at thirty except maybe Alexander the Great. Or Mark Zuckerberg. But he's still not there yet. There is time for him to fail.
When I turned twenty, I was in a very different place. I was living with my sister, I was unemployed, and I hadn't even had sex yet. I hadn't even met Najwa, who is now my closest, dearest friend, and hadn't yet reconnected with Tony, who is my other best friend. Still, I'm pretty much the same person I was. I'm single, just like I was ten years ago and I like to dance inappropriately, even more so than I did ten years ago. The only big changes are that I've stopped grooming my eyebrows so obsessively and I've stopped wishing my ass was smaller. I want my old eyebrows back, and I want an ass you could balance three or four cans of Coke on.
I am definitely not where I thought I would be at thirty. I thought I would still be married and I thought I would have at least one child by now. But, that wasn't the plan for me, and it's stupid for me to even make plans. When I make plans, the world laughs, and I have to learn to improvise. This whole past year of my life has been about improvising, because I have no fucking idea what I'm doing, and that's not just when I am at work. I've gotten comfortable with not knowing what I am doing, even when I'm just walking down the street or having a conversation. I'm pretty hopeless, but maybe I'll learn to not be so hopeless in my thirties.
I am lucky to have a best friend like Najwa, who threw me my very own dance party. In the months leading up to when I would have to either plan some way to celebrate or just decide not to do anything, I kept hearing that voice in my head, which happens to sound just like Regina George, saying, "Stop trying to make your birthday happen. It's never going to happen."
Every time I have tried to put together something for my own birthday, I have failed. I am not including my last birthday, which was, of course, hosted by Najwa and Gabriel, in that assessment, but I have bad associations with it now. From that party is the last photograph that will ever be taken of Gino and I as a couple, and Jesus, does he look unhappy in it. It was a fun party, but now it's got this pall over it, and I am still having trouble remembering it as fun.
I might just have bad luck with parties that I am in any way associated with in any other capacity than as an attendee. Any time I try to put together any party, it has been an epic let-down. There must be something about me that just makes some people say, "Uhh, no thanks?"
I still feel guilty about Gino's thirtieth birthday, two years ago, when I tried to organize a surprise party for him and only a handful of people showed up. Planning an event doesn't always work the way you want it to. In your head, you make the list, the people who say they want to come all show up and you have cake and everyone has a nice time. In reality, people say they will be there, but then at the last minute they forget or they find something better to do or they just don't feel like it and they assume they are the only person on the list who did so.
My birthday party this year was not a failure, even though I was competing with a Bruins-Canucks game and two other parties, so some people were absent. I saw the people I wanted to see and I got to dance and I ate too many cupcakes for my own good. And today, I don't have any papers to file or laundry to do or knitting classes to teach, and I'm sitting on my bed drinking water out of a martini glass because why not? It's my birthday, and I can do what I want.
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