I was the nice girl. I was obedient, orderly, predictable. Today, I am not nice and I thrive on confrontation. And although I have 370 more words, they are mine and I will not share them with anyone.
I was the waterboy. That’s not a euphemism or anything. My brother played third base with his gang. They seemed like adults, squatting and spitting in the dirt. Thwang went the baseball bat and the mess of them would dash across the grass, reaching for that spec to come down from the sky. After a big play they’d say: hey, can I get some water over here? Which was my cue to pull the red pale with the orange cooler full of icy water that Mom had filled up from the green hose behind the blue bathrooms at the other end of the field. I couldn’t play because they didn’t have any extra uniforms, which I know is a euphemism for: we don’t want you gumming up the game with your gimp leg and general squishiness. So I just sat and watched them run, waiting for my cue.
I’m not a waterboy anymore, though I do work for a drinking water municipality in the suburbs outside of Ontario. My brother died in a car accident back when they still had manual transmissions. My gimp leg was removed when I was in college, replaced with plastic and titanium. I hardly ever watch baseball, but when I do, and a big play causes the crowd to burst out of their seats, cheering, I tend to stay in my seat. I’m not a waterboy anymore, and frankly, there ain’t anyone worth cheering for anymore.
I was the girl who drew pictures of gorgeous creatures with massive boobs, big hair, high heels, and boa feathers draped around sparkle dresses. People worried I was drawing the prostitutes near our apartment on Hollywood and Vine, my teachers were alarmed. I was the girl who was sent to the school nurse for showing up to first grade with mascara on, the girl who had her eyes scrubbed with soap. But I was drawing (and drawn to) the drag queens that took over the talent show at the Rexall Drug Store around the corner, where we went every weekend for the free entertainment. Everyone called them transvestites but deep inside I knew they were queens. I thought I could be one, too. I wanted to be a queen instead of a pale, skinny, uncoordinated girl. I thought I’d grow up and suddenly have boobs, muscular legs, size eleven sling backs and curly blonde hair piled high on my head sprayed into place like a helmet. I grew up thinking everyone loved the drag queens, like me.
I used to sit next to a girl in Sunday School who drew those pictures! I'd try to copy her but didn't have the knack. That last like really hits. I still have those thoughts.
i wanted to be anything but who I was. I wanted straight hair with bangs. I wanted different parents. I wanted to dress like the other girls but couldn't figure out the key to all of it. I was such a mess.
Same here. I had straight hair and I wanted curly hair! I remember the horrible perm that my mom tried to give me. It just turned out frizzy like a poodle.
I had a friend who had Cher hair. Beautiful, thick, dark hair and big chocolate brown eyes. She liked John. (You'll have to see my post below). I always wanted boobs. Finally got them when I was pregnant. But then, they magically just...<poof> later on.
Godalmighty I knew even back then how hard it was to be a girl when all I had to do was show up with a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. It did get harder, but much later. I do remember sitting in church trying to draw pictures of guys with big pecks and bicepes and my mom telling me to put that away, right now.
Oh you lucky girl. I didn't see or/know about drag queens until I ran away and stole away to the iconic My-O-My Club on Lake Pontchartrain, LA. Even then, I'm not sure I understood what was going on.
I was a girl that was scared. I was a girl that was scared of my shadow. That was scared of my mother, my father, my sister, and my dog. I was a girl that was scared of all dogs. I was a girl that would jump at the sound of door slamming. I was a girl that was so scared, people would get close to my mother and say ‘Did anything happen to her… you know when she was little… has she ever said anything?’
Then I became a girl who started to take off her clothes. I became a girl that would take her clothes off for strangers behind cameras, strangers in rooms full of people. I was a girl that became beautiful. I became so beautiful, that people would walk past me staring. Girls would glare at their boyfriends as I walked past, because they couldn’t help but oggle at me. I was a girl who was so scared, that I never noticed.
Until, one day, when this women with curls piled on top of her head, asked me if I would want to be a model. I was still scared, so I didn’t usually talk to strangers, but this women had kind eyes and a demeanor where no was more scary than yes. She gave me her card and told me to meet her on Kings Road at 12pm. It was the 60’s so when the day arrived, I wrote the directions on my hand. It wasn’t a very good idea. I was a scared girl so I would clench my fists in fear, and the door number rubbed off.
I was a girl. On a street in Chelsea. In matching white M&S underwear. A green mini skirt and a black v-neck woolen jumper. It was too warm and I was sweating, but I handn’t worn anything underneath. Fear makes bad decisions.
I was a girl that was scared. So, when I didn’t know what house to ring. I thought it was a sign. I stood staring for a few minutes, because maybe the curly haired women would see me through the window. Or, perhaps, someone else would stop me and offer me their card and open their door.
I was a girl that was too scared to wait for fate. So I turned around.
Yup. The cute one. The one who sang “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” (Doo-dah-doo). And that line: “Closer…let me whisper in your ear…” Melt, swoon, etc.
Hey–it was 1964. And Paul just seemed like the “approachable one” I could dream about.
John? A bit scary for this small town girl from the heart of the Palouse country.
But, I secretly aspired. Read a bunch of his essays from In His Own Write. Not sure I completely understood them, but that was the mystique. I wasn’t edgy enough to keep up with his snappy wit, although I did try wearing black nail polish to school one day, which set my mother’s hair on fire.
Took my aspiration to be a “John Girl” into my university experience. By then, there were so many other edgy and cool bands to get excited about, but I kept my little Beatles fascination, even through the devastating “Paul is Dead” stuff and playing the White Album backwards tediously with my roommate to hear the muffled “turn me on, dead man.”
Tried out my edgy persona on an older guy (he was actually the residence hall director for the men’s dorm next door) who informed me:
1. My roommate was a “woman of the world”
2. I was the kind of girl a guy takes home to meet his mama.
(So much for edgy, eh? Now I wonder just what he was telling me…hm?)
This life experiment in being cool, dark, unreadable (ha), led to three memorable dates.
A double date with my roommate during which my date thrust his tongue all the way into my right ear. (Ew)
The guy who made me drive to a club in Idaho, where he wanted to dance far too close to me and ask me what I was keeping “it” for, anyway. (If you have to ask…)
Guitar guy. Didn’t we all want to date guitar guy? Talked about himself all night and later offered: “maybe I’ll call you some time.”
So yeah. A Paul girl. Not as cool as I thought.
Except. I married Paul.
Well, not Paul. Steve. And he surprised me with tickets to see Paul in 2022 when Paul began his tour in our hometown.
“My” Paul is, indeed, cute. And he is taking guitar lessons.
I was a lost kid back in 1972, riding the Erie Lackawanna train from East Orange, New Jersey to Hoboken, taking the Hudson Tubes to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and walking through the Macey’s Tunnel where the homeless and the drug addicts hung out with their cardboard and jingling paper cups. At Penn Station I caught an uptown train to Columbia University where I was a student. One of the regular riders was a blind saxophone player who played while he walked up the aisle of the rocking train with a tin cup taped to his saxophone. I had to change trains at some point to an uptown local, but the first time I took the Express and ended up in Harlem where a kind old man told me I better get out of there. I learned that I had to get off at the 116th Street Station. It was dismal time in New York City where heroin addiction was rampant making the City a dangerous place where muggings and break-ins were an everyday occurrence. I got an education.
Remember when Times Square was all porn shops and strippers? Now it's disneyland. So you went to Columbia! Did you hang out at the Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam? "I got an education." Those were the days.
No Hungarian Pastry, but we did meet up after class at Chock Full ‘a Nuts coffee shop on Broadway & 112th (I think it was) where it always seemed like I got into the strangest conversations with the strangest people.
I once lived at 108th and Amsterdam. The Hungarian is, incredibly, still there (on Amsterdam near the Cathedral of St John the Divine). So if you ever go back, check it out!
I will. Lucky you to have lived there. Hungarian pastries sound incredible. I have a great memory of being at a Winter Solstice Concert by Paul Winter in The Cathedral. I can’t remember to get toilet paper at the grocery store, but I can remember some of these times in NYC like they were yesterday.
I moved there in the early 80's with one suitcase and a few hundred dollars to my name. I illegally sublet an illegal sublet! Those were high crime days in NYC. The crack epidemic was going strong. An incredible time to live in the city that never sleeps. As far as memory goes--same!
It is a true shame that we didn't know each other in NY in the early 80's. what an era!! three card monty at Times Square, those "magic supply" stores that sold fake vomit, hand buzzers and whoopee cushions in the front but were really fronts for peep shows and porn. I miss the "Trannies" on 8th ave. It was so alive and so dangerous but not if you knew the system
One day I followed him when he got off the subway, through the station, up the stairs, and outside. Yes, he really was blind. No scam and so I always plunked a few coins in his cup whenever I saw him. He could sure play the saxaphone.
I was a child so grounded in the present that I never thought about the future. That’s not quite accurate. I thought about the future in terms of “I’m going to get out of this stupid school one day.” Or “I’m going to grow up and then no one can tell me what to do or wear or say or think.” I thought those thoughts at night in bed before I fell asleep or when I was alone in my room listening to my records. The problem was that I never brought those thoughts to mind when confronted with a bad teacher, or a neighborhood bully, or an agonizingly boring household chore or school assignment. No, in those situations, I was completely present, unable to remember the past or imagine the future, 100% committed to whatever suffering was immediately before me. To be fair when things were excellent, I was equally present, able to slip into ecstasy without any anticipatory grief about the fleeting nature of experience.
When I was nineteen, I met a boy. He was a fine boy, a smart boy, a wise boy. Also, sometimes a fool. He taught me to lessen up on my suffering, to not be 100% present when it might otherwise be helpful to remember that everything is fleeting and eventually changes.
Of course, by then, the channels in my brain were deep and wide and difficult to escape. Still, I did learn part of the lesson. Over time, I became adept at chanting to myself, “This too shall pass” when I was unhappy with current conditions. Unfortunately, I failed to learn that the same applied to moments of contentment, joy, and ecstasy. I still slid seamlessly into the moment, 100% committed and completely oblivious to the past or the future.
Ah, my teacher was good though. Eventually, he taught me that everything, including his attention, ends.
All things must pass. I say this to myself all of the time (though it only helps a little). I love that you (or your narrator) were able to live in the moment, 100%. That's my aim, often, but i find it hard to achieve.
Here's something to toy with: Could be that the sober father of the bride says "this too shall pass," while his ex-wife is taking a sip of her fourth glass of wine. Then we understand that his own marriage failed. Just a thought! I shouldn't be weighing in at all, so apologies, ignore me.
I am a blood donor. Why? Where does that come from? If the answer lies in nature, then my dad, a blood donor, somehow that encoded that behaviour into his genes and it was passed onto me. But that way also lies nurture. As the oldest boy, Dad was my role model and I followed many of his behaviours (not all as lauded as being a blood donor). Or maybe it was the environment at university. The blood bank knew everyone loves a freebie. When they offered a sausage roll for a mere 800 ml of my blood, it seemed like a fair swap. Forty years on, the sausage rolls still call me back. Or maybe dad's genes compel me.
Of course, there is the good it does for patients. These days I’ve graduated to plasma. It takes a bit longer, but I enjoy that extra time to sink into reading a book. And occasionally they ring, “Would you be happy to do platelets? You’re a match for someone in hospital and we’re securing a supply for them”. That flattens any potential excuse. It’s longer again… justifies an extra sausage roll at the end. Blood is so vital, yet we’ve not yet had the smarts to create a synthetic blood. We can replace knees, eyes, hearts…whatever…. but you still need a human for blood. Which means we still need sausage rolls.
I recall how sad and annoyed dad was on the day the Red Cross told him, “No more donations from you”. His age meant they wanted him to keep his own blood, to look after himself for a change. They gave him a certificate “139 donations”. We were all sure it was more, but new systems don’t always pick up the data from paper records. According to the Red Cross, that means he saved 417 lives.
At his funeral, a photo with that donation certificate, made it into his tribute slideshow. Dad was a blood donor. I was a blood donor. As were my siblings. An important part of dad surviving. The phone rang on the way home: “Could you donate platelets?”. Within a few days I was there, smelling the sausage rolls, as I absent-mindedly answered the necessary questions. The nurse said “You’re getting up there. This is your 139th donation”. I am a blood donor. I am my dad.
This is so nicely written. Love this line: “you still need a human for blood. Which means we still need sausage rolls”—just a great detail that connects the whole piece.
Lovely take on something many of us grew up doing. When they told me I couldn’t give blood anymore because of a condition I should be fairly concerned about, I think I felt worse about the disruption of my lifelong donor habit.
I was that quiet kid always on the fringes, the last pick for the games. My sister Carmel was queen of the hood, she looked out for me some, but I think I kinda embarrassed her. Ma used to say, 'don't worry bout nothin, Joey. Keep eatin the pasta, one day you'll flattenin Marciano.' Ma was great. But it wasn't just my height and skinny frame, I was timid too.
When Carmel was being mean, she'd say, 'That kid would jump back from his own shadow.'
Ma would get mad, 'Shut yer mouth, Carmel. He's a sweet boy. I'm glad he ain't like all the other roughnecks round here.'
She was in all kinds of clover when I became an altar-boy. She'd say to Pa, 'maybe we're gonna have a priest in the family.' Pa didn't reply but he'd give me a nickel, asked me to say a prayer for the favourite in the 5.30 at Aquaduct. He had a lotta success with that method which made him look at me kinda funny like there was somethin goin on he didn't understand.
When Grandma Lorenzetti took ill, they called Father O'Brien.
'Just in case,' Ma said.
But Grandma took a turn for the worse, Ma's eyes were all red and puffy even Carmel was subdued. Pa gave me two nickels.
'Aqueduct? What time?'
'No, kid. That's for the candles. Go down to St, Francis's, light up a couple, put your soul into the words. You're our last hope.'
I put the coins in the slot, used the taper to flare two sticks of wax then knelt in the half light.
I thought hard about Grandma, choose from my prayer book, 'Almighty and Eternal God, You are the everlasting health of those who believe in You. Hear us for Your servant, Maria, for whom we implore the aid of Your tender mercy.'
Back home, Grandma was sitting up in bed, Ma feeding her teaspoonfuls of tiramisu. After that Pa stopped with the Aqueduct nickels, said it wasn't right. Grandma called me her little angel and Ma warned Carmel if there was another bad word, she'd swing for her.
Then Grandma lapsed.
Pa gave me three nickels, 'Better not take any chances.'
Back in the half light, I gave it my best shot but when I got home, Grandma was gone.
Ma said, 'To a better place.'
A week later she caught me with a magazine Rudi Gaetano gave me. They treated me like a normal kid after that.
Terry, this is fun. I had a Rudi Gaetano friend. Her mom worked at the drugstore where they sold paperback novels. They were supposed to take the covers off the ones that didn't sell and send them back to the wholesaler. Jane managed to sneak a bunch of them out, and we spent summer picnics reading stuff like "Candy." (Another Beatle crossover. Ringo was in that film.)
I know. So fun, but I have a short story in mind that includes some of that stuff. Or, knowing me, I have managed to jump into another novel before Simon and the goats are done. Sigh.
I was a dead man. No one else knew it at the time; I liked to keep that sort of thing hidden. Strangers still talked to me and little children shyly kicked patched balls in my direction. I’d smile and nod in return to both of these interactions, but stayed on the outskirts.
Being a dead man made things simpler. Didn’t have to own a house or gossip with the neighbors. The bank couldn’t fine me and the traveling salesmen ignored my dusty boots propped on the saloon’s railing.
No, sir. I liked being a dead man.
And it didn’t bother no one else either.
Until the wandering priest arrived.
He saw right through me and no matter what dingy part of town I slunk away to at night, he’d find me and just sit there, staring. A stare like his could unnerve a man, even if he’d done nothing wrong. I’d done plenty wrong and spent many nights wandering the streets so I wouldn’t have to witness that stare.
I finally left town.
I took trains.
I sailed rivers.
I slid down rocky canyons and struck out across prairies.
The priest dogged my every step, never slackening, never turning aside. The man was perseverance itself.
I ain’t proud of the ways I tried to shake him. And each time he reappeared, another weight landed on my shoulders until I sank at last to the dry ground beneath me and gazed up at the starry sky.
The priest sat down beside me, his presence oddly comforting in the vast emptiness around us.
“What do you want?” I asked, more tired than I’d ever been.
“Did a deal with the devil, didn’t you?”
I closed my eyes.
The priest chuckled and patted my shoulder. “I can help you, if you want.”
I shook my head and looked down at my hands, the blood of the innocents long gone. “No. I deserve to be taken.”
The priest hummed, whether in agreement or not, I couldn’t tell. “Then I’ll just sit with you, if you don’t mind.”
I didn’t speak and the two of us waited until the dawn.
Life in the Thirties! Me too. Wannabe Anna Quindlen. Before that I wanted to be Jane Pauley, but then I learned she woke up at 5am and whisked off to Manhattan and didn’t get to see her kids at breakfast.
At school, I was the little Communist girl, singing cheerful pioneer songs about squirrels and summer trees and life as ‘a wonderful, beautiful thing.’ At home, I was the responsible girl, doing her homework quietly and cooking her own dinner. In the kibbutz, I was the outsider who stank of the city and the ‘goya’ who couldn’t be Jewish. At the army, I was the pacifist who was useless with guns and dreamt of a life in Italy. In my twenties I was the cheap Eastern European labour who helped raise your children. But also, the theatre fanatic who spent her last pennies on theatre tickets and plays. The hopeless romantic who refused to sleep with just anyone, and waited for the real deal. The globe trotter who was looking for herself in the most remote places, living out of a small backpack. Lost in books, lost in stories, lost in languages and always searching. In my thirties I thought I found it – my belonging – when I became a wife, and mother, and almost lost myself completely. I was already in my forties when I realized that who I was, is part of who I am, and who I will be – an identity that is forever in flux. And that this is a very good thing, whether you happen to agree, or not.
I was not a good time girl. I was an end of times girl, as in it won’t be long until the final war, the war where everyone will be sorted into sheep and goats, and if you wonder which group will be saved, just watch a goat, frisky, free-willed, willing to eat just about anything, jump up on its hind legs and execute a perfect round-off. And if you think God is enamored of goat-like hijinks, just ask yourself what happened to Lot’s wife, or the Egyptians firstborns, or Jesus, come to that. I was an end of time girl until we bought a flock of sheep, until I heard their plaintive bleat, sounding like a tired old hymn, fur mud-matted, willing to follow the leader anywhere. That’s when I decided I’d rather be a good time girl.
Oh that division of the world into goats and sheep! Similar end times philosophy here and the warning that it could happen at any time—and probably when I was where I shouldn’t be. Love your description of the bleats sounding like tired old hymns. But I like to think God, if we must insist on one, is shaking her head at all the mythology that men wrote down to explain how patriarchy made all the rules. She probably gave us goats to remind us that “frisky and free-willed” is what she intended all along. (Good time girls for the win!)
Goats are way more fun! My older brother, also an alcoholic, brought home intriguing friends that drove my parents crazy and surrounded himself later on with a houseful of eccentric characters. I didn’t fully appreciate his influence until much later.
Your neighbors most likely think you are an alien. While others are playing bridge or backgammon, you are reading and writing stories. You joined a book club but while your neighbors prefer reading best sellers, you opted for Alliss At the Fire by John Fosse. You lasted eight months and then excused yourself, saying you have too many other books to read. J, from the book club said they miss you because you offer a different perspective.
Your readings began with Gnosticism, which led you to read about serpent symbolism and the Faustian pact, and that led to research on the Chalcolithic Age and that led you to write a story about a nomadic band leading their herds and flocks through the ancient Sinai, which wasn’t a desert then but an arid grassland, and one man from the band who made a pact with a volcanic deity and followed a phoenix, born from the volcano, made love to an Egyptian goddess about whom you dreamed and the phoenix smelted its egg-shaped copper-bearing stones in fire, and the nomadic band learned from Yaldabaoth how to cast the copper into a gleaming snake, and by turning stone to metal, humankind has progressed from knapping stone weaponry to nuclear warheads —all of which required vast amounts of research on pre-Dynastic Egyptian deities, and the Benu Bird who most scholars agree is the same as the Phoenix, and which volcano in the Sinai rift was the most likely choice, metallurgical ritual, and copper smelting techniques, and how copper smelted with tin becomes bronze, and how the Late Bronze Age collapsed when a volcano erupted in the Mediterranean, and iron metallurgy was introduced.
But what if, you ask, humans had refrained from casting copper weaponry but had only used it for making ornaments and objects used in fertility rituals as they had done originally? What if they had never replaced their rituals honoring the earth with worship of a volcanic deity whose command is to dominate the earth? A volcanic deity whose fire is recreated in the furnaces where iron is smelted and forges where steel is made? Would we be facing an apocalypse now?
And yes, you do have unusual perspective, just has J. said you do, but as to whether your neighbors think you are an alien, for as long as you never tell them what you are thinking or writing about, they will just consider you a harmless, eccentric reclusive, but friendly neighbor who nods and says “Hello, how are you today?” whenever you meet in the elevator.
When a writer is writing, the question that keeps him/her going is "What if my character laughed right here? Would that work?" and so on. Writing is a series of "what ifs," one after another. (There's actually a writing book of writing exercises called "What If" by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.)
Ah—I happen to be working on a “Where I’m From” prompt for a quick interview, and, messing around and actually not working, saw your prompt today. I think they are similar although the ‘where I’m from’ asks for specific things (ordinary objects, family foods, etc.) My ordinary object is the yellow line down the middle of the road. When I think of myself as a girl, I’d say ‘I was the flower girl, announcing the arrival of the bride.’ Now I have to think about how these two things mash together. Thanks for the prompt!
I was a Jim West boy. That was the name of the character played by Robert Conrad on The Wild, Wild West, one of my favorite TV shows from the 1960s. He went around 1870’s America living on a special train, inventively solving crimes and chasing villains with the help of his intellectual and tech-smart sidekick, Artemus Gordon. When the show first came on, I was seven, and during its four seasons, I inched up onto the cusp of puberty, full of incipient thoughts that hormones would eventually make blossom into a realization that I wanted to not just stare at men, but touch and be touched by them.
Robert Conrad was exceptionally good-looking and well-built, and his costumers knew precisely how to dress him to emphasize his V-shaped gymnast build. In 1966, I didn’t understand what the vague stirring was that I felt every time he came on scene, or why I liked in particular those perilous situations in which he was bound and shirtless, resisting his interrogators with arrogant defiance.
If I couldn’t articulate what that feeling was, I knew it wasn’t what a “normal” boy should be feeling. I remember, at one point, trying to compare the sensations I had when I watched the distinctly more avuncular and unfetching Ross Martin. He was a well-written character, personable and sharp, but there was no doubt about it, I was not an Artemus Gordon boy. Nor did the periodic saloon girls and female spies brought on to confirm Jim’s heterosexual bona fides do a thing for me. When I fantasized about being tied up, (whoever says children are too young to develop fetishes is wrong) it was always a man who looked something like Robert Conrad doing the kidnapping. That fantasy was my obsessive secret. (And I instinctively sensed was shared by others because the frontispiece of the Hardy Boys’ books, full of “scenes” of their adventures, had a visual of them tied up and gagged. And they found themselves in that position by Chapter 11 with amazing consistency.)
A few years later, when my brother and I came out to each other, we got a big kick out of finding out we were both Jim West boys. It’s hard to imagine a world in which we might have expressed this to each other, but I see that as a good thing. Children need their own secret gardens.
I know you have the fullest of plate just keeping up with the prompt responses, but if you care to read this short chapter from "Ink from the Pen" you will understand why Johnny Quest holds a permanent place in my heart. (No expectations) http://thetrashwhisperer.blogspot.com/2016/01/pistachios.html
That's a lovely story--I kind of choked up at the end. (Though I worried for a moment that he wouldn't have a stamp to send the letter!) Thanks for sharing this. You've had quite the life, which is probably a huge understatement. (Race Bannon! I'd forgotten about him!)
Loved this show! I have to believe Robert Conrad inspired those feelings in a lot of boys watching that show. But you just made me realize why the name Artemus immediately jumped into my head when I started writing my WIP. And oh those Hardy boys, indeed. This was so fun to read.
I was the nice girl. I was obedient, orderly, predictable. Today, I am not nice and I thrive on confrontation. And although I have 370 more words, they are mine and I will not share them with anyone.
God, I love this.
Wow! I'm not sure you should encourage me :)
Cool ending Ruth.
Yes! Funny, too.
Way to go Ruth ! Here's to using language performatively !
I like your attitude, Ruth!
I love this. Perfection.
yasss!
Really made me laugh.
Go girl!
I was the waterboy. That’s not a euphemism or anything. My brother played third base with his gang. They seemed like adults, squatting and spitting in the dirt. Thwang went the baseball bat and the mess of them would dash across the grass, reaching for that spec to come down from the sky. After a big play they’d say: hey, can I get some water over here? Which was my cue to pull the red pale with the orange cooler full of icy water that Mom had filled up from the green hose behind the blue bathrooms at the other end of the field. I couldn’t play because they didn’t have any extra uniforms, which I know is a euphemism for: we don’t want you gumming up the game with your gimp leg and general squishiness. So I just sat and watched them run, waiting for my cue.
I’m not a waterboy anymore, though I do work for a drinking water municipality in the suburbs outside of Ontario. My brother died in a car accident back when they still had manual transmissions. My gimp leg was removed when I was in college, replaced with plastic and titanium. I hardly ever watch baseball, but when I do, and a big play causes the crowd to burst out of their seats, cheering, I tend to stay in my seat. I’m not a waterboy anymore, and frankly, there ain’t anyone worth cheering for anymore.
Short and devastating. Really great writing here.
There are waterboy stories and then there's your story. Fabulous story!
Great read. Not a water boy but a good writer, instead.
Wow, well done.
general squishiness. Humor and pathos. beauty
Moving piece. I also loved the string of colours.
Wow. Your descriptive details. And this one just pierces my heart.
I was the girl who drew pictures of gorgeous creatures with massive boobs, big hair, high heels, and boa feathers draped around sparkle dresses. People worried I was drawing the prostitutes near our apartment on Hollywood and Vine, my teachers were alarmed. I was the girl who was sent to the school nurse for showing up to first grade with mascara on, the girl who had her eyes scrubbed with soap. But I was drawing (and drawn to) the drag queens that took over the talent show at the Rexall Drug Store around the corner, where we went every weekend for the free entertainment. Everyone called them transvestites but deep inside I knew they were queens. I thought I could be one, too. I wanted to be a queen instead of a pale, skinny, uncoordinated girl. I thought I’d grow up and suddenly have boobs, muscular legs, size eleven sling backs and curly blonde hair piled high on my head sprayed into place like a helmet. I grew up thinking everyone loved the drag queens, like me.
I used to sit next to a girl in Sunday School who drew those pictures! I'd try to copy her but didn't have the knack. That last like really hits. I still have those thoughts.
Like, did you want to be booby and blonde?
i wanted to be anything but who I was. I wanted straight hair with bangs. I wanted different parents. I wanted to dress like the other girls but couldn't figure out the key to all of it. I was such a mess.
Wasn’t everyone around that age!?
Same here. I had straight hair and I wanted curly hair! I remember the horrible perm that my mom tried to give me. It just turned out frizzy like a poodle.
Oh yeah. Toni home permanents were so bad!
That’s it! I’d forgotten the name.
I had a friend who had Cher hair. Beautiful, thick, dark hair and big chocolate brown eyes. She liked John. (You'll have to see my post below). I always wanted boobs. Finally got them when I was pregnant. But then, they magically just...<poof> later on.
I prayed for boobs! If only I’d put that energy into something useful! 🤣
Godalmighty I knew even back then how hard it was to be a girl when all I had to do was show up with a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. It did get harder, but much later. I do remember sitting in church trying to draw pictures of guys with big pecks and bicepes and my mom telling me to put that away, right now.
I hope you’re still doodling and drawing! I hate it when kids get discouraged like that.
Thanks Sea.
Oh you lucky girl. I didn't see or/know about drag queens until I ran away and stole away to the iconic My-O-My Club on Lake Pontchartrain, LA. Even then, I'm not sure I understood what was going on.
I sure didn’t know I couldn’t grow up to be one! Wish we could go back in time and see those shows with our big girl brains.
fantastic
Thank you!
and yikes on having your eyes scrubbed. That's awful.
Right? Punishment did not fit the crime!
I was a girl that was scared. I was a girl that was scared of my shadow. That was scared of my mother, my father, my sister, and my dog. I was a girl that was scared of all dogs. I was a girl that would jump at the sound of door slamming. I was a girl that was so scared, people would get close to my mother and say ‘Did anything happen to her… you know when she was little… has she ever said anything?’
Then I became a girl who started to take off her clothes. I became a girl that would take her clothes off for strangers behind cameras, strangers in rooms full of people. I was a girl that became beautiful. I became so beautiful, that people would walk past me staring. Girls would glare at their boyfriends as I walked past, because they couldn’t help but oggle at me. I was a girl who was so scared, that I never noticed.
Until, one day, when this women with curls piled on top of her head, asked me if I would want to be a model. I was still scared, so I didn’t usually talk to strangers, but this women had kind eyes and a demeanor where no was more scary than yes. She gave me her card and told me to meet her on Kings Road at 12pm. It was the 60’s so when the day arrived, I wrote the directions on my hand. It wasn’t a very good idea. I was a scared girl so I would clench my fists in fear, and the door number rubbed off.
I was a girl. On a street in Chelsea. In matching white M&S underwear. A green mini skirt and a black v-neck woolen jumper. It was too warm and I was sweating, but I handn’t worn anything underneath. Fear makes bad decisions.
I was a girl that was scared. So, when I didn’t know what house to ring. I thought it was a sign. I stood staring for a few minutes, because maybe the curly haired women would see me through the window. Or, perhaps, someone else would stop me and offer me their card and open their door.
I was a girl that was too scared to wait for fate. So I turned around.
So intense. And so much to write about! I'm so glad that little scared girl turned around.
Each paragraph really ups the ante so that by the time the girl gets to Chelsea in matching white M&S underwear I'm scared for her....
Her evolution seems so real. Well done.
This piece could really take off into something longer. You made me scared for her and yet so very curious about her.
Well--mine just tumbled right out of me.
Ok. I admit it. “You got me.”
I was a Paul girl. No surprises there, eh?
Yup. The cute one. The one who sang “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” (Doo-dah-doo). And that line: “Closer…let me whisper in your ear…” Melt, swoon, etc.
Hey–it was 1964. And Paul just seemed like the “approachable one” I could dream about.
John? A bit scary for this small town girl from the heart of the Palouse country.
But, I secretly aspired. Read a bunch of his essays from In His Own Write. Not sure I completely understood them, but that was the mystique. I wasn’t edgy enough to keep up with his snappy wit, although I did try wearing black nail polish to school one day, which set my mother’s hair on fire.
Took my aspiration to be a “John Girl” into my university experience. By then, there were so many other edgy and cool bands to get excited about, but I kept my little Beatles fascination, even through the devastating “Paul is Dead” stuff and playing the White Album backwards tediously with my roommate to hear the muffled “turn me on, dead man.”
Tried out my edgy persona on an older guy (he was actually the residence hall director for the men’s dorm next door) who informed me:
1. My roommate was a “woman of the world”
2. I was the kind of girl a guy takes home to meet his mama.
(So much for edgy, eh? Now I wonder just what he was telling me…hm?)
This life experiment in being cool, dark, unreadable (ha), led to three memorable dates.
A double date with my roommate during which my date thrust his tongue all the way into my right ear. (Ew)
The guy who made me drive to a club in Idaho, where he wanted to dance far too close to me and ask me what I was keeping “it” for, anyway. (If you have to ask…)
Guitar guy. Didn’t we all want to date guitar guy? Talked about himself all night and later offered: “maybe I’ll call you some time.”
So yeah. A Paul girl. Not as cool as I thought.
Except. I married Paul.
Well, not Paul. Steve. And he surprised me with tickets to see Paul in 2022 when Paul began his tour in our hometown.
“My” Paul is, indeed, cute. And he is taking guitar lessons.
Aw, so sweet! You got your Paul!
I did. He’s lovely. In his own semi-exasperating but sweet way.
I love reading about bad dates! Now if only the bad daters would read up! Your cool, dark, unreadable phase makes a great story.
Thank you.
Love that he’s taking guitar!
OH! An "ear thrust" is really disgusting!
I was a lost kid back in 1972, riding the Erie Lackawanna train from East Orange, New Jersey to Hoboken, taking the Hudson Tubes to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and walking through the Macey’s Tunnel where the homeless and the drug addicts hung out with their cardboard and jingling paper cups. At Penn Station I caught an uptown train to Columbia University where I was a student. One of the regular riders was a blind saxophone player who played while he walked up the aisle of the rocking train with a tin cup taped to his saxophone. I had to change trains at some point to an uptown local, but the first time I took the Express and ended up in Harlem where a kind old man told me I better get out of there. I learned that I had to get off at the 116th Street Station. It was dismal time in New York City where heroin addiction was rampant making the City a dangerous place where muggings and break-ins were an everyday occurrence. I got an education.
Remember when Times Square was all porn shops and strippers? Now it's disneyland. So you went to Columbia! Did you hang out at the Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam? "I got an education." Those were the days.
No Hungarian Pastry, but we did meet up after class at Chock Full ‘a Nuts coffee shop on Broadway & 112th (I think it was) where it always seemed like I got into the strangest conversations with the strangest people.
I once lived at 108th and Amsterdam. The Hungarian is, incredibly, still there (on Amsterdam near the Cathedral of St John the Divine). So if you ever go back, check it out!
Field trip! I lived on West 79th in the late seventies. Zabars was our go-to.
Yay for Zabars! And in the good old days: H & H bagels! Shakespeare and Co! Fairway!
The Hungarian Pastry Shop, which is indeed wonderful, shows up in a novel by Rivka Galchen that I read recently!
Oh, I just love that!
I will. Lucky you to have lived there. Hungarian pastries sound incredible. I have a great memory of being at a Winter Solstice Concert by Paul Winter in The Cathedral. I can’t remember to get toilet paper at the grocery store, but I can remember some of these times in NYC like they were yesterday.
I moved there in the early 80's with one suitcase and a few hundred dollars to my name. I illegally sublet an illegal sublet! Those were high crime days in NYC. The crack epidemic was going strong. An incredible time to live in the city that never sleeps. As far as memory goes--same!
It is a true shame that we didn't know each other in NY in the early 80's. what an era!! three card monty at Times Square, those "magic supply" stores that sold fake vomit, hand buzzers and whoopee cushions in the front but were really fronts for peep shows and porn. I miss the "Trannies" on 8th ave. It was so alive and so dangerous but not if you knew the system
Perfect Coffee. In a NY minute.
Love the sax player. Such a great detail!
One day I followed him when he got off the subway, through the station, up the stairs, and outside. Yes, he really was blind. No scam and so I always plunked a few coins in his cup whenever I saw him. He could sure play the saxaphone.
Did you read “Just Kids”? I love reading about true life experiences of living in New York, and loved reading yours, too.
Oh! Patti Smith. I've read some of her books, but not that one - yet.
You’ll love it.
I was a child so grounded in the present that I never thought about the future. That’s not quite accurate. I thought about the future in terms of “I’m going to get out of this stupid school one day.” Or “I’m going to grow up and then no one can tell me what to do or wear or say or think.” I thought those thoughts at night in bed before I fell asleep or when I was alone in my room listening to my records. The problem was that I never brought those thoughts to mind when confronted with a bad teacher, or a neighborhood bully, or an agonizingly boring household chore or school assignment. No, in those situations, I was completely present, unable to remember the past or imagine the future, 100% committed to whatever suffering was immediately before me. To be fair when things were excellent, I was equally present, able to slip into ecstasy without any anticipatory grief about the fleeting nature of experience.
When I was nineteen, I met a boy. He was a fine boy, a smart boy, a wise boy. Also, sometimes a fool. He taught me to lessen up on my suffering, to not be 100% present when it might otherwise be helpful to remember that everything is fleeting and eventually changes.
Of course, by then, the channels in my brain were deep and wide and difficult to escape. Still, I did learn part of the lesson. Over time, I became adept at chanting to myself, “This too shall pass” when I was unhappy with current conditions. Unfortunately, I failed to learn that the same applied to moments of contentment, joy, and ecstasy. I still slid seamlessly into the moment, 100% committed and completely oblivious to the past or the future.
Ah, my teacher was good though. Eventually, he taught me that everything, including his attention, ends.
All things must pass. I say this to myself all of the time (though it only helps a little). I love that you (or your narrator) were able to live in the moment, 100%. That's my aim, often, but i find it hard to achieve.
Reminded me of this micro I keep toying with.
The sober father-of-the-bride took the microphone and faced the guests. “This too shall pass,” he said, some incontestable truth. He was right.
ha!
Here's something to toy with: Could be that the sober father of the bride says "this too shall pass," while his ex-wife is taking a sip of her fourth glass of wine. Then we understand that his own marriage failed. Just a thought! I shouldn't be weighing in at all, so apologies, ignore me.
Fantastic. Gives it another level. Thanks :)
Love “the channels in my brain were deep and wide and difficult to escape.”
I'm not sure if this applies but I was reminded of Janis Joplin's Kosmic Blues that I heard for the first time the other night.
I had never heard that song either. Just listened. It is similar, isn't it?
Living for the moment. Living for the future. I guess as adults we try to do both.
Wow. What Angela said. I didn’t know where this was gonna end up —but man. So good.
Ouch. Tough ending to this one. Well done.
YES, true but tough!
I am a blood donor. Why? Where does that come from? If the answer lies in nature, then my dad, a blood donor, somehow that encoded that behaviour into his genes and it was passed onto me. But that way also lies nurture. As the oldest boy, Dad was my role model and I followed many of his behaviours (not all as lauded as being a blood donor). Or maybe it was the environment at university. The blood bank knew everyone loves a freebie. When they offered a sausage roll for a mere 800 ml of my blood, it seemed like a fair swap. Forty years on, the sausage rolls still call me back. Or maybe dad's genes compel me.
Of course, there is the good it does for patients. These days I’ve graduated to plasma. It takes a bit longer, but I enjoy that extra time to sink into reading a book. And occasionally they ring, “Would you be happy to do platelets? You’re a match for someone in hospital and we’re securing a supply for them”. That flattens any potential excuse. It’s longer again… justifies an extra sausage roll at the end. Blood is so vital, yet we’ve not yet had the smarts to create a synthetic blood. We can replace knees, eyes, hearts…whatever…. but you still need a human for blood. Which means we still need sausage rolls.
I recall how sad and annoyed dad was on the day the Red Cross told him, “No more donations from you”. His age meant they wanted him to keep his own blood, to look after himself for a change. They gave him a certificate “139 donations”. We were all sure it was more, but new systems don’t always pick up the data from paper records. According to the Red Cross, that means he saved 417 lives.
At his funeral, a photo with that donation certificate, made it into his tribute slideshow. Dad was a blood donor. I was a blood donor. As were my siblings. An important part of dad surviving. The phone rang on the way home: “Could you donate platelets?”. Within a few days I was there, smelling the sausage rolls, as I absent-mindedly answered the necessary questions. The nurse said “You’re getting up there. This is your 139th donation”. I am a blood donor. I am my dad.
This is so wonderful.
The loss of youth, when ones blood is no longer needed or valuable. A completely fresh perspective. on a father/son story as well.
This is so nicely written. Love this line: “you still need a human for blood. Which means we still need sausage rolls”—just a great detail that connects the whole piece.
Love this!
Lovely take on something many of us grew up doing. When they told me I couldn’t give blood anymore because of a condition I should be fairly concerned about, I think I felt worse about the disruption of my lifelong donor habit.
I was that quiet kid always on the fringes, the last pick for the games. My sister Carmel was queen of the hood, she looked out for me some, but I think I kinda embarrassed her. Ma used to say, 'don't worry bout nothin, Joey. Keep eatin the pasta, one day you'll flattenin Marciano.' Ma was great. But it wasn't just my height and skinny frame, I was timid too.
When Carmel was being mean, she'd say, 'That kid would jump back from his own shadow.'
Ma would get mad, 'Shut yer mouth, Carmel. He's a sweet boy. I'm glad he ain't like all the other roughnecks round here.'
She was in all kinds of clover when I became an altar-boy. She'd say to Pa, 'maybe we're gonna have a priest in the family.' Pa didn't reply but he'd give me a nickel, asked me to say a prayer for the favourite in the 5.30 at Aquaduct. He had a lotta success with that method which made him look at me kinda funny like there was somethin goin on he didn't understand.
When Grandma Lorenzetti took ill, they called Father O'Brien.
'Just in case,' Ma said.
But Grandma took a turn for the worse, Ma's eyes were all red and puffy even Carmel was subdued. Pa gave me two nickels.
'Aqueduct? What time?'
'No, kid. That's for the candles. Go down to St, Francis's, light up a couple, put your soul into the words. You're our last hope.'
I put the coins in the slot, used the taper to flare two sticks of wax then knelt in the half light.
I thought hard about Grandma, choose from my prayer book, 'Almighty and Eternal God, You are the everlasting health of those who believe in You. Hear us for Your servant, Maria, for whom we implore the aid of Your tender mercy.'
Back home, Grandma was sitting up in bed, Ma feeding her teaspoonfuls of tiramisu. After that Pa stopped with the Aqueduct nickels, said it wasn't right. Grandma called me her little angel and Ma warned Carmel if there was another bad word, she'd swing for her.
Then Grandma lapsed.
Pa gave me three nickels, 'Better not take any chances.'
Back in the half light, I gave it my best shot but when I got home, Grandma was gone.
Ma said, 'To a better place.'
A week later she caught me with a magazine Rudi Gaetano gave me. They treated me like a normal kid after that.
Great little story! Love the ending.
Thanks, Mary :-)
Terry, this is fun. I had a Rudi Gaetano friend. Her mom worked at the drugstore where they sold paperback novels. They were supposed to take the covers off the ones that didn't sell and send them back to the wholesaler. Jane managed to sneak a bunch of them out, and we spent summer picnics reading stuff like "Candy." (Another Beatle crossover. Ringo was in that film.)
Thanks, Angela. You headed down Memory Lane :-)
I know. So fun, but I have a short story in mind that includes some of that stuff. Or, knowing me, I have managed to jump into another novel before Simon and the goats are done. Sigh.
Really nice exploration of faith and luck, and how they ebb and flow.
Thanks, Janet, generous as usual
love!
"They treated me like a normal kid after that."
Wow, what a great short story.
Thanks, Ruth
I was a dead man. No one else knew it at the time; I liked to keep that sort of thing hidden. Strangers still talked to me and little children shyly kicked patched balls in my direction. I’d smile and nod in return to both of these interactions, but stayed on the outskirts.
Being a dead man made things simpler. Didn’t have to own a house or gossip with the neighbors. The bank couldn’t fine me and the traveling salesmen ignored my dusty boots propped on the saloon’s railing.
No, sir. I liked being a dead man.
And it didn’t bother no one else either.
Until the wandering priest arrived.
He saw right through me and no matter what dingy part of town I slunk away to at night, he’d find me and just sit there, staring. A stare like his could unnerve a man, even if he’d done nothing wrong. I’d done plenty wrong and spent many nights wandering the streets so I wouldn’t have to witness that stare.
I finally left town.
I took trains.
I sailed rivers.
I slid down rocky canyons and struck out across prairies.
The priest dogged my every step, never slackening, never turning aside. The man was perseverance itself.
I ain’t proud of the ways I tried to shake him. And each time he reappeared, another weight landed on my shoulders until I sank at last to the dry ground beneath me and gazed up at the starry sky.
The priest sat down beside me, his presence oddly comforting in the vast emptiness around us.
“What do you want?” I asked, more tired than I’d ever been.
“Did a deal with the devil, didn’t you?”
I closed my eyes.
The priest chuckled and patted my shoulder. “I can help you, if you want.”
I shook my head and looked down at my hands, the blood of the innocents long gone. “No. I deserve to be taken.”
The priest hummed, whether in agreement or not, I couldn’t tell. “Then I’ll just sit with you, if you don’t mind.”
I didn’t speak and the two of us waited until the dawn.
Love that you chose "I was a dead man." Turned into a great little story!
Thanks! I had fun writing it.
What a sort of sweet but terrible journey. Great writing!
Read this on my break from work and love it. Great opening.
Oh I love this one. In so many ways--the wandering priest, the traveling salesmen who leave him alone...so good.
Life in the Thirties! Me too. Wannabe Anna Quindlen. Before that I wanted to be Jane Pauley, but then I learned she woke up at 5am and whisked off to Manhattan and didn’t get to see her kids at breakfast.
Jane Pauley! Yes! My girlfriend used to do her hair for those early shows.
Well this is fun. Sort of a 3rd degrees of separation for me (almost). Loved Jane Pauley.
Okay, here goes my try...
At school, I was the little Communist girl, singing cheerful pioneer songs about squirrels and summer trees and life as ‘a wonderful, beautiful thing.’ At home, I was the responsible girl, doing her homework quietly and cooking her own dinner. In the kibbutz, I was the outsider who stank of the city and the ‘goya’ who couldn’t be Jewish. At the army, I was the pacifist who was useless with guns and dreamt of a life in Italy. In my twenties I was the cheap Eastern European labour who helped raise your children. But also, the theatre fanatic who spent her last pennies on theatre tickets and plays. The hopeless romantic who refused to sleep with just anyone, and waited for the real deal. The globe trotter who was looking for herself in the most remote places, living out of a small backpack. Lost in books, lost in stories, lost in languages and always searching. In my thirties I thought I found it – my belonging – when I became a wife, and mother, and almost lost myself completely. I was already in my forties when I realized that who I was, is part of who I am, and who I will be – an identity that is forever in flux. And that this is a very good thing, whether you happen to agree, or not.
This is just great, Imola!
I happen to agree!
Loved the journey of this
I was not a good time girl. I was an end of times girl, as in it won’t be long until the final war, the war where everyone will be sorted into sheep and goats, and if you wonder which group will be saved, just watch a goat, frisky, free-willed, willing to eat just about anything, jump up on its hind legs and execute a perfect round-off. And if you think God is enamored of goat-like hijinks, just ask yourself what happened to Lot’s wife, or the Egyptians firstborns, or Jesus, come to that. I was an end of time girl until we bought a flock of sheep, until I heard their plaintive bleat, sounding like a tired old hymn, fur mud-matted, willing to follow the leader anywhere. That’s when I decided I’d rather be a good time girl.
Your childhood fascinates me!
I’ll trade ya!
Honestly, you really don't want to do that....
Oh that division of the world into goats and sheep! Similar end times philosophy here and the warning that it could happen at any time—and probably when I was where I shouldn’t be. Love your description of the bleats sounding like tired old hymns. But I like to think God, if we must insist on one, is shaking her head at all the mythology that men wrote down to explain how patriarchy made all the rules. She probably gave us goats to remind us that “frisky and free-willed” is what she intended all along. (Good time girls for the win!)
Thanks Angela. My dad, although a mercurial alcoholic, (and not a Jehovahs Witness like the rest of us) proclaimed he’d rather be a goat.
Goats are way more fun! My older brother, also an alcoholic, brought home intriguing friends that drove my parents crazy and surrounded himself later on with a houseful of eccentric characters. I didn’t fully appreciate his influence until much later.
all things bright and beautiful!
Gerald, how can I work in that hymn?
Well… as a title perhaps? Or borrow some words when your narrator hears the sheep’s bleating echoing “….” Like a tired old hymn.
Time Loop Story #10
Your neighbors most likely think you are an alien. While others are playing bridge or backgammon, you are reading and writing stories. You joined a book club but while your neighbors prefer reading best sellers, you opted for Alliss At the Fire by John Fosse. You lasted eight months and then excused yourself, saying you have too many other books to read. J, from the book club said they miss you because you offer a different perspective.
Your readings began with Gnosticism, which led you to read about serpent symbolism and the Faustian pact, and that led to research on the Chalcolithic Age and that led you to write a story about a nomadic band leading their herds and flocks through the ancient Sinai, which wasn’t a desert then but an arid grassland, and one man from the band who made a pact with a volcanic deity and followed a phoenix, born from the volcano, made love to an Egyptian goddess about whom you dreamed and the phoenix smelted its egg-shaped copper-bearing stones in fire, and the nomadic band learned from Yaldabaoth how to cast the copper into a gleaming snake, and by turning stone to metal, humankind has progressed from knapping stone weaponry to nuclear warheads —all of which required vast amounts of research on pre-Dynastic Egyptian deities, and the Benu Bird who most scholars agree is the same as the Phoenix, and which volcano in the Sinai rift was the most likely choice, metallurgical ritual, and copper smelting techniques, and how copper smelted with tin becomes bronze, and how the Late Bronze Age collapsed when a volcano erupted in the Mediterranean, and iron metallurgy was introduced.
But what if, you ask, humans had refrained from casting copper weaponry but had only used it for making ornaments and objects used in fertility rituals as they had done originally? What if they had never replaced their rituals honoring the earth with worship of a volcanic deity whose command is to dominate the earth? A volcanic deity whose fire is recreated in the furnaces where iron is smelted and forges where steel is made? Would we be facing an apocalypse now?
And yes, you do have unusual perspective, just has J. said you do, but as to whether your neighbors think you are an alien, for as long as you never tell them what you are thinking or writing about, they will just consider you a harmless, eccentric reclusive, but friendly neighbor who nods and says “Hello, how are you today?” whenever you meet in the elevator.
"What if?" The mantra of the true writer. (A version of "What now?")
How so? Say more, please. Why is 'what if?' a mantra of a true writer? Maybe there's a prompt in there?
When a writer is writing, the question that keeps him/her going is "What if my character laughed right here? Would that work?" and so on. Writing is a series of "what ifs," one after another. (There's actually a writing book of writing exercises called "What If" by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.)
Thank you. I see now how I do that unconsciously. And sometimes the choice is wrong and then, by asking 'what if', try something else.
Yes, we most often do it unconsciously.
So much here! And the what ifs really have me thinking. Also the Benu Bird.
Ah—I happen to be working on a “Where I’m From” prompt for a quick interview, and, messing around and actually not working, saw your prompt today. I think they are similar although the ‘where I’m from’ asks for specific things (ordinary objects, family foods, etc.) My ordinary object is the yellow line down the middle of the road. When I think of myself as a girl, I’d say ‘I was the flower girl, announcing the arrival of the bride.’ Now I have to think about how these two things mash together. Thanks for the prompt!
Sounds like a good prompt--talking about "where you're from" through objects, food, etc. Good luck and hope it's a fun interview!
Thanks!
The elements you are putting together sound intriguing. Have fun with this.
I was a Jim West boy. That was the name of the character played by Robert Conrad on The Wild, Wild West, one of my favorite TV shows from the 1960s. He went around 1870’s America living on a special train, inventively solving crimes and chasing villains with the help of his intellectual and tech-smart sidekick, Artemus Gordon. When the show first came on, I was seven, and during its four seasons, I inched up onto the cusp of puberty, full of incipient thoughts that hormones would eventually make blossom into a realization that I wanted to not just stare at men, but touch and be touched by them.
Robert Conrad was exceptionally good-looking and well-built, and his costumers knew precisely how to dress him to emphasize his V-shaped gymnast build. In 1966, I didn’t understand what the vague stirring was that I felt every time he came on scene, or why I liked in particular those perilous situations in which he was bound and shirtless, resisting his interrogators with arrogant defiance.
If I couldn’t articulate what that feeling was, I knew it wasn’t what a “normal” boy should be feeling. I remember, at one point, trying to compare the sensations I had when I watched the distinctly more avuncular and unfetching Ross Martin. He was a well-written character, personable and sharp, but there was no doubt about it, I was not an Artemus Gordon boy. Nor did the periodic saloon girls and female spies brought on to confirm Jim’s heterosexual bona fides do a thing for me. When I fantasized about being tied up, (whoever says children are too young to develop fetishes is wrong) it was always a man who looked something like Robert Conrad doing the kidnapping. That fantasy was my obsessive secret. (And I instinctively sensed was shared by others because the frontispiece of the Hardy Boys’ books, full of “scenes” of their adventures, had a visual of them tied up and gagged. And they found themselves in that position by Chapter 11 with amazing consistency.)
A few years later, when my brother and I came out to each other, we got a big kick out of finding out we were both Jim West boys. It’s hard to imagine a world in which we might have expressed this to each other, but I see that as a good thing. Children need their own secret gardens.
Loved reading this. I remember watching that show as a kid. I only remember the train. Meanwhile, my crush was on Will Robinson. Among others.
Oh, Major Don West was so much cuter. Not that I didn't have a few crushes on boys closer to my own age, namely, Johnny Quest.
No! Not Johnny Quest! He was my first love!
I know you have the fullest of plate just keeping up with the prompt responses, but if you care to read this short chapter from "Ink from the Pen" you will understand why Johnny Quest holds a permanent place in my heart. (No expectations) http://thetrashwhisperer.blogspot.com/2016/01/pistachios.html
That's a lovely story--I kind of choked up at the end. (Though I worried for a moment that he wouldn't have a stamp to send the letter!) Thanks for sharing this. You've had quite the life, which is probably a huge understatement. (Race Bannon! I'd forgotten about him!)
Love this.
Loved this show! I have to believe Robert Conrad inspired those feelings in a lot of boys watching that show. But you just made me realize why the name Artemus immediately jumped into my head when I started writing my WIP. And oh those Hardy boys, indeed. This was so fun to read.
It's a great name that should really come back in vogue! (Unfortunately, the diminuitive form, "Artie" is rather pedestrian.)
And yes Jim West was quite the trigger for a great many future gay men. Him and the Dad on Flipper.
Oh god. I had forgotten about him.
I love your boy's comparison between hot Jim West and Artemus Gordon.
My crush was Billy Mumy and to this day it is the only fan letter I have ever written
Another Billy Mumy fan! (I wrote to Mark earlier that my crush was on Will Robinson....)
You were in good company - but with other little girls, not the little gay boys, for sure!