Month: September 2010

How to Reflect on Failure

You dream that a high school buddy of yours is going to have lunch with Lorrie Moore and won’t introduce you to her when you ask him to. You decide to stalk him and then run into them “by chance” where you’ll make your move by impressing her with your knowledge of her work and the best of your charismatic magic.

There is a subplot wherein you try to speak with two tattooed Russian girls who are working a counter at a lemonade stand at a mall food court. The detail of their tattoos is inconsequential. They are terribly young and their bored eyes are by far their most striking feature. They never speak a word but you just know. They are one person.

After this it becomes clear that you’re at the mall because that’s where your buddy and Lorrie Moore will be. They lunch at a Mongolian barbecue place. All of the seats are made of fiberglass and the decor is themed mustard yellow. There is a bar and that’s where your friend and Lorrie Moore sit to lunch. Their conversation appears to be moving along swimmingly.

You notice the two Russians are sitting in a booth near yours, with older men. You try to tell them to stop but realize you haven’t the right.

You hear your buddy yell, “Fuck you!”

Then you hear her yell, jokingly, “No, fuck you!” Then she laughs, and it occurs to you that you would never have yelled “Fuck you” at Lorrie Moore, not ever. Maybe that’s what you’ve been doing wrong all along.

You would have told her, Lorrie Moore, that you’re a huge fan, and that you write, too, and although you don’t do this in the dream you can still see her eyes glaze over and prepare to say, “Thank you very much. So kind of you. Keep writing.”

You wake up and listen to the ceiling fan flow like a distant river. You curse the flashing LED lights of a dozen aparatii and wish for a blackout, for total darkness. You are prepared to sweat through the night from lack of ceiling fan.

You fall into another dream in which you are sitting in a surgery observation area overlooking some poor sap getting his brain cut into but don’t really notice because you are too occupied by  making out with a blonde woman who is perhaps five to seven years older than you and wears thick burgundy lipstick, a lot of which ends up on your lips, cheeks, and neck, but what you remember most of all is that waxy cigarette and beer taste that remains in your mouth and on your shirt and you just wish you could remember a single name and not a list of them.

You wake up again and stand in the shower letting the hot water cool you off because now there’s nothing left to do except remain awake until a day has passed and you’re too tired to dream.

How to Reflect on Failure

You dream that a high school buddy of yours is going to have lunch with Lorrie Moore and won’t introduce you to her when you ask him to. You decide to stalk him and then run into them “by chance” where you’ll make your move by impressing her with your knowledge of her work and the best of your charismatic magic.

There is a subplot wherein you try to speak with two tattooed Russian girls who are working a counter at a lemonade stand at a mall food court. The detail of their tattoos is inconsequential. They are terribly young and their bored eyes are by far their most striking feature. They never speak a word but you just know. They are one person.

After this it becomes clear that you’re at the mall because that’s where your buddy and Lorrie Moore will be. They lunch at a Mongolian barbecue place. All of the seats are made of fiberglass and the decor is themed mustard yellow. There is a bar and that’s where your friend and Lorrie Moore sit to lunch. Their conversation appears to be moving along swimmingly.

You notice the two Russians are sitting in a booth near yours, with older men. You try to tell them to stop but realize you haven’t the right.

You hear your buddy yell, “Fuck you!”

Then you hear her yell, jokingly, “No, fuck you!” Then she laughs, and it occurs to you that you would never have yelled “Fuck you” at Lorrie Moore, not ever. Maybe that’s what you’ve been doing wrong all along.

You would have told her, Lorrie Moore, that you’re a huge fan, and that you write, too, and although you don’t do this in the dream you can still see her eyes glaze over and prepare to say, “Thank you very much. So kind of you. Keep writing.”

You wake up and listen to the ceiling fan flow like a distant river. You curse the flashing LED lights of a dozen aparatii and wish for a blackout, for total darkness. You are prepared to sweat through the night from lack of ceiling fan.

You fall into another dream in which you are sitting in a surgery observation area overlooking some poor sap getting his brain cut into but don’t really notice because you are too occupied by  making out with a blonde woman who is perhaps five to seven years older than you and wears thick burgundy lipstick, a lot of which ends up on your lips, cheeks, and neck, but what you remember most of all is that waxy cigarette and beer taste that remains in your mouth and on your shirt and you just wish you could remember a single name and not a list of them.

You wake up again and stand in the shower letting the hot water cool you off because now there’s nothing left to do except remain awake until a day has passed and you’re too tired to dream.

The Fall of Man

Blasius was a decrepit old fellow who cared not for his fellow man but for his fellow man’s skill at brewing a fine pint of dark ale.  The t-shirt and slovenly denim jeans belied the sophistication and well-bred demeanor that he claimed to possess with boisterous laugh and thunderous jest.  His unshaven complexion (for this man was hirsutely blessed beyond compare) gave him an air of tramp and rogue, seeking places that were once common but now dwindled as the generations after him decided the fashion and appropriate social clubs of the day.

One such gathering place gained recognition for the refusal to assimilate (more due to cost of improvement than any notion of quaint old world charm), and it was in this establishment that Blasius was most likely to be found.  It was The Karmen House, once owned by renowned and now deceased club owner Karmen Indehar and since owned by two business men, the first of which found that his dream of owning a social club was no longer his dream and the latter now old and not willing to depart with the only business he knew.

Although Blasius did not care for his fellow man he was keenly aware and drawn to his fellow woman, a number of which he personally addressed in his most charismatic manner.  In this establishment, his Karmen as he called it, Blasius found the cure that he yearned for, and relished in the perceived company of the women who happened by, either alone or with escorts.  One such occasion, the evening described herein, began with two young women flanked and petted by three older men, although only one of the men showed any amorous intent.

Blasius sat at a corner of the bar, a usual place to spend an evening although he could sometimes be found at a table where he appeared to sit and wait for a guest that would never come.  “Oh ho!” bellowed Blasius at the sight of the group of men and women, “I see we are joined by a fine pair of lasses on this beautiful evening!  Come, gentlemen and ladies, and take a seat at the peaceable end of the bar.”

“What, dude?” they asked of him.

“I am no ‘dude.’  I am Blasius!  Now, come and join me.”

The group silently walked past to the back entrance as Blasius’s head rotated to follow them out through the door.

“Your clientele’s manners leave much to be desired, Jorge.”

“Yea,” said Jorge, the barman standing nearby but intently watching the game of fútbol on the television hanging overhead.

Blasius sat on the stool furthest from the door, near a place in the back corner where no light could penetrate and the back entrance door creaked wistfully.  Blasius enjoyed the pleasant sound of creaking metal for reasons he did not care to explain.  The cackle of a woman’s laughter also pleased him, and this he did feel the need to expound upon.

“Gets me all riled up.”

As the evening wore on, a woman of a good and decent age stepped into the bar.  Strands of her hair, prepared in a top bun, hung loosely around her pale round face.  The skin of her finely tailored yet obviously well-worn dress suit stretched in several good places and perhaps a few bad ones as she approached young Jorge who was busying himself with a plastic pitcher full of a lighter Belgian brew.  Her manners were direct, unlike her passive voice.

“Hi,” she told him.

“Hello.”

“I wonder if you could do me a favor?  My car is stalled outside and I need someone to help me push it.”

“Um, to help you push the car?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t right now, but if you wait a few minutes then maybe,” he replied.

“Well, perhaps someone else can help.”  She peered into the farthest recesses of the club but was dismayed to see that there were not many patrons in The Karmen House that evening, and of the few that were present, none seemed capable of the task at hand.

The woman sighed and smiled in defeat at Jorge.  She turned and was nearly out through the door when she heard a bellow echo from the far end of the bar.  She turned to see Blasius standing before her, his hefty stomach peering out from beneath his t-shirt and a wry grin across his rounded face.

“Do you seek help, madam?”

She looked hesitantly toward Blasius and then at Jorge, who had already returned to the fútbol game.

“Well, yes… but it’s okay.  Please, don’t bother yourself.”  She turned to walk away but was once again stopped by a booming voice calling after her.

“Madam, wait!  I am Blasius and I can help you.  I could not help but overhear and I, a man of great physique and cunning, am more than a capable of assisting with your vehicle.  Please, please, come sit and explain the situation.  What exactly is the problem?”

The woman smiled nervously and appeared to be on the brink of escaping through the swinging wooden door, but paused and let out a long, exhausted breath.  She moved strands of her hair behind her ear and then approached Blasius, who was once again seated, but did not sit down herself.

“Well, my car’s just stuck outside.  I think it’s all this darn rain.”

“Yes, yes,” nodded Blasius.  “Weather is a most temperamental mistress.  Hers is the power to control our very way of life, as is the case with all women, hm?”  He smiled and winked before drawing a mouthful of ale from his glass.

“It’s not that bad,” she said.  “I really just need someone to help me push my car toward the curb.”

“Ah, so it is merely physical, manly strength that you require?  Well, fear not!  I am a man of great physical capability.  Please, sit and allow me to ease your woes with a pint of ale before we see to the matter of your vehicle.”

“Um, no thanks.”  She smiled nervously again.  “I need to get going.  If you could just come out and help me push the car…”

Blasius narrowed the slits of his large, globe-like eyelids.  He paused and looked at his glass.  The Karmen House became silent, and the woman looked about her more anxiously than before.  She glanced back at Blasius who remained fixed on the pint glass before him, and he spoke.

“I know you, madam.  You are a temptress: a seducer of men’s souls.  We have already met.  You are strong in your subversive strategies to subdue and overtake my very being but I am not one to fall.  Do not attempt to entice me with your feminine wiles.  I do not sway for the wind as does the weak young sapling growing among groves of equally weak brethren.  I am the oak tree that stands in the field and observes over all of creation with the will of iron and stance of pride.  A mere rock fails to capture the essence of what I have become after these long years of strength and vigor.

“I crossed the ocean as a young man and witnessed the freedom of men as they sailed their ships of wood and strode upon the back of the bare-chested visages of these sirens of the sea.  How they spoke of women and knowing women and losing women and longing for women.  Their goal was not to deliver goods or earn their wage but to find the objects of their desire.  They lusted after them and wondered over them and wept in spite of them at crowded taverns at every port between the Americas and the great Western shores of Spain, France, and England.  They paid for them and lost not only their souls but their dignity and their very being, the poor fools.  It is a willful man that denies his obsession and a stupid man that denies the attraction altogether, for all men crave what men have craved since the dawn of the sun and the moon and the stars of heaven above.  Those stars shone upon those men as they clamored out of the taverns with costly maidens in hand, eager to part the flesh and ease the soul.

“Beyond the Old World I bore witness to the wonders of middle Asia, where dark-skinned men of mysterious origin developed unholy cultures of magic and sorcery which they utilized in their attempts to control the indomitable spirit of Eve and make it their own.  The fools!  Their empires fell and they ceased to exist in their vainglorious attempts to dominate that which has known the purity of freedom.  Our arrogance, madam, and your trustworthy legions of sirens!  That is the reason for it all.

“Sirens of the sea, and sirens of the sand.  I have seen the great deserts and crossed them with the determination of the American bulldog and the endurance of the great African camel.  Through the deserts I witnessed men fall and perish beneath each other’s feet as they warred and toiled for the love of power, which they needed in order to win the affections of their subdued mistresses, for women are women no matter the culture.

“It was in the desert, in the lands of the House of Saud itself, where I witnessed your true power and contempt.  It was the gathering of men that caught my attention.  All dressed in thick layers, shielding themselves from the sun and sand even in the populated city-center in which they found themselves.  Though unfamiliar with local customs I felt compelled to attend the spectacle that had garnered so much attention.  A sideshow, perhaps, or a brawl?  No such thing, madam, and as I tell my tale I fear you are already aware of its conclusion.

“Much to my disbelief, there was nothing more than a woman in the center of this crowd of ruffians!  She was buried in the ground up to her shoulders, and a dark shroud covered her head and shielded her from the sun.  All the men gathered around in a circle and before I could comprehend what I was witnessing they began to stone her!  And the terror, the horror!  The men believed they were beating the spirit out of that woman, but no.  Her eyes, her horrible eyes.  She cursed them all and they would perish horrible deaths, every one of them.  She stared at me as the stones struck upon her and deformed her face until she could no longer physically stare into my soul.  Do not, nay, dare not ask me why I did not look away for I have no answer that is satisfactory.  If you wonder why I did not attempt to stop such cruelty then I must confess fear, for even men of great prowess must be humbled by their ineptitude.

“But here I am, madam.  Alive, having survived my travels.  My will is iron, my mind is stone.  My body may succumb but by God I am stronger than the flesh and mightier than a sword.  I stand atop the highest mountain and shout at the wind as it forces upon me its sweetest caressing breath and attempts to enter me and engulf my mind.  I am a man.  I will not succumb!  I know the power you hold within you!  Keep yourself!”

The woman stared at Blasius, as if waiting to be certain that Blasius had reached a conclusion to his rambling.  She looked around her and no one else seemed to have noticed Blasius’s speech, or they did not care to listen.  When a minute or more passed she asked Jorge for a shot of brandy, which she paid for, and then drank eagerly.  She regained her composure and turned toward Blasius, who had just finished consuming the last of his ale.

“The car?”

Blasius nodded and stood, his head lowered.

“At your service, madam.”  He plodded along ahead of her and held the door as she approached him.

“You know that you will not receive compensation in any form,” she said.

He waited for her to pass alongside him.  “Your presence, madam, has been more than charitable.”

The Fall of Man

Blasius was a decrepit old fellow who cared not for his fellow man but for his fellow man’s skill at brewing a fine pint of dark ale.  The t-shirt and slovenly denim jeans belied the sophistication and well-bred demeanor that he claimed to possess with boisterous laugh and thunderous jest.  His unshaven complexion (for this man was hirsutely blessed beyond compare) gave him an air of tramp and rogue, seeking places that were once common but now dwindled as the generations after him decided the fashion and appropriate social clubs of the day.

One such gathering place gained recognition for the refusal to assimilate (more due to cost of improvement than any notion of quaint old world charm), and it was in this establishment that Blasius was most likely to be found.  It was The Karmen House, once owned by renowned and now deceased club owner Karmen Indehar and since owned by two business men, the first of which found that his dream of owning a social club was no longer his dream and the latter now old and not willing to depart with the only business he knew.

Although Blasius did not care for his fellow man he was keenly aware and drawn to his fellow woman, a number of which he personally addressed in his most charismatic manner.  In this establishment, his Karmen as he called it, Blasius found the cure that he yearned for, and relished in the perceived company of the women who happened by, either alone or with escorts.  One such occasion, the evening described herein, began with two young women flanked and petted by three older men, although only one of the men showed any amorous intent.

Blasius sat at a corner of the bar, a usual place to spend an evening although he could sometimes be found at a table where he appeared to sit and wait for a guest that would never come.  “Oh ho!” bellowed Blasius at the sight of the group of men and women, “I see we are joined by a fine pair of lasses on this beautiful evening!  Come, gentlemen and ladies, and take a seat at the peaceable end of the bar.”

“What, dude?” they asked of him.

“I am no ‘dude.’  I am Blasius!  Now, come and join me.”

The group silently walked past to the back entrance as Blasius’s head rotated to follow them out through the door.

“Your clientele’s manners leave much to be desired, Jorge.”

“Yea,” said Jorge, the barman standing nearby but intently watching the game of fútbol on the television hanging overhead.

Blasius sat on the stool furthest from the door, near a place in the back corner where no light could penetrate and the back entrance door creaked wistfully.  Blasius enjoyed the pleasant sound of creaking metal for reasons he did not care to explain.  The cackle of a woman’s laughter also pleased him, and this he did feel the need to expound upon.

“Gets me all riled up.”

As the evening wore on, a woman of a good and decent age stepped into the bar.  Strands of her hair, prepared in a top bun, hung loosely around her pale round face.  The skin of her finely tailored yet obviously well-worn dress suit stretched in several good places and perhaps a few bad ones as she approached young Jorge who was busying himself with a plastic pitcher full of a lighter Belgian brew.  Her manners were direct, unlike her passive voice.

“Hi,” she told him.

“Hello.”

“I wonder if you could do me a favor?  My car is stalled outside and I need someone to help me push it.”

“Um, to help you push the car?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t right now, but if you wait a few minutes then maybe,” he replied.

“Well, perhaps someone else can help.”  She peered into the farthest recesses of the club but was dismayed to see that there were not many patrons in The Karmen House that evening, and of the few that were present, none seemed capable of the task at hand.

The woman sighed and smiled in defeat at Jorge.  She turned and was nearly out through the door when she heard a bellow echo from the far end of the bar.  She turned to see Blasius standing before her, his hefty stomach peering out from beneath his t-shirt and a wry grin across his rounded face.

“Do you seek help, madam?”

She looked hesitantly toward Blasius and then at Jorge, who had already returned to the fútbol game.

“Well, yes… but it’s okay.  Please, don’t bother yourself.”  She turned to walk away but was once again stopped by a booming voice calling after her.

“Madam, wait!  I am Blasius and I can help you.  I could not help but overhear and I, a man of great physique and cunning, am more than a capable of assisting with your vehicle.  Please, please, come sit and explain the situation.  What exactly is the problem?”

The woman smiled nervously and appeared to be on the brink of escaping through the swinging wooden door, but paused and let out a long, exhausted breath.  She moved strands of her hair behind her ear and then approached Blasius, who was once again seated, but did not sit down herself.

“Well, my car’s just stuck outside.  I think it’s all this darn rain.”

“Yes, yes,” nodded Blasius.  “Weather is a most temperamental mistress.  Hers is the power to control our very way of life, as is the case with all women, hm?”  He smiled and winked before drawing a mouthful of ale from his glass.

“It’s not that bad,” she said.  “I really just need someone to help me push my car toward the curb.”

“Ah, so it is merely physical, manly strength that you require?  Well, fear not!  I am a man of great physical capability.  Please, sit and allow me to ease your woes with a pint of ale before we see to the matter of your vehicle.”

“Um, no thanks.”  She smiled nervously again.  “I need to get going.  If you could just come out and help me push the car…”

Blasius narrowed the slits of his large, globe-like eyelids.  He paused and looked at his glass.  The Karmen House became silent, and the woman looked about her more anxiously than before.  She glanced back at Blasius who remained fixed on the pint glass before him, and he spoke.

“I know you, madam.  You are a temptress: a seducer of men’s souls.  We have already met.  You are strong in your subversive strategies to subdue and overtake my very being but I am not one to fall.  Do not attempt to entice me with your feminine wiles.  I do not sway for the wind as does the weak young sapling growing among groves of equally weak brethren.  I am the oak tree that stands in the field and observes over all of creation with the will of iron and stance of pride.  A mere rock fails to capture the essence of what I have become after these long years of strength and vigor.

“I crossed the ocean as a young man and witnessed the freedom of men as they sailed their ships of wood and strode upon the back of the bare-chested visages of these sirens of the sea.  How they spoke of women and knowing women and losing women and longing for women.  Their goal was not to deliver goods or earn their wage but to find the objects of their desire.  They lusted after them and wondered over them and wept in spite of them at crowded taverns at every port between the Americas and the great Western shores of Spain, France, and England.  They paid for them and lost not only their souls but their dignity and their very being, the poor fools.  It is a willful man that denies his obsession and a stupid man that denies the attraction altogether, for all men crave what men have craved since the dawn of the sun and the moon and the stars of heaven above.  Those stars shone upon those men as they clamored out of the taverns with costly maidens in hand, eager to part the flesh and ease the soul.

“Beyond the Old World I bore witness to the wonders of middle Asia, where dark-skinned men of mysterious origin developed unholy cultures of magic and sorcery which they utilized in their attempts to control the indomitable spirit of Eve and make it their own.  The fools!  Their empires fell and they ceased to exist in their vainglorious attempts to dominate that which has known the purity of freedom.  Our arrogance, madam, and your trustworthy legions of sirens!  That is the reason for it all.

“Sirens of the sea, and sirens of the sand.  I have seen the great deserts and crossed them with the determination of the American bulldog and the endurance of the great African camel.  Through the deserts I witnessed men fall and perish beneath each other’s feet as they warred and toiled for the love of power, which they needed in order to win the affections of their subdued mistresses, for women are women no matter the culture.

“It was in the desert, in the lands of the House of Saud itself, where I witnessed your true power and contempt.  It was the gathering of men that caught my attention.  All dressed in thick layers, shielding themselves from the sun and sand even in the populated city-center in which they found themselves.  Though unfamiliar with local customs I felt compelled to attend the spectacle that had garnered so much attention.  A sideshow, perhaps, or a brawl?  No such thing, madam, and as I tell my tale I fear you are already aware of its conclusion.

“Much to my disbelief, there was nothing more than a woman in the center of this crowd of ruffians!  She was buried in the ground up to her shoulders, and a dark shroud covered her head and shielded her from the sun.  All the men gathered around in a circle and before I could comprehend what I was witnessing they began to stone her!  And the terror, the horror!  The men believed they were beating the spirit out of that woman, but no.  Her eyes, her horrible eyes.  She cursed them all and they would perish horrible deaths, every one of them.  She stared at me as the stones struck upon her and deformed her face until she could no longer physically stare into my soul.  Do not, nay, dare not ask me why I did not look away for I have no answer that is satisfactory.  If you wonder why I did not attempt to stop such cruelty then I must confess fear, for even men of great prowess must be humbled by their ineptitude.

“But here I am, madam.  Alive, having survived my travels.  My will is iron, my mind is stone.  My body may succumb but by God I am stronger than the flesh and mightier than a sword.  I stand atop the highest mountain and shout at the wind as it forces upon me its sweetest caressing breath and attempts to enter me and engulf my mind.  I am a man.  I will not succumb!  I know the power you hold within you!  Keep yourself!”

The woman stared at Blasius, as if waiting to be certain that Blasius had reached a conclusion to his rambling.  She looked around her and no one else seemed to have noticed Blasius’s speech, or they did not care to listen.  When a minute or more passed she asked Jorge for a shot of brandy, which she paid for, and then drank eagerly.  She regained her composure and turned toward Blasius, who had just finished consuming the last of his ale.

“The car?”

Blasius nodded and stood, his head lowered.

“At your service, madam.”  He plodded along ahead of her and held the door as she approached him.

“You know that you will not receive compensation in any form,” she said.

He waited for her to pass alongside him.  “Your presence, madam, has been more than charitable.”

My First

In my first semester of my first year of my first time in college, I wrote a story.  It was an English assignment in which we had to select one of the three teenage girls from John Updike’s “A & P” and write about the events of the story from that character’s perspective.  There was no analysis of the story, no essay, no study of its literary importance at all.  The assignment was to simply read the story and write one in turn.  I had never written a story before.  Oh, I did well in English.  I was a natural at it.  High school “essays” flowed from my brain like water from a faucet and writing assignments were practically a joke.  I relied on questionable practices and every shortcut in the book to get by in Math and the Sciences but when it came to writing it was just… instinct.  Just a truth, albeit one that didn’t particularly matter at the time.

Many things happen in Updike’s story but I suppose what you really need to know is that these three girls walk into an A & P (a grocery store chain from the Eastern U.S.) in bathing suits, and the narrator, as a healthy, red-blooded American male, goes into detail about the event.  He describes their dress (or lack thereof), their demeanor, and practically their every move from the moment they walk into the store to the moment they leave.  There’s the attractive girl (the leader), the lanky girl, and the chubby girl.  That one, the chubby girl, immediately caught my mind’s eye.  I wanted to know what she thought, why she was there, and really, who she was.

It’s quite an experience to write from a fictional character’s perspective, especially when the character is a girl from New England in the 1960s.  I am decidedly not a girl from New England nor was I familiar with the 1960s outside of the bits one absorbs from popular culture (did you know that it wasn’t just hippies and men in suits and crew cuts?)  This would be my first experience with creation, with giving life to a concept—an idea of a person.  And so I wrote.  The truth is I don’t recall the process and really anything about the assignment outside of the fact that I turned it in to Mike (calling a professor by his first name? amazing!), and that I received a good grade on the assignment.  He made little notes, pointed out the details that he liked and the grammar mistakes that slipped by, and that was it.  For my first story it was a surprisingly underwhelming experience.

I would not write a story again until several years later, when the ideas of a “life plan” and career became meaningless and it became acceptable to indulge in hopes, dreams, and fantasies.  It was then that I finally decided to explore this idea of a person—what he thought, why he was here, and who he really was.

My First

In my first semester of my first year of my first time in college, I wrote a story.  It was an English assignment in which we had to select one of the three teenage girls from John Updike’s “A & P” and write about the events of the story from that character’s perspective.  There was no analysis of the story, no essay, no study of its literary importance at all.  The assignment was to simply read the story and write one in turn.  I had never written a story before.  Oh, I did well in English.  I was a natural at it.  High school “essays” flowed from my brain like water from a faucet and writing assignments were practically a joke.  I relied on questionable practices and every shortcut in the book to get by in Math and the Sciences but when it came to writing it was just… instinct.  Just a truth, albeit one that didn’t particularly matter at the time.

Many things happen in Updike’s story but I suppose what you really need to know is that these three girls walk into an A & P (a grocery store chain from the Eastern U.S.) in bathing suits, and the narrator, as a healthy, red-blooded American male, goes into detail about the event.  He describes their dress (or lack thereof), their demeanor, and practically their every move from the moment they walk into the store to the moment they leave.  There’s the attractive girl (the leader), the lanky girl, and the chubby girl.  That one, the chubby girl, immediately caught my mind’s eye.  I wanted to know what she thought, why she was there, and really, who she was.

It’s quite an experience to write from a fictional character’s perspective, especially when the character is a girl from New England in the 1960s.  I am decidedly not a girl from New England nor was I familiar with the 1960s outside of the bits one absorbs from popular culture (did you know that it wasn’t just hippies and men in suits and crew cuts?)  This would be my first experience with creation, with giving life to a concept—an idea of a person.  And so I wrote.  The truth is I don’t recall the process and really anything about the assignment outside of the fact that I turned it in to Mike (calling a professor by his first name? amazing!), and that I received a good grade on the assignment.  He made little notes, pointed out the details that he liked and the grammar mistakes that slipped by, and that was it.  For my first story it was a surprisingly underwhelming experience.

I would not write a story again until several years later, when the ideas of a “life plan” and career became meaningless and it became acceptable to indulge in hopes, dreams, and fantasies.  It was then that I finally decided to explore this idea of a person—what he thought, why he was here, and who he really was.