On Truth and Creative Nonfiction

I went to Pitt, allegedly the birthplace of creative nonfiction, for a semester for graduate school. Something that got paid a lot of lip-service was the role of truth in Creative Nonfiction. Here's where I've landed on the matter. Just today actually. First some back story:

I want to write a novel about my grandma. Baptized Florence, but Flossie, Flo, Sarge, or any other of a slew of nicknames to her friends and family. Florence Ella Leib died long about 2005, when my baby was just a wee baby. She was an ahead-of-her-time feminist pragmatist. At least that's the truth that matters to me.

Here are the other truths that matter to me: She served in WWII. She had a baby at age 17 to a guy who didn't marry her. She had 4 more babies with another guy who also didn't marry her, but who at least lived with her and pretended until he became a PTSD drunk and she worked 3 jobs to support her 4 kids, one of whom was my dad.

Recently, I was at some family thing--right, it was a family reunion with about 6 of the not-dead people from my grandma's generation, most of whom are now dying off. It was the other side of the family, but one of Flossie's cousins or something married one of my mom's mom's brothers or something. In any case, the two sides of my family are connected somehow via marriage (but not via blood thank the lucky constellations). Anyhow, all the folks in my mom's generation, who've started losing parents now, were all ruminating over how it's important to ask these questions we have about our parents' parents. Because before we know it, they'll be gone and there won't be any more asking.

Since then, I've been in minor panic mode trying to figure out how to get one-on-one with a couple of Flossie's living siblings who're cogent enough to converse. And it occurred to me today, as I read this disaster of a short story I wrote, that the important truth in fiction is the emotional truth. Whatever my grandma's youth was like, what I make up will be at least as cool and, as far as anybody who's alive can remember, as accurate!

Boy-oh was that a liberating epiphany. The stuff I know is enough. And unless there's some political or social or moral reason for the whole journalistic integrity thing, creative nonfiction can be fiction as far as I'm concerned. Arguably, all realist fiction is creative nonfiction. The only stuff that's really fiction would be dystopian sci fi and those sorts of things. But to a schizophrenic, even those things could seem real.

The notion that perception is reality has been hitting my home base pretty hard of late.

Counter Culture Dancing

Couple things happened in my head while I was dancing my hypothetical balls off at Club Z in Williamsport last night with some of my girlfriends and our DD/supervisor/agent, Tom.

First, I was missing a whole lot during my crippled-by-self-consciousness 20s. Dancing at a gay bar is awesome. I did go dancing at a gay bar once in my 20s, with some gay temporary roommates. I got felt up (and not in a nice way) by some straight dude.

Which is a total quandary. What are the straight people doing at the gay bar? I know, I know. It's a bar, a club, there's dancing and the air is thick with poorly mixed DJ beats and cigarette smoke. The energy is contagious and it's totally counter culture. I guess there're some straight folks (like myself) who get a kick out of being someplace where different is normal. In Williamsport, if you don't want to hang out with the 20-23 set at Cell Block, it's the only place to go dancing.

But what was with the posturing straight men trying to grab my (luscious) bootie, and feeling up Amber, this drag queen who danced with us, and trying to dance with the irrepressible Hillary? What were they posturing? Were they pretend gay or pretend straight? Were they trying to feel us up so as to discern our sex? I feel like mine is fairly obvious. And Amber's was, too, but her girl parts done comparatively well. And Hillary is a feminine, shimmering pixie. Do their weasely minds believe genitals grabbing is more acceptable at a gay bar?

That was what I told myself the first time. But I'm older now and wiser and angrier and more aware of the very real way in which women (and very similarly homosexuals) are second class citizens, even now--in the future! I sincerely believe that most straight men are utter pigs and not to be trusted. And I follow @MsMagazine on twitter, so I get all these news feeds about the high sex-discrimination crimes that happen the world over. Now. In the future!

And when I got home last night and I was a sweaty, vaguely drunk, cigarette stinking mess in bed with my lover, and my body still ticked with energy and glee, when I thought about way in which the fun was kind of marinated in this palpable cultural dischord; I almost wept.

There is no minority for which I have greater sympathy than the transgendered/transvestites. I can't think of a worse affliction than looking in the mirror and seeing the wrong thing. Feeling like your skin got mis-sewn at the factory.

my office chair

I spent 4 hours yesterday working my my office chair of my groovy office. I will post photos someday. My bottom got sore and my legs fell asleep. Maybe I need a proper office chair?

Also, I am still plagued by the idea that blogs need focus, and that mine doesn't have one. I don't know what to make the focus. Maybe I will start a new blog, and that will be where I exercise focus, but on what? I change my mind all the time.

Haha. Maybe I'll make one called Feminist Stories and write a new feminist story every day.

My sister likes my blog. I'm glad. I don't know if anybody else does.

PSPA Conference

The good news: my presentation was neither too long nor too short for the time allotted.
They gave me a Starbucks Gift Card for showing up.

The bad news: only three students came to my presentation.

More good news: one of the three students talked about how I am her new favorite thing/person. There is something really sweet and inspiring about being the object of a teenager's fleeting affection. Especially when it's the hero/admiration kind.

at the lip of a downward spiral

Today is the first day I feel like myself again. Since our little run-in with the law, I have been sort of revelling in self-pity.

Despite Cash Bash (where I got money, free food & booze and an iPod Nano just for selling some Subarus!!), hanging out with groovy peeps, QT with Ms. P, getting at least one new fan of my blog and having some small successes at work.

I tried to explain to my mom and sister earlier why I think it is healthy to allow periods of wallowing in the dark of self-loathing & pity. It did not work. I told them I'd be even more insane if I didn't. I do not think they were impressed (or convinced).

For example: I made up this thing that I say when I burp or fart: It's like a parody of the 23rd Psalm. "Pardon me, for yea though I belch in the valley of the shadow of gastro-intestinal anguish, I shall fear no flatulence." My sister told me that I must be quoting Monty Python. She said that tomorrow I may admit that I'd made it up about making it up.

A Pen that lights up

At work last evening, there was a pen on my desk that said on the side, "Jesus is Light Daryl and Barbara." It was clearly a favor from some pair of zealots' wedding.

Slightly cool about this pen: the top quarter of the pen was a clear plastic cylinder with what appeared to be a DNA helix in it (ironic, right??!), and there was a little button below the clear plastic part that, when pushed, lit up the little DNA helix with this lovely bluish light.

But to me, there was no dispute about whether or not to keep and use the pen. The punishable "Jesus is Light" is far too corny to grace my coffee cup full of pens.

So I gave the pen to the boy who sits in the cubicle on the other side of my cubicle's wall who does--in earnest--believe that Jesus is Light.

Later, I found that my other colleague left it on my desk, thinking that I'd have a quandary: the pen is cool, it lights up. The pen is uncool, it's about jesus. Keep it? Get rid of it?

If I had know that part of the story, I might have kept it as a souvenir of the fact that somebody besides me had put that much thought into my pen taste.

Dillsburg & Fates

Tonight I drove back from York via Pennsylvania Rte 74 N.

York is a gorgeous town. It's huge, urban, fabulous. There is a vacuum hospital. Can you imagine? I don't need to imagine anymore!

But about 20 miles later, 74 cuts through Dillsburg, and as I drove through I was swept back in time a dozen years. I was in high school and not long for my profession as a Christian. I'd switched churches and started hanging out with this girl Lorraine. She and I met from Bible Quizzing. Bible Quizzing is the only thing from church I still miss. Competitive memorization and smartness. Boss.

Anyway, Lorraine's family (which was just her and her mom) had more money than any family I'd met to date. We ate a lot of Crab Rangoon and Ben&Jerry's from the Giant grocery about 1/2 mile from the house L and her mom shared. The money thing is only relevant inasmuch as the exoticness of people-with-money I perceived and the awe I felt. They weren't people who acted like they had money, and now I'm not even sure they had soooo much money, it's just that they had more money than anybody I'd ever met.

I've lost track of a lot of friends, but Lorraine is one of the only friends I've consistently regretted losing track of.

And recently, I've been selling cars to some of her High School cohorts.

I think this is what the Cosmos does when it wants me to relocate old friends.