For all the times I tell my students—the same way Stephen King told me in On Writing, the same way Thomas Lewis reminds me in A General Theory of Love—that most stories, above all else, are about relationships, I tend to forget this. I want to make stories about everything else: yoga, depression, Los Angeles, eating disorders, drumming, cigarettes, music, love, etc, etc... I want to make them bigger, flashier, up the stakes by giving them more places to go and more proof of their significance.
"If only I could describe that first time I shaped my body into Camel Pose in a way that really conveys that I went to another plane of reality...like a desert plane, where everything was blinding yellow, wide open and infinite..." I find myself musing on some mornings, clearly when I'm off on another plane of reality, thinking about the memoir I'll come back to someday. Yes, there is a memoir in progress. Yes, it's about LA and television and yoga and... well, a lot of things.
This morning I was talking to Dada, with whom we share the raising of one human experiment, currently in the form of an almost 8-year-old Jude. What we talk about when we talk about Jude is varied and celebratory, often addressing the logistics of raising him (as best we can) with consistent values and discipline from two separate houses. We do pretty well except for the occasional snag on screen time. Neither of us is too political or hysterical when it comes to the Matrix; it has more to do with preference: Dada loves making movies and doing stuff with technology. I am bored by it and prefer face-to-face over virtual.
Still, occasional flare ups where I start to wonder "is he playing too many violent video games or watching too many scary movies?" result in Dada insisting there is "nothing to worry about," reminding me it's interactive, they play together, there is plenty of supervision, etc. And yet, you can take the girl out of LA, but you can't...
"But, Dada," I tell him, "remember what my memoir is about? It's about television ruining my life!" This gives us a both a laugh, me because I am citing my own unpublished memoir as evidence. Not that I don't make a good point: years of unsupervised TV and movie and music video watching while growing up in Los Angeles resulted in years of suffering, distorted thinking because I assumed TV was real, that I should tithe to the Hollywood gods to the point that I married a gay man because he—"we"— looked good. Ergo, I should've been happy, right?
"Your memoir isn't about television, it's about your mother, for Christ Sake," Dada says, reminding me how my mother insisted we watch the holocaust movies year after year and how they scared me to death. How I couldn't sleep at night when Ma was out on the town because I was afraid they were going to come get us, turn us into soap.
Contrast that to the hours of "happily ever after" TV that came my way daily via The Brady Bunch, Heart to Heart, Facts of Life, Different Strokes, Fantasy Island, Punky Brewster... and I was one confused kid.
When I went to Ma with these Hollywood spawn fears, she was not much help. "Could it still happen, Ma?" I said, following her around the kitchen while she crashed around in the junk drawer. After all, Ma knew best and most about all things. "Could it, Ma?"
"Who the fuck knows," she said, "it's possible. There are a lot of people out there who still hate Jews."
"But—"
"Now go outside and tell your fucking brother to get in here. Dinner's ready and I'm going to be late." She crushed Top Ramen noodles into the near boiling water, hurrying it along with a wooden spoon.
"K! Can we eat in the living room?" Happy Days would be on soon.
"No. You'll make a fucking mess. Okay. Just don't make a fucking mess."
Happy Days and Top Ramen, a little Sara Lee banana cake for dessert and things were looking up. Today, while it's still light, let there be dancing at Mel's; tonight I'll deal with the nazis!
How could I have forgotten? Without Ma, the journey we take together throughout the pages of my memoir, there is really no story. We are the momentum and the tension behind the entire thing. How will it "end" between us? What will I have to do for my own "happily ever after"?
Leave it to Dada to remind me of this. I picture he and Jude at the Red House, sword fighting or boxing on the Wei, before dissolving into a pile of boy laughter in the hammock. I picture Jude asking his dad if zombies are real, if they can do "stay up late night" again and have cereal for dinner. I picture Dada telling him about the zombies he has seen at work, that even though there are plenty of them, there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to fear.
WRITE WITH ME? WHO AND WHAT IS YOUR MEMOIR ABOUT?
Ah, the ever evolving memoir...
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Jewish, my favorite fiancé was Texas Jewish. And several of my closets friends growing up in Boston were Jewish. So it was with much astonishment and chagrin that I discovered in the last year of his life that my father was a serious anti-Semite. And when I asked around it was clear that anti-Semitism was extremely prevalent amongst my aunts and uncles and really the whole Irish Catholic community I grew up in. And yet I was totally clueless,
I am still good friends with my Jewish Texas fiancé, Diana, and she just recently told me that when I took her home to meet my family she was immediately aware of my father's anti-Semitism. But at the time she said nothing to me. I was aghast at this news and a bit ticked off but she just countered that she was certain I had inherited none of my father's attitudes so that was all that mattered to her.
Of course after WWII and the revelation of the Holocaust it became "politically incorrect" to be visibly anti-Semitic so the entire Boston Irish Catholic community (of the Greatest Generation) had to suppress its attitude towards Jewish folk. That they did so effectively that my generation had little if any awareness of this repulsive strain of prejudice really amazes me.
The memoir is indeed fluid and ceaselessly surprising. Thank the stars above.
Love it, Rob: favorite fiance. Man, I gotta write about that one... Once again you've taught me something in the way of a (true) story! Thanks Rob. One of these days I'll have to write about my half Irish favorite fiance whose parents may have been a.s... though you'd never know it. Here's to the powers of repression (the bright side!) . Talk soon, Rox
ReplyDelete