Stag-Fish
I think I'm coming down with something. My throat hurts and my breathing is juicy and sounds like someone scraping Styrofoam, which is one of my least favorite sounds in the world and now I'm stuck hearing it in my chest all day. Please please please don't make me get what I had back in January that nearly made me want to slit my giblet just to relieve myself of the pain for ten minutes. I want to get up and move around but when my breathing increases so does the pain so I've been lying in bed since I got home today, buried under covered and reading my Lisa Carver book. And I don't want to call out from work tomorrow either because then I'll just be laying around at home going blehhhhhh but at least at that point I might be done with my book, because I've been pretty engrossed in this lately.
And one of the funny things I've realized the further I read is that Carver's life, in a somewhat less extreme way, runs almost parallel to a story that I've had in my head -- a super secret story that I've been writing throughout my life ever since I was 13 years old, as hard as that is to believe (well for me that is). For years I've progressively written in my head a story about a little punk girl who from the age of 13 has lived this increasingly subversive lifestyle, over the years doing more and more wildly decadent, even ludicrous things with her life, living like a wild animal oftentimes, a complete survivor, although always on the verge of fatal collapse. Her life ran parallel to my own, my own innocent, well-adjusted upbringing, as if she were the me from an alternate universe, a me that could have been. She's my age now and her story is about to come to a close in my head, where she is rehabilitated and reintroduced into polite society, normal and finally, emotional at rest. But is her new life any better than her previous drug-addled prostitute thrill-killer existence? That's part of what I dwell upon the most in this creation I fashioned in my head since my pre-teens. Granted, Carver has lived a far more creative life than my protagonist. But certain parallels are there. It's like watching my creature come magically to life on the page, a creature that I always dared not write or draw throughout the years of molding her for my own personal pleasure because she's too imitate to me, too exploitational to you.
But now I'm wondering if I haven't perhaps been sitting on a story that I probably would have, could have, should have put down on paper in some manner. I suppose it would only be truly interesting if the events in my character's life actually happened to a real person. Making it up feels less autobiographical morality play and more sensationalist attention-getter, like the motion pictures during the early era of the Hayes Code where you were allowed to show sex and nudity onscreen so long as there was some kind of punishing retribution or moral lecturing at the end. I have no intention of moralizing or lecturing. I've just had a wild, dirty story in my head that I've been telling myself on rainy days to keep me amused, and that story could have just as well been someone else's life in another world. My life, perhaps. That's what kind of scares me.
And one of the funny things I've realized the further I read is that Carver's life, in a somewhat less extreme way, runs almost parallel to a story that I've had in my head -- a super secret story that I've been writing throughout my life ever since I was 13 years old, as hard as that is to believe (well for me that is). For years I've progressively written in my head a story about a little punk girl who from the age of 13 has lived this increasingly subversive lifestyle, over the years doing more and more wildly decadent, even ludicrous things with her life, living like a wild animal oftentimes, a complete survivor, although always on the verge of fatal collapse. Her life ran parallel to my own, my own innocent, well-adjusted upbringing, as if she were the me from an alternate universe, a me that could have been. She's my age now and her story is about to come to a close in my head, where she is rehabilitated and reintroduced into polite society, normal and finally, emotional at rest. But is her new life any better than her previous drug-addled prostitute thrill-killer existence? That's part of what I dwell upon the most in this creation I fashioned in my head since my pre-teens. Granted, Carver has lived a far more creative life than my protagonist. But certain parallels are there. It's like watching my creature come magically to life on the page, a creature that I always dared not write or draw throughout the years of molding her for my own personal pleasure because she's too imitate to me, too exploitational to you.
But now I'm wondering if I haven't perhaps been sitting on a story that I probably would have, could have, should have put down on paper in some manner. I suppose it would only be truly interesting if the events in my character's life actually happened to a real person. Making it up feels less autobiographical morality play and more sensationalist attention-getter, like the motion pictures during the early era of the Hayes Code where you were allowed to show sex and nudity onscreen so long as there was some kind of punishing retribution or moral lecturing at the end. I have no intention of moralizing or lecturing. I've just had a wild, dirty story in my head that I've been telling myself on rainy days to keep me amused, and that story could have just as well been someone else's life in another world. My life, perhaps. That's what kind of scares me.
posted by Melissa at 10:26 PM
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