I teach creative writing at a community college on the California coast. We have a large University here, but I prefer my school, wrapped as it is in the fog and redwoods. I do try to keep up with my own work, and the work of other writers, so last week I left my favorite independent bookstore with a stack of literary journals. I had recently received a promotion, and thought I'd choose to which publications I'd start a few tax-deductible subscriptions. The bookstore's cafe on the sidewalk wasn't too crowded, and I was settling down behind my double decaf latté and a respected journal of short fiction, when one of my former students, from a decade or more ago, interrupted me. Or, as she would have put it, she "invaded my space."
She is the kind of woman who says "invaded my space." Although she is not bad looking, keeps her hair longish, wears nice clothes, and doesn't pierce anything visible, she's a feminist lesbian, and never lets you forget it. I didn't really like her in my class, although she was a brilliant writer.
"Hey, Thomas," she said, and slid in to the chair opposite me. "What's up?"
I scoffed silently. She's too old to be saying "what's up?" "Just reading. How have you been?"
She ignored my civilities. "Hey, I bought that magazine last week. I heard all about it, supposed to publish the best stories, blah blah, blah. But that magazine--it sucks."
She reached across the table and took the journal from my hands. I let her take it. She waved it around. "These aren't stories. These are little workshop exercises that people read at writing group and go 'Wow, you really completed that assignment.'
"Like this." She posed like a writer's back-cover photo, with one hand near her chin. 'I saw a man, he smelled of cows, and I wondered what happened to him, so I wrote a story about him going somewhere and nothing happened.' " She dropped the character and resumed her sarcasm. "You smelled cow on this guy's body, you wondered about him, and this was the best you could come up with? Has creativity ever bit you on the ass? You wouldn't know." She cracked open the spine and showed me the table of contents, tracking a stubby fingernail down the list.
"The other stories in the book are just as stupid. The one about the deer woman--obviously the most interesting character is the deer woman, but we only find out about some boy with a gun and emerging libido. As if we've never seen this character in literature before. Why not a woman who turns into a deer? A woman who would rather die than live with a man: that's conflict for you! That's a story!
"And the one about Madame Curie--I couldn't even finish it--yes, she died of radiation poisoning, duh. We all know about it; it's called irony, ok? How sophomoric.
"The one about New Jersey. How proud she must be getting two characters up a hill to push a car off. If you're a real storyteller, you can get characters to do anything you want. God, look at science fiction. It's nothing to be proud of to paint these ugly little pictures."
She flipped the pages to the back of the magazine, and sat back in the cafe chair. "Oh, but I see," she taunted, "that this one is married to a writer. She boasts of the fact; perhaps her husband has something to do with the acceptance of this alleged story? Oh surely not."
She looked up at me over her glasses. She didn't wear glasses ten years ago. I still don't wear glasses. I don't know why this thought occurred to me, but I felt better afterward.
"And then most of these folks have fake little 'Master's degrees' in 'creative writing.'" She actually made little quotation marks with her fingers. I thought people had stopped doing that.
"You must have a Master's degree, don't you, Thomas?" We call professors by their first names in our town. I wished she wouldn't get personal. Then I started wondering if I could use her monologue in a story.
"How did you get that degree? Did you do research? What a waste. The only research a writer needs is reading and writing. Those little letters just got you a job, didn't they?"
Amused she was letting me get a word in, I began, "Well, in a way, people should have graduate school training to teach in a college."
She waved a dismissive long-fingered hand. "Oh, it's all a charade to keep the poor people and brown people out of the best jobs and you know it. I work at the University; you can't fool me." Then she leaned over the table took a sip of my latté!
"Who are you people?" she interrogated, putting the mug back.
"Who? writers?"
"Yeah, you writers with your groups and your retreats and your workshops and your letters after your names. You all seem to be Esherian washerwomen, taking in each other's laundry; teaching writing and spending your teaching money going to writing school. It's obvious you're all reading that same shit you're writing. None of the stories have a plot or a moral, or add anything at all to anybody's understanding of the mysteries of life. Look at you, Thomas. Why don't you read a real book?
Before I could answer, she stopped looking at me and was flipping through the magazine again. "You know what I hate most: stories about teachers. I know you have to write about what you know but shouldn't you get a life or a real job or something?" She slapped the journal down and leaned forward.
"And another thing," her tone now conspiratorial. "You're all older than me. First you were just 'the big kids,' then you were hippies, then yuppies. And my whole life you got all the good stuff first: Barbie, rock music, sexual revolution.We got--" and again with her fingers--she popped her fingers out of her hand as she counted off-- "pong, disco, herpes. Do you know anyone else born in the Kennedy administration? We're all cursed. Ask any astrologer. I'm thirty-three now, as old as Jesus. When you boomers were thirty-three, they had a tv show about you. No one has a show about people my age anymore. We even had a name for ourselves, "Generation X," but by the time you heard about it we were a few years older, and boomers in the media gave the name to your kids. God, how I hate yuppie children: spoiled, mannerless, uneducated. You people buy computers that read books to your children." She actually pointed her finger at me. Which didn't help me accept that last Christmas I did buy a computer that reads CD-ROMs to my daughter.
I was finally able to say something, so I changed the subject. "I remember that you were a good writer. I'm sure if you tried you could get something published in that journal, or another. Why don't you try?" I wanted to add "instead of ranting at me" but I didn't.
"I have been writing, didn't you know that, Thomas? And I've been publishing. I don't sell to magazines like that dreck. I write pornography, or, since I write good stories, it's called erotica. And I sell it because I write stories."
Suddenly it occurred to me that I had read something she published. Oh shit. A whole collection of erotica. I remembered the review in the paper, "Local Writer Pens Porn." I had read parts of it out loud to that girl I took up to my cabin last spring break. Her stories had really worked, too. She really liked to hear it before we had sex. Lesbian scenes had worked best, now that I thought of it. The girl had later disappeared from school. I wonder what happened to her?
The local writer was still holding forth, oblivious to my reverie:
"...ticks like you have sucked up all the resources of the literary market, and swarmed the editorial boards and infected all the writing schools--so someone who can tell a good story can only sell her work if it can be read one-handed."
She tossed the book back at me with affected disgust, but brought the latté over to her side of the table. "Oh sure, if I had connections, if I had the leisure to go to writing retreats, I might be able to parody one of these stories and get published. But that's not going to happen. I have to work for a living, for rich people dumber than me, writing for their signature. If I'm going to write for free, it'll be writing what I freely write.
"Look, maybe my metaphors aren't as fancy as the gal's who won the Pulitzer Prize for that book about knots, but by God you go somewhere in my stories, something's gonna happen, and you're not sure what, but when it's over, you feel something. That's a story." She finished my latté, and slumped in the chair. Suddenly her voice was soft and vulnerable. "I felt something when I finished that magazine. But it wasn't nice."
I got up to leave. "Good to know you still can express yourself. Good luck with your writing," I said evenly, trying not to show my pity. I had to leave, not because she made me uncomfortable, but because I wanted to take a few notes. I didn't think she'd approve.