Therese Oneill's Blog, page 4

You Know what REALLY Annoys Me about this Book???

Hello all. First, thank you for picking up Unmentionable, thank you for loving history, and thank you for have voracious curiosity.

I have noticed in the month since publication some repeated FAQs. They’re fair ones. I’d like to address them as best I can:

Q: Why is your writing style so annoying/snarky/cutesy/hip/corny?

A: Well, mostly cuz…I am?

Also, my book is non-fiction, but my narrator, she’s fictional. I tried to strike a balance between a brothel madam and the dowager countess. She’s patronizing and sarcastic, true enough. She has to be. She’s your guide and lifeline in this strange horrid place. If she isn’t bossy you aren’t going to put up with this crap she’s relating to you.

I use the analogy of The Three Stooges. Half the planet thinks they’re comic genius in purest form. The other half hates them. You just can’t make everyone laugh at once. But I wish I could.

Q: Why didn’t you talk more about women of color? 

A: My book is specifically aimed to take some of the puff out of the romance of the 19th century. Most all the books and movies and shows and fantasies involve a beautiful young woman of wealth, mindlessly enjoying wealth and men and servants and teacups

Flowery romances are few when it comes to the lives of anyone BUT the aforementioned. When I spoke of women of color, it was to remind the reader that it was a sick sad time for many of them, and that the western  intellectuals of the day were blithely unaware of their misery. I dealt with it as honestly as I could, but briefly. The same way I didn’t delve too deeply on how truly vicious some of the standard medical treatments for women and children were in the era.

If had really gotten in there…and believe me the things I read “learned men” write about blacks and natives and hell, Irish, were atrocious, Unmentionable would have sucker punched you.

That is “Here is a light (but accurate!) book debunking your favorite romance novel” would become “and here is also a tour of Hell hidden in the middle.”

That tour needs to be taken, by everyone. And the people who offer those researched, detailed tours are to be revered for their unflinching history.

But that simple wasn’t what Unmentionable was designed to do.

Q: In some of the interviews I’ve read or heard, you keep referring to Jane Austen. She’s not Victorian, you dumbass. You know that right? 

A: Yeah. I…I know that. 

Most of those mentions were from live interviews…and I get nervous and babble. My original title for my book didn’t have the word “Victorian” in it, because I was afraid that would limit me. But Little, Brown, who were actually around in Victorian times, incidentally, and know infinity more than I do about selling books, urged that word because it brings strong mental pictures to mind. I agree with their suggestion whole heartedly. As a compromise, I note in my introduction that I’ll be using information from the entire century and even a bit beyond.

I hope this helps answers some of the questions readers have had. Unmentionable is imperfect, I know. Oh, but I love here. Thank you for reading.

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: analogy, NO., The old days, UNMENTIONABLE, writering

My Name is Therese…and I’m…well, shit. Still Therese.

“I want you all to STAND UP! Greet the person next to you and say, “HELLO, MY NAME IS BLANK, AND I AM A WRITER!”

This was years ago, at a literary convention. I was five months into an excruciating pregnancy, my brain swamped in chemicals that caused it to hear hungry tiger roars and maniacal chainsaw laughter the entire time it was awake. Or at least for my body to be constantly readying it’s natural defenses against such sounds. But I’d pre paid $500 for this overnight adventure and I couldn’t back out.

It was the morning of the second day, and I was getting more sour by the second. It had taken every ounce of fortitude to even attend this conference, so terrified I was of a change in routine. I was gagging daggers physically, but now, I was starting to think some terribly inhospitable, mean thoughts toward the other attendees of this convention.

From dominicanjournal.org

Before I’d come I had seen a documentary about LARPing. Live Action Role Playing. A Dungeons and Dragons type phenomenon, right before the slightly more respectable cos-play fad took over. People dress in as much anachronistic costume as possible, (lots of capes…I think as a species we really miss capes) and hurl flour bombs at each other while invoking spells, taking -2 hit points from the Elf Paladin in with the rapier from BUDK stuck in his belt. 

The documentary didn’t try to make them look silly. They just, silently showed grown and mostly grown people pretending to inhabit a reality that was a heck of a lot better than their real one. And looking so, so bitch-slappy silly while doing it.

So while everyone else in this class followed the teacher’s request, making the word “writer writer writer” hit the walls of the hotel’s conference room over and over, I curled my lip and didn’t move. I was too cool for school, obviously. But it was more than that.

We’re LARPing, I realized. We’re not real writers.

We’re dressed like real writers, with turquoise jewelry and crinkle skirts, or, for the younger set, ironic cats eye glasses and orange corduroys. We’ve already constructed the kind of writer we are in our heads…quiet and withdrawn, known only to locals of our small New England hamlets…or popular public speakers, or gonzo journalists taking really great cocaine; but always someone much more interesting than our selves.

Someone not overweight. Someone not invisible or dull. Someone who never has to be alone on a Saturday night if they don’t want to. Someone desirable and powerful.

Do I generalize? Do I project my own issues? Damn straight I do. There are exceptions, I know. I’ve just never met one at a place like that.

Oh we write, sure. Hundreds, thousands of pages, easily. But they aren’t anything anyone else wants to READ. That’s really important! If you “write for yourself” that’s wonderful, it really is. But that’s called “keeping a journal.” You’re not here because you want to keep a better journal. You’re here to learn how to make other people want to buy your stuff! It seems like a lot of writers can’t reconcile the two.

I’d heard the elevator pitches and first paragraphs of 50 different novels since I’d been at the conference. A remarkable lot of them about the author’s own struggle to reconcile adoption/abortion/abuse/divorce/cancer. Men’s pitches tended to be about older, hard-boiled, burnt out but don’t-fuck-with me cops/detectives/retired SEALS solving crimes. And the fantasy…oh lord the dragons and fairies. Thank you sooooo much Lord of the Rings Trilogy movies.

I realized, we’ve all paid $500 to…who again? to feel writerly for a day. To inhabit a space where only a thin film separated us from our imagined destinies. Our make-believe dream. Oh, some were there in complete earnestness to sell their books, and maybe some did. But…not most of us.

I never went back to another convention. I didn’t want to be like them.  

Or rather…I didn’t want to be reminded that I was them.

———————————-

But now it is now. What has changed?

This is a picture of my book on the “New Release” tables at the two largest Barnes&Nobles in Manhattan, graciously snapped by my native editor and agent.

My book came out on October 25th. I briefly, only briefly thank God, overtook Anne Frank’s diary in “Women’s History” on Amazon which I felt very, very bad about. I’m being widely reviewed because I have three, THREE, publicists working to make sure the whole damn world KNOWS about my pink butt-bar book.

And they know. Elle, Good housekeeping, Glamour, Paris Review, The Guardian, Washington Post, New York Post, The Daily Mail (UK version! WOOOO!), NPR and it’s nationwide affiliates, and we will still wait patiently on the confirmed reviews from Bust (the best woman’s magazine since Sassy, no joke) and the great grandaddy, The New York Times Book Review. I’m forgetting a half dozen.

Hustler wanted to interview me. HUSTLER. I respectfully declined, citing that our readership had little overlap. That the vaginas in MY book were unwashed and deranged. I described myself as, “a complete boner-killer.”

My publicists asked me to stop writing personal letters back to interview requesters. I think they suspect I have the ability to go too far off-script and end up being quoted on how no one ever pays attention to the fact Hitler was an animal lover and vegetarian, and really, Jews probably DO run Hollywood but so what? Good for them!

And they are right to fear such a thing. People would not take that as I intended it.

Last week I went to read at one of our state’s largest public libraries. They set out fifty chairs in a conference room. The attendance exceeded…to 150, at which point they put me in the auditorium. I loved it very much. I made them laugh for an hour straight. That “chubby youngest child hungry for approval” was full as a tick off the blood of those people’s happiness.

I always ask for a chair now. Can’t think when standing. 

So now. I can say, I am a writer. I got proof now. And it wouldn’t be like shouting with deep conviction, “I AM AN ELF KING!” But it turns out (and I shoulda seen this coming but…why are dreams coming true always such a damn Monkey’s Paw situation?) it was way funner back when it was in my head.

As I said, I stopped LARPing. But not from choice. Sure I left the conference, but I still pretended. I still walked in the dark plugged into my earphones, giving imaginary witty interviews to late night hosts. I still imagined word getting round to anyone who ever under-estimated me “Oh she’s a big deal now, didn’t you here? Makes me wish I would have let her sit with me in seventh grade.”

I don’t know tho. It’s hard to explain. The book is succeeding. But...I’m the same. Which my friends, is the biggest pisser in the world. A crushing disappointment. I think I wanted the fantasy more than the book.

Therese with the Successful Book was…inexplicably taller. Healthier and looked cuter in clothes. She wore white eyelet dresses and they didn’t have curry and ketchup stains. Her voice was less croaky, and her resting face was graceful…it didn’t still look like the face of women eternally sentenced to smell dog farts. She wasn’t perpetually exhausted. She sparkled.

She never happened. Just me, shuffling into a local television studio holding my friend’s copy of my book cuz I forgot to bring one, hacking phlegm in the bathroom off the teeny greenroom, refusing to open my mind to how exciting it is to go on TV/live podcast/interviewed for big publication, cuz if  I do it will paralyze me. So I sit with legs apart, head lolling, heaving myself up and grunting, “yeah yeah…lets do this fucker..” when my turn to sit across from the scary and efficient host, pinned in by three cameras, comes up. (“Oh! Hey! No you can’t move the table! The table stays!” -but I was just scooting it closer…- “THE TABLE STAYS.” -yes’m.)

Gratitude? I’m pinned to the floor with it. This is a literal one in 10 million shot and I’d be a fool to sneer at such good fortune. I know I’m lucky and have no right to moan. I am proud to be a real writer. I just can’t believe how better a one I was when I was only pretending to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: analogy, tangled, tried a new thing, UNMENTIONABLE, writering

And by their works you shall know them

Tomorrow is Monday. I got nothing scheduled tomorrow. So I can spend one more day trying to sleep off this cold. I’ll watch Supernatural on Netflix and Adventure Time on Hulu, the two shows I’ve chosento see me through this month. When I’m uncomfortable, I like to watch shows so removed from reality that I can’t share the character’s hurt. Or..go be with them in place where there really IS no hurt. 

The next day is Tuesday. Tuesday, the 25th Seal breaks and the Four Horseman of the Bookpacalypse (Fear, Confusion, Weakness, FAILURE) ride slow-motion, black robes billowing, across my life, tearing flesh and leaving blood pooling in their deep hoof prints. My book, my dream comes true on Tuesday.

I’ll start that morning by getting up very early, and driving my daughter and I to Portland. LE is scheduled for a field trip with her class to a symphony that day, but I’m substituting a different field trip. We’ll go to my friend’s house. Her name is Bryn, and five years ago she eyed me up with utter seriousness and said, “I think you’re going to be the next David Sedaris and I want in on the ground floor.” That was after I’d published maybe two little pieces on Mental Floss. So now, I will love her forever for seeing something grand in me when I was anything but.

She’ll drive us to the tv studios, the kindest thing she could do. She’ll do it with broken ribs and a busted foot (her body just…hates her. That’s the best I can figure it. And is continually trying to bust free of her. Like a demon repulsed by her holy heart and mind.) She’ll save me from figuring out the one-way street grids AND parking in downtown Portland, and she’ll hold my hair if I stare to vomit.

Around nine I’ll be interviewed on the local ABC affiliate. I have already requested not to be put on the “chatting couch”. I’ve been watching previous interviews and if you’re tubby the chatting couch seems to angle you into an awkwardly slanted sea cow. I requested the chatting table instead.

“I CAN put you there,” said the terribly nice producer, “but it does have arms.” Translation, now…how fat are you, dear? I appreciate the forethought. I tell her I can do arms. My weight is belly forward, I can do arms.

For ten or so minutes I will talk about my book on live television. I will be weird, awkward, say “vulva” too much, forget where I was going with that, and probably get distracted by set props. This is the only way.

Snip snap snip…I throw the switch on the power grid in my brain that causes self-awareness. The energy firing those synapse sputters and dies. So I’m no longer aware of the camera, (who has never, in ANY form, done me ANY favors) or the viewers. So I’m not paralyzed with self awareness. Reality is mine to accept or wave pass.

For the first time my daughter might see that I have done actual work. That a year of playing on the computer had an end result. That’s why she needs to come. She’s been raised with parents who appear to put no value on competition or hard work. She needs to see that I have worked for something, and that work has afforded privileges. “Mom has a book,” is meh. Books  are everywhere and she isn’t fond of them. “Mom got to be on TV,” is cool. “Mom threw up before and after….well that’s just Mom.”

After that, I don’t know. I’d like to go to a bookstore and see my book on a shelf. Many different interviews, book reviews, and podcasts will release that day. I’ll be in proximity to my parent’s graves…I may go there just to…I don’t know why I ever go there. I just do.

And then I will spend every night of the next two weeks at some event, somewhere, reading, signing, selling, trying to make folks happy that they bought my book. I don’t mind that part. The folks…the real ladies and such who laughed or smacked their husband’s shoulder in bed and said, “Listen to this!”…I love them. I see each of them and I want to know what we share in common that they wanted to know the same stuff I wanted to know. Also, let’s be honest, I’m a psychological vampire who would suck the marrow from their worst memories and highest dreams if I could arrange access. But that allows for a much more personal book signing. 

I know I’m changing because change hurts and I’m hurting now. A constant post-adrenaline collapse in my blood. A familiar merciless squeeze, starting in the belly and stringing it’s thorned blackberry vines down my legs and around my neck muscles. Change is good and I have no business struggling against it. Only make the vines tighter and thornier. Especially when I think how much I’ve wanted it.

See you on the flip side, guys. I’ll be the Therese with the actual published book. That’s how you will know me.

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: badmom, glowing rectangles, goodmom, hurts, tried a new thing, UNMENTIONABLE, writering

Authors and Bookseller That I Have Groped, a Tribute, by Therese Oneill.

Chris watched me from the sharp sky blue chaise couch in our hotel room and finally asked, “Do you want me to iron it?”

I had thought I was doing lovely. I had hung this linen flash-sale dress in my bathroom for an entire week, hoping the steam and gravity would eventually pull the wrinkles out naturally. But they hadn’t, and since I transported the dress wadded up in my Adventure Time rolling suitcase, I was now ironing it.

At first I was upset that my lack of math skills resulted in me purchasing the size too big to be a carry-on, but it turned out to be a blessing for carrying tubs of pasties to speaking engagements. And I AM SO A GROWNUP. I’m gonna do a whole post on Adventure Time one day, you’ll all see. YOU’LL ALL SEE!!

“I’m fine.”

Chris is descended from Southern gentry. His clothes are starched and folded, his hair carefully pomaded into a fetching swirl. Satisfied that the dress was now just playfully rumpled, I began yanking on the iron’s cord, which refused to come loose from the wall.

“Hmm. Is that how we unplug things?” Chris asked.

“Apparently not because it isn’t working!” I was snappish, sweating too much. I still had to cake on a butter tub of make-up before I’d be presentable for this thing…and mousse my perm. I don’t know what else to do with my perm. I only got one cuz I had to. I mousse it.

Chris is my mentor and friend, and taught me how to be a published writer. He had agreed to accompany me to the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Convention, where Little Brown had reserved me one of 20 tables at an author’s event. It was far more chi-chi than I’d imagined; the hotel scraping the Tacoma skies and hand blown art displayed at every intersection of chrome and hardwood.

Hotel Murano. Classy. I underestimated Tacoma. I’m probably not the first. 

Chris is married to Ro, and Ro is the oft mentioned woman of wonder who I’ve known since we were kids, the woman who held me while my mother died and stayed at my house when my son was born. It is fitting that she’d marry a man of Chris’s caliber; intelligence, ultra-empathy, personal trainer, documentary film maker and writer, all wrapped up in a sports jacket and expensive jeans. I’m happy for them. But Ro is every bit as fastidious, hyper-aware and over achiever as her husband. I feared for him, having to spend 24 hours in my constant company.

Chris slowly lowered himself into the passenger seat I’d furiously burrowed into with an ice scraper just hours before, trying to get the crumbs of 100 muffins and french fries out of the crevices, and said, casually, “Have you ever heard of getting a car detailed? It’s really amazing how like new they can make your car.”

I think I responded with just a face mangled up in confusion. Ah, he must have noticed the dust coating the…everything. And the torn shopping bag I’d used to try and hide how sticky my drink holder was had slipped. And he opened that drawer below the radio where I keep my filth. He ought not done that.

I  said sympathetically,”You’re going to get really irritated with me by the end of this. Cuz I’m…just a delightful mess. And you’re all…you’re all…snootsy Portlandy.”

“Oh no, no, not snootsy,” he said with trademark passivity, using his hanky to dab at the (second round of) soda I spilled on his white dress shirt and sports coat within the first ten minutes of our drive by taking curves too wide. “Just a grownup.”

I take obscene pride in never having to have got my shit together enough to be mistaken for one. But it really helps to have them around when things are rough.

Chris, right, talking tripods with my neighbor (both at the covention, and as we discovered, in real life) John Bruning.

 

And he likely did find me a horrorshow by the end, but he is a gentleman and kind to boot, so he contained it well. He’d been playing this game; interacting with creative people for most of his life, and it showed. I was in awe of him, usually the picture of amiable reserve, working the room of movers ‘n’ shakers like he was on home turf, happy and natural.

And there was I, swinging my stubby legs, asking my brilliant publicist obnoxious questions (“But why am I even here ?” “Can I have cold water cuz this water is ‘abandoned bath tub’ temperature?” “I think I was wrong when I asked you to get a short chair cuz now I think I want the tall chairs.”) kicking the visually assaulting but yet beguiling tablecloth I’d made by sewing thriftstore scarves and random material scraps together, thinking about pie. Because the author next to me had written a pie book. And she brought ten pies. And I wasn’t supposed to leave my post to get any.

Oh, sure, he went Toddlers and Tiaras stage-mom a few times on the conference floor, (“Do you see how the OTHER authors are standing UP at their tables? As if inviting conversation? Think you’d wanna try that?”)

Oh….ho ho, gracious.

No.

Listen. I’d lugged a dress dummy in bloomers, a giant framed poster, 16 pounds of nipple pasties and rose-chocolate tea swag, not to mention a small museum of stinky old perfume and medicine bottles 200 miles so as to appear interesting enough NOT to have to stand at the damned table.

Besides, I didn’t know I was supposed to have a line of people wanting your book and inscription. I thought folks wandered, like at a flea market. But when a line formed, it was soooo much fun. When you ask a lady to pick a piece of swag, and she may choose between a fan, a tin of tea, or some nipple pasties….the ice is not just broken but shattered and fresh-water conversation gushes up. I was able to write something personal on everyone’s book, because each lady had something interesting to comment on.

-Do owls even have crotches?

-Wait, you were a goldsmith in high school? That was your hobby? That’s a THING?

-Well, you CAN use it as a reference to write your romance novel, but it is REALLY gonna ruin your romance novel.

-I know that town! There’s a whole bunch of people who HATE me who live around there!

THE Bob! I got to grope THE BOB!!! He’s like a state landmark! 

 

– Are you THE Bob of Lincoln City’s Bob’s Books (I shout his name and tackle hug him) oh my god it’s really BOB! My husband and I DATED in your store! It’s a foundation block of our marriage! Why do you keep the Victorian erotica so far in the back I can never find it?

Chris is spare with his compliments, like so many high achievers. But before we both plugged into our Cpaps and earplugs, and he wedged a huge cushion in the center of the king size bed we shared, fully jammied, he said I did well. Granted he might have been a bit spent on having to carry a bloomered dress dummy around all night, but I take it as a compliment.

A good grown up compliment.

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: good memories, happy, tried a new thing, UNMENTIONABLE, Visual, writering

PROFESSIONAL Dumpster Fire

“We need the find the balance. A switch we can turn between, “Hot Mess Therese” and “Professional Hot Mess Therese.”

That’s a paraphrase of tonight’s advice from my mentor, when I called to tell him that, with still a month to go before Unmentionable’s release, shit’s getting real and my tummy hurts.

Tits n Gravy

I’ve been invited to go on a local morning program in a few weeks. That’s new. Lots of interviews and podcasts…but TV? “Local” I think means “serving all of Oregon.” This is unfortunately timed, as my usual oblivious and precedent-lacking confidence that I am, as my husband says, both the tits AND the gravy, is low.

I told them, a year ago. “I have a speech impediment. My tongue is tied to the bottom of my mouth, and further more, it has no tip. I was born with no tongue tip.” But none the less I found myself back in the exquisite arms of Digital One recording studio in Portland, this time with a PDF of my entire book before me, trying to record the audio version of my book. One that you might listen to in your car during your commute, or on your daily jogs.

On Monday, I recorded about five hours of dialog into the most sensitive and hateful microphone on the planet. An engineer sat outside my booth, and the book’s audio director Skyped in from Los Angeles.

Tips for Massacring an Audio Book

When you need to repeat a sentence, you find the last comma or period and say, “Pick up” into the microphone, so the editors will know to erase and replace. If you’ve got a word you can’t pronounce because it is an ancient form of medical Latin used by 19th century blowhards trying to sound smart while making you feel bad about your nocturnal emissions, that’s ok. The director keeps a talking dictionary open on his computer, which can tell you the right way to pronouce “Spermatorrhoea.”

ORGASMINANING!!!

The problem is, when your voice actor, me, can’t even pronounce “vulvar” (an ‘L’ and an ‘R’ THAT close together? That’s absolute tongue acrobatics. No matter how many times the two men helping her record keeping intonating “VUL-var. VUL-var. VUL VAR!” into her headphones.) She can’t pronounce “Orgasming” either because she keeps saying Orgasminaning because her brain insists that’s just better. To the point a frustrated engineer writes it out phonetically and lays it on your little music stand. Then add to that any word with more than one S, TH, F, R, L, or ending in “ably.” This dialog results:

“Valvergina bloomers thphhtht Queen Victoria?”

Me: “Sponge baths are a popular opshun, but not the kind of lucksyurees….ug, pick up….but not the kind of luckszzzzurius…luh… (director over headphones “lux-ur-ee-us.”) luhxureeus sponge baths admishterd…pick up…administurd (director: “take it from ‘but not the kind…'”)….audible sigh and moan from me…then spoken with exasperating quickness, “Butnotthekindof…lux…urr…ee…ohs…spongebathsadminishterd…” (bang pinkie against music stand while gesticulating a strangling motion…Director: “Wait…you hit the stand again I think. Take it from “But not the kind….”) 

Now, even if my voice was an angel’s choir, an editor would still have to go through 15 hours of recording, and REMOVE every mis-spoken word, slur, asthmatic pant, and groan, and try weave together the remnants into something that wouldn’t cause an innocent jogger to fall into a ditch when they rip their earbuds off in aural shock.

But hey, who can read my book better than me, right?

The first day’s audio found it’s way back to the Little, Brown audio producers Tuesday. After recording that day I checked my email. My agent, who is so very delicate and kind, thank god, had written me. She said…the producers at LB were having trouble with….the microphone…in that studio’s booth. And that just to save time they were thinking of hiring a profession voice actress.

The microphone. Yes. And the reason it was too sensitive to effectively record my audio was because THEY TURNED IT ON. I wasn’t too upset…I had heard playback.

I sounded like Daffy Duck and Sylvester the Cat had a baby and it was on meth.

But it was the first time in the past year anyone in my publication team had suggested I was not the most recent incarnation of the goddess Nike, bastion of VICTORY!

She, she writes AND presents a pleasing appearance to the general public. 

Today I got audition tapes of voice actors reading my book. I sat in my shed and laughed hard. Oh wow. Oh wow that’s how it was supposed to sound! I am delighted.

Then the invitation for the morning show appeared though my publicist. With the same casualness she uses to tell me I’ve been reviewed by Library Journal and they think the book is quite nifty.

Look, I know who I am. I know what I’m good at. I mean, I know the singular activity which I am good at. It’s sitting on my ass in this shed and typing. I am the antithesis of public persona.

My face, body, height, scowl, slur, weight, apathy and inability to SHUT UP are of no discomfort to me in this shed-life. But they are a vicious piercing insult to people who expect public entertainment.

“Book? Yeah. Wrote a book. Are those donuts back there in the green room from Voodoo Donuts? They’re sooo overrated. Honestly, Safeway donuts, just as good. You folks are throwing your donut money away. Now. Vaginas. Whaddya wanna know? But let me tell you, I’m a little high right now cuz I was nervous so…I only remember like two things from my book. Smash my nards, madam, can you tell that guy not to point that camera directly in my face? It’s UNNERVING.” 

My mentor Chris is going with me to a booksellers convention this weekend. One where I have to song and dance my book, make it rain swag nipple pasties and chocolate tea tins all over booksellers from Alaska to Montana. But that is at least in person. The drive is long so I plan to listen to his wise council, as I have for the past five years. I’m heartened that he thinks there could be a “Hot Mess Switch.”

I haven’t found it in 38 years. But…we best keep looking.

 

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: beauty, girlie junk, glowing rectangles, UNMENTIONABLE, Visual, whoops, writering

It Was Only a Coupla Flipper Babies

The first thing I said to the first person to ever interview me on national (Canadian) radio regarding my book was in response to “How are you this morning?”

“Certainly not so nervous that I’m gonna vomit! HAA!”

My husband Gus calls these my “flipper baby” moments, in reference to a unfortunate bit of miscommunication some years ago, when we were in a French class together. Madam Professor was solemnly describing the birth defects triggered by some event or poison, and I, with equal solemnity, nodded sympathetically and said to the class, “Mm. Yes. Flipper babies.”

Madam’s features froze…the struggle not to break was valiant, and then her poised, elegant features crumbled in inappropriate, stunned laughter

“Oh Ter-ezzz,” she muttered under her hands while the entire class shock-laughed and hated themselves for doing it. Apparently “flipper babies,” though accurate in description is not an actual medical term. And is in fact very rude.

And now I know that. But that leaves the entirety of the English language for me to misplace, poorly time, and blurt. Stick a microphone in front of me and watch!

The show is called Out in the Open, produced by CBC Radio.  It discusses things that are uncomfortable to talk about. Next month menstruation will be a topic. My book has a chapter on that. A delightful producer named Karen had an Advanced Readers Copy of Unmentionable and invited me to speak, even though the book won’t be out for two months.

As far as I can tell CBC radio is Canada’s NPR, so no lousy phone interviews. I was booked at a state of the art recording studio on 1st avenue in Portland. I brought talking points, and the correct pronunciation of the host’s name.

Preparation is key. None-the-less I should never, ever attempt to do it.

I just started flipper-babying all over the place.

I walked in the doors of this seriously classy joint, the kind of place that reclaimed the color orange for decorative purposes, the kind where the light fixtures purposefully look like wadded paper. 

I walked in and a lovely lady at an open plan desk, who I would later learn was an extra on Little House on the Prairie as a child, greeted me and offered me a drink.

I responded, “Ha! PARKING!”

And that ever familiar eyebrow lift, where a person is trying to decide if one of us misheard the other, or if I’m a special, special woman.

I waved my arm behind me at the small empty parking lot I’d pulled into.

“You’re on FIRST AVENUE in Portland and you have a dang PARKING LOT! That’s amazing! I zipped in like freakin’ Doris Day!”

She returned to the drink question and I stared at her. “I know that’s not a hard question, I’m sorry. I’m…this is my first radio thing and I can’t process much beyond…the parking.”

She was graceful and let me make myself home in a fancy kitchen lounge. I opened the fridge and found THIS. 

Seriously, just some classy shit right there. All lined up like fancy little hipster soldiers! Micro-brews, energy drink buffet, ironic soda pops. Perrier. I took Perrier. I learned to drink it at a secret gay wedding this summer and now I can do classy, too.

Chip was my engineer. I asked him if Chip was short for Charles. He said his real name was Richard but his mom didn’t like the traditional nickname options. A neighbor gave them a little onesie with “Chip” written on it. That is a story that will make you instantly like someone.

He put me in a booth with soundproofing and a phallic microphone that I kept touching until it was laying against my bosom.

“Okay don’t…no that’s not where it goes.”

“You said move it closer.”

“Yeah just…no…no touch. There we are.”

He connected me to Canada, to both the host and the nice producer.

“Now no worries, Tah—Tareeese?”

“Ehh. Ter-ee-sa. Or whatever.”

“Well just relax, this is not actually on the radio right now. It’s just you and Karen and me.”

“And Chip. He’s my engineer. He won’t let me touch the microphone. He’s from Michigan but his goatee says he belongs HERE. If I seem nervous I think we all ought just ignore it.”

FFFFFFLLLLLIIPPPPPER BAAYYYYYBBBBEEEEEEES

Here is what you’re supposed to do when you give a pre-recorded radio interview.

Answer in a simple short paragraph the specific question the host asked you. Do not explore connected themes, no matter how enticing.
Begin each of those answers by repeating the question you’ve been asked.
Don’t shake your paper at the microphone.
Don’t pant like fat basset-hound into the microphone.
Always pause after your answer. This allows the editor to patch together your statements in the tidiest fashion.
If you DO want to add some thing not touched on by the host, speak after the official sign off, and ask if you might mention one more thing. They can plug it in later if they like it.
Don’t ask the host “….was I good?” after she’s said “Thank You For Being With Us.”

Because then she, being a professional journalist, will say, “You’re not supposed to ask me that.”

“But you said we weren’t on the radio. Like we’re just hangin’.”

“I’m going to thank you again and you just say goodbye.”

“….O…okay. Yes ma’am….YES AND THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME!!!!”

The host signed off the line then. I asked the sweet producer for a grade report, what I could do better in future to give great interviews.

She gave me the list above, all of which I had done backwards, needlessly, or not at all. Wrong. All of which I’d done wrong. She promised me I’d given plenty of usable dialog.

“Halfway through , you really started loosening up and – ”

“Klonopin kicked in!” I shouted into the microphone. Chip the engineer was visible through the booth window laughing into his soundboard. Not for the first time, bless his heart.

It was over, and I was happy. One step closer to not sucking at something new. I walked out and the nice lady who’d greeted me called out, “Are you traumatized?”

“Yes! But I really enjoyed it!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: happy, totally mental, tried a new thing, UNMENTIONABLE, whoops, writering

Because It’s not MINE Anymore

“You haven’t posted in such a long time. I had to call to make sure you were all right. You told me I was to keep you grounded!”

Sara went to boarding school with me 20 years ago. She had a tough time of it. Like me, she was chubby, confused by fashion, and in general one or two steps out of line with the rest of our world. We two were the least talented piano players at the school, giving our halting childlike contributions at the very front of the annual recital.

Me, 14, first day of boarding school, terrified.

She had it even worse in some ways. Her family was bitingly poor; her room decorated in grandmotherly crafts and crochet and she sold Little Debbie Cakes to get the quarters to do laundry with. Her health was bad. A thyroid problem made her neck thick and her mouth slack. She doesn’t remember whole swathes of life at the school; her pistons just weren’t firing because of all the things she had to cope with. All these things conspired to make her seem less

Me, senior year at Academy…experiencing regression.

intelligent than she was, and a million miles from anything resembling “cool.”

 

I was a different sort of mess, but a mess all the same. My brain wasn’t dulled by chemicals, but jabbed, slapped, and locked in by them. I had more money but still somehow ended up decorating my room in crochet and sunflowers and pictures of farm life cut from magazines though I had no fondness for farms.

In truth we didn’t spend a lot of time together back then. But we always liked each other. That’s special if you think about it. Often, especially for kids, you never want to compound your own uncoolness by being associated with someone else uncool. But neither of us minded how goofily assembled the other was. She thought I was funny, I thought she was in possession of a deeply sweet heart and disposition.

Sara’s life took the most peculiar of turns. I suppose the less charitable among us had her pegged for a life of depression and forfeit. Even me. It’s hard to survive in a world when you don’t follow its rules. Instead, she got her thyroid fixed and became health conscious. She married a man of exceptional intelligence and enviable employment, who by all accounts worships her and whom she deeply loves. She moved to the deepest recesses of Canada, far away from anything wicked or sticky from the past, and raised sharp minded robust children.

She is, frankly, a better person than I will ever be and probably better than most of you. Yes, I know. But it’s true. She’s diligent, affectionate, intelligent…just list a virtue and she’s got a least a half-gallon tucked in her somewhere. Not in the obnoxious way, either.

She doesn’t Facebook. It’s not her style. She’s too busy living a quiet, tired but for a good reason, three dimensional life, the kind I’ve unlearned. So she relies on this blog to carry her silently along in her friend’s life.

But I have neglected this blog. This blog has become a millstone, a rotting albatross hung round my neck.

I love the style of blogging. Free form diary entries with no editor, no rules. Perfect anonymity if you choose. I’ve blogged for 17 years.

As god as my witness I did not envision my fervent journey to become a well known popular writer and humorist might affect that anonymity and freedom.

My Advanced Reader’s Copies came.

I sputtered into the phone over the pinch of my three week sinus infection and the shrieks of one child trying to practice Krav Maga on her brother with a broom stick. I can sputter and babble and never feel bad about it to Sara.  I can be un-witty, even sometimes utterly unintelligible. She’s not calling to be impressed. I’m not sure I could impress her; she just doesn’t give the world grades quite like the rest of us.

I said, “I can’t! I can’t blog no more! It’s not my blog anymore! Its Writer Therese’s Blog. I’m supposed to use it to promote myself and make people buy my book and I keep deleting every post I write cuz it’s too personal or dull or I can’t always razzmatazz! I don’t know…I don’t know!!!”

And that’s the truth. Oh there’s been stuff that I could spin into a great little story. My trip to my see my best friend marry his partner of 7 years in their backyard where they were expertly united by a female Muslim Persian prostadontist. The fact that despite my body positive beliefs (which translate succinctly into, “I’m fat, fuck off”), I have broached the event horizon of fat and have to change or start using the motor carts at the Winco so my belly’s gravitational pull doesn’t through my lower back from orbit.

Having a hilarious dinner with NYT bestselling humorist Laurie Notaro. (We are so frickin’ DELIGHTFUL together, yo!) All my BOOK stuff. Barnes n Noble is going to stock me on their holiday tables. That’s the goddamn MIC DROP of book sales real estate. “Oneill OUT, bitches.” kinda stuff.

I’m going to be recommended in Elle Magazine this October. One of my articles from a couple years ago is going in a Japanese schoolbook! ‘N stuff! I’m making swag to give away and it includes nipple pasties because I deeply misunderstood a joke one of my publicists made.  All of these thing…and I’ve just heaved a sigh and rolled back onto my hammock and shouted for a child to bring me my iPad so I can keep working on killing those awful fish people in Plants Vs. Zombies.

So what do I have now? A professional calling card to highlight my particular abilities? Or the tiny white confessional where I purge up what’s vile and obtuse and frightened inside of me?

Mostly the former, and that sort of regimentation is Medusa to my free typing fingers. Until I figure out how to balance it, long form posts might be scarce, though I will ramp up the shorter snappier stuff. Oh lord, I’m not snappy.

Sara, expect more calls. Congratulations, you dear woman, you’re my new blog.

 

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: glowing rectangles, good memories, tangled, The old days, tried a new thing, writering

I took pot.

This is my pot junk.

I have never smoked pot. I have never taken a non-prescribed drug, though I have at times richly, nearly unethically, enjoyed my prescribed drugs.  I’ve also only been drunk twice, one time because they didn’t bring the bread fast enough at this restaurant that also made fantastic lemon drops, and another because I mixed pills and wine cuz I was super sad and trying to be fun anyway. I spent the most remembered portion of that night sitting on the sidewalk outside the wine bar, leaning against the bricks, as my sweet friends took turns coming out to keep me company. In retrospect I’m glad for it, I dug up whole new pockets of tenderness and brilliance I hadn’t seen yet in those friends.

I didn’t do pot when it was illegal because I didn’t like what it did to people. I didn’t like what alcohol did to people either. Made them stupid, took their wit and powers of observation away. Made them careless, pointless, untrustworthy. And of course, reminded me of unfortunate times from when I was a kid.

Also asthma.

I’m going to do pot today. I’m doing it because now that it is legal it is monitored by the FDA, which history has taught me to respect, and because I now believe there is some science going on behind the scenes. Also, apparently because I’m a patriot because the sales tax (remembering Oregon does not HAVE a sales tax) on marijuana products is 25% of the purchase. Go Beavs!

The science is what comforts me. They can chop up the chemicals in the marijuana plant now, separate them and even sew them together in different ways. And it turns out only part of those chemicals make you stupid. The other part eases muscle pain and relaxes tension. I bought a tiny vial of pot-oil called “AC DC” because it had the highest ratio of muscles relaxant to stupid-maker I could buy.

See, a bar chart. That’s science. So everything is ok.

The shop I bought it in was an even greater comfort. It is one of literal hundreds here and I chose it randomly. I never liked head-shops, all grimy and no-eye-contact. Even if it was the only place in central Oregon to buy a decent tie-dye in 1986, it wasn’t worth it to feel so shady and low.

But this place! A cross between a jewelry store and a Trader-Joes. The staff all wore uniforms, were clean cut and young, and so damn happy! EVERYONE was happy. Their was a general air of back-slapping, “We did it! The dream is real! THE DREAM IS NOW!!” between the people who moved between the aisles.

TLC Dispensary in Salem

I told a darling pony-tailed girl what I wanted.

“I don’t know how pot works. But I don’t want to smoke it and I don’t want to be paranoid or have a panic attack.” I was asking for the relief from living that the drug supposedly gave, with none of the greasy memories I tied to it still attached.

The things I bought were a literal century apart from anything I’d known. I have my own vape now. It’s a pot vape. Ha! It’s charging in the USB drive of this very computer right now. USB drive! My joint has a tiny computer in it! I then plug the AC DC vial, which is remarkable similar to the antique vials of hypodermic morphine and strychnine I keep in my medical collection, and take a “pull.”

“Do I have to hold it in, like in the movies?”

“No…it’s…no just breathe normal.”

Oregon law now also allows you to have one “edible” per day! At that store they had taffy, suckers, and honey sticks. I took a honey stick that the girl told me an older lady takes for joint aches.

“Can I still care for my children with the pot honey in me?” I asked her. Ha. I used to be a terrific fan of Winnie the Pooh and am so used to those two words being inverted.

“Yes. It should just loosen your muscles and relax you a bit. Absolutely.”

And of course, I’m terrified. I can consume enough Klonopin, which makes Xanex look like Tylenol PM to sedate a giraffe, thanks to a slow and painstakingly built tolerance. But this…marijuana. It’s drugs. Bad bad bad. Bad people, slimy, jobless, hopeless, trying to blot out the world. Marijuana is a lifestyle and a terrible scary one, my brain wrang it’s nodules in worry.

My husband is smarter than I am and he did lots of pot in his wild years and he framed it for me many times. “How is it different or less civilized than having a glass of wine in the evening? Or a nice whiskey on the rocks? The only difference between pot and alcohol is that no one ever gets HIGH and goes home to beat their wife.”

4 hours later—

He literally held my hand as I “pulled” the mist into my lungs. It bit like smoke would, tasted like beef jerky, and made me cough like in the movies. He was chuckling at the percentages on the box, “You can’t possibly get high off this.”

I don’t know if I am. LE just came in to bargain for chocolate, and I was able to recount the treats she’d already had today with mild clarity, so I must be fairly ok. I would like to lie down, maybe in the hammock. Kinda sleepy. Also, swear to god, I’m hungry. I always thought it would be the kind of hungry where your mouth wants something, flavor, texture, thrill. But my stomach is hungry. I need a sandwich. (Full disclosure, I said that sentence outloud and it was, “I sleed a snandwich.”)

7 hours later—

All gone, out of my system. Only lasted about 40 minutes I’d say. Conclusion? Meh.THAT’S what the fuss is over? THAT’s what people give their life over to? Just… foggy and tired. Slurry and a tad stupid. I can do that all on my own. Even with a USB drive and state of the art, perky customer service…I’m just not a Potter. Pot taker. PARtaker.

No. Back to the faithfully prescribed horse tranquilizers for ol Therese. Now, call me when opiates are legal, we’ll try this experiment again.

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: bad memories, biology, Gus, tangled, tried a new thing

Nigger Ben Butte, Sisters to Shaniko

I don’t mean to generalize, but the entirety of the Oregon High Desert smells like cat pee. I think it’s the juniper. I have formed a loose theory about how juniper needs very little water and CATS need very little water and so their individual excretions, the scent of juniper and the urine of cats, have the same concentrated acids that make the same smell. Gus assures me this is biologically impossible. I demanded a better explanation and he had none. Point: Therese’s Brain Science.

I can’t remember now, though in was less than a week ago, what snapped in me. I do remember where it snapped. I have a big green book of Oregon Geographical names in my bathroom. Its short, non-committal entries are absolutely perfect for distracting and relaxing the bowels. (Not totally non-committal, actually. The author does take issue with the 1960’s renaming of “Nigger Ben Butte” to “Negro Ben Butte.” (Apparently the nigger designation was used affectionately, named after a well liked blacksmith who lived at the base of the mountain in pioneer days. Which was, wooo! mighty white of ’em cuz black folks technically weren’t allowed to live in Oregon for most of the 19th century.)

Vacation, I decided. First real family adventure vacation. We were going to some of the places listed in this book. Someplace not the Coast, which is an hour away and repressively safe and has been the default for 20 years. Someplace we can do stuff that’s different.

Go the other way. Inside of Oregon. Over the Cascades, past the grotesque glut of pastels and engorged false fronts that is Sisters (uggg. Sisters. What a whore of a town.)

 

Sisters, Oregon. From Tidbits by Terri Stats 

 

Past the triumvirate, Camp Sherman, Sisters, and Bend, that made up my home towns, further, further. Until we came to near nothing. 

The Oregon High Desert.

The clouds poof on top and then line up flush against an invisible ceiling. My husband, who approached this vacation with nothing short of misery, became the most relaxed I’ve ever seen him away from home while driving through these winding miles of uninhabitable near-desolation. To Gus emptiness meant safety. It means you can see what’s coming. And in the case of Central Oregon…all that’s coming is rabbits, antelope and a fairly steady occurrence of brush/forest fires.

We did lots of things, found thunder-eggs and peed out behind my old elementary school (since when do they think they can lock the doors and install security cameras at MY school?)  but I mostly want to tell you about Shaniko…Oregon’s real ghost town.

It’s so, so far away from anything. There used to be a railroad there, and wool. Then there wasn’t. And the people left, the town maintaining a population of around 20 hapless souls through the century. Shaniko was so desolate, not on the way to anywhere but Shaniko, that it just…held there. A few people came back a century later to find the buildings still standing and holding a possibility of profit.

That doesn’t happen a lot in Oregon. This is a place so lush and verdant that people sacrificed their lives by the hundreds to get here. I’ve literally grown a fine pumpkin patch in my backyard because I absentmindedly threw a handful of slippery Halloween seeds into the grass.

There is constant change. Usually it’s through fancy-ification…warehouses becoming microbreweries and farmer’s orchards giving way to expensive housing associations where the homes are designed to look turn of the century, but with televisions that descend from the ceiling.

There are more ghost towns in the wet Willamette valley than anywhere in Oregon, between the pioneers and the gold rushers and the lumber…but they are truly GONE. The rich soil and thorough rains that seduced their creators proved to be succubi,  quickly swallowed them back up as soon as they were abandoned. I have watched it happen. First the moss eats the roof and it softens, dips and falls. Then the rain can blacken and melt the walls and foundation even faster, all the while the blackberry bushes and weeds chew through any open space they can find. The rubble is cleared up or it isn’t, and what held a generation of human life and suffering and excitement becomes a dark outline in the vegetation, if even that.

But Shaniko, dry and cold and too far away from anywhere to be worth hassling with, remained. I found a gift shop, of a sorts, where a hunched lady took a blue shirt and hot-pressed the words, “SHANIKO, OR” on it’s left breast, just for me. She urged me to get it in rhinestones. I told her I was not sparkly.

“So what was this place originally?” I asked her while the giant waffle-iron of a shirt maker heated up, drawing fuel from the portable propane generator in the back of the store.

“This was one of the taverns. Everything is like it was in 19o1. As long as we don’t update it, we don’t have to pay taxes on it. It’s Historical.”

I tried to get to the dried old piano she claimed to be part of the original bar, but could only rub a hand against it, for she also used it as her office table, stacked with soda bottles and papers.

There was a bowl of faded hair scrunchies shoved back against a wall, each baring a plastic teddy bear or rainbow or duck that, along with the sheer tiredness of the exposed elastic, revealed the providence of the 1980s. They were new. But they were 30 years old. I grabbed a greedy handful. Shaniko is set wrong in time, and these scrunchies illuminate it.

I asked about the big brick hotel across the street, one that I had hoped would be a museum. She said the hotel hadn’t been opened for a long time, neither as museum, hotel, gift shop, or cafe.

“He replaced the windas,” she said. “Now he’s gotta pay taxes on it even though it’s just sittin’ there.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“He” is the billionaire  that bought most of the land that comprised the town, she told us. He had the idea, and it wasn’t a crazy one, to spruce up Shaniko into a “Ghost Town!!!” instead of what it is…a deserted, ailing place with remarkably old buildings, twisted Model-T skeletons, and broken buckboards littering the land.

That’s what makes Shaniko truly special. The gentrification that has face-lifted Dame Oregon so many times was begun, but it failed. The billionaire wasn’t allowed to drill his own wells to provide water for the would-be Old West theme-town, so all he managed was to renovate a gas station to sparkling 1950’s standards, down to the phone booth and the sign proudly declaring its acceptance of green stamps. Just like a model you’d see in a box at a hobby store…but real. Shaniko would have been his dollhouse, his train set.

by Joe Hudspeth

Being stuck cold between three different worlds…1901, 2016, and a potential, half-realized renaissance of cotton candy and shoot-out re-enactments, left the town dangling between realities; a science fiction waystation between worlds. I loved it. I hated it. It felt sick there and so special too. Like Nigger Ben Butte, all wrong, distasteful even, but sickly compelling in its defiance.

When the laws change, Shaniko will be taken away. It will become a sister to Sisters, fake and rouged, a gaudy old west whore sick at the heart but smiling hard. Until then, Shaniko doesn’t know who she is anymore. There is such beauty in her confusion.

 

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness, Tarnished Gold Tagged: analogy, beauty, Death, Gus, tangled, The old days, tried a new thing, Visual

What’s the Frequency

But it really wasn’t expected, though.

I know it seemed like I did expect it. I’d been throwing the word around for months, over lunch with friends, or while introducing my son to new people. I’d say he was five, and they’d pause, squint, think…they saw a child who looked about three, who talked like a two year old crossed with a Minion.

And there I’d rush in with, “But we’re thinking he’s somewhere on the autism spectrum. He’s a little delayed.” I’d waver my hand side to side to emphasize the lightness with which we assumed Jack touched that spectrum. If it were a rainbow he was ultraviolet…hardly making contact with the splits of light at all. Most of him was blue sky, just like your kid. He was just delayed. He was premature and all. No big thing. He’s like his Dad, is all. Quiet and such. He’ll catch up.

So actually, I didn’t expect it. I walked Jack through the seventh floor lobby of Doernbecher’s Children’s Hospital in Portland, straight back to the Purple Chipmunk desk as instructed. It was the behavioral unit, I guess. And I gauged Jack’s placement among the other children in the lobby.

I was pleased with the comparison. Not in a wheelchair. Not staring into empty space. Not incessantly talking in a scratching nasal voice. Nah. Just my lil guy. He stood right at attention for his weigh in and height, watched with cooperative fascination as a blood pressure  cuff near the exact same size as his toy one at home was squeezed on his arm.

An hour and a half later, a world-class, wait-5-months to see Child Development pediatrician was handing me Kleenex. I’d need to see three or four more of their specialists, but provisionally, his diagnoses mid-way spectrum. And we’ll need to check him for mental retardation and chromosomal deficiencies. We can’t rule those out yet. 

We can’t tell you if he’ll be whole when he grows up. We won’t tell you it will be ok. We won’t even give you a goddamn pamphlet on how to handle the death of the son you imagined you had.

Have a nice day.

No. No no no. Just because he can’t finish the alphabet song? Because he doesn’t count past eight with real words? Because he can’t say what a nose does? That’s NOT the entirety of my son! Remember how he told me he had to pee? He potty trained right on time and never has accidents. How he played with the blocks with you? How he did the stuff you asked, even chirping with great indignity, “WhyyouwhatDOING-that???” when you quickly checked his genitalia. That’s a smart kid. He’s aware! He’s just…words is all. He can’t do words.

I didn’t know what autism was. I still barely do. It’s a catchall. A way to describe people that don’t fit in. We used to call them nerds, weird, and if it was deep enough on that invisible spectrum, retarded.

It turns out autism does have firm characteristics. Speech delay. Jack has the vocabulary of a three year old at best. Social difficulties. He has no interest in friends his own age. And most importantly, he isn’t a team player. When he’s done, or not interested, that’s THAT. Which means he quit abiding most of the doctor’s designs after about forty minutes.

You should know, they don’t call it retardation anymore. They skimmed a thesaurus and now they call it “Intellectual Disability.” Which will take about one generation to become a nasty pejorative all over again and then back to the thesaurus. We all know what it really means.

It means the man who makes you uncomfortable. It means no college. It means no wife. No buddies. No watching him play soccer. But then your mind slips, as if down a ravine, and it keeps adding to the list. It means never leaving home. It means never taking care of himself. It means sitting drugged and dead eyed in a mental ward or cold and filthy over in Junkie Park. It means everything you ever feared for your child.

I know, I know. “It doesn’t mean ANY of that! People on the autism spectrum (and we do NOT call them Autistic for they are NOT their disorder) lead rich lives!” Invariably someone mentions Bill Gates and Einstein. And truly, I thank every book and person who responds that way. Thank you for your comfort. On some level I know you’re more correct than I am.

But he’s mine. He’s mine!

The scarier stuff, Jack doesn’t have that. He is happy to meet strangers and tries to talk to them. Eye contact, affection, pretend play, empathy, misery when punished for naughtiness that can only end in a cuddle or he’s not okay. He’s got those in spades. Tonight to my surprise he hit three out of five wiffle balls pitched at him.

But he…as an old friend whose own father was “Intellectually Disabled” from a lack of oxygen at birth said…he’s on a different frequency.

There. My son’s not on your spectrum, your stupid rainbow of pain and awkwardness. He’s on a different frequency. And the music coming through is odd and sweet and slow and brilliant. Nothing you’ve heard before.

But my frequency. High pitched to whining…angry talk radio that doesn’t quite seem authentic. I know how I sound. I know.

That’s just all I know, right now.

 

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: biology, hurts, tangled, The Barnacles, totally mental