Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life, page 4

Chiseling Out a New Book

I had one of the most productive writing weekends in recent memory. 2,772 words between Friday and Sunday. Friday night, around midnight, I sat down to write. My husband had gone to bed, and Riley with him. Toby stayed with me in my office on the third floor. He never leaves my side. When I stopped writing, it was 1:30 a.m.

Saturday, the dogs needed walks, and I had errands to run and laundry to do. By the time I sat down to write it was after 4 p.m. The dogs, tired from our afternoon hike, fell asleep as I sat down at my desk. Everything fell away as I typed. The dogs woke and started whining. It was then that I realized I’d been “in the zone” for two hours and I’d missed their dinner time.

I’m not a very disciplined writer. My writing process is...chaotic. But it works for me. I don’t outline or create character bibles. My stories are more organic. I’ve heard sculptors say they didn’t create the sculpture, they simply freed what was already inside the stone. That’s how I feel about my writing; I don’t create stories, or characters, I just use words to reveal the stories and characters that are already there, waiting to be told, waiting to be seen. Thus, I am constantly surprised by the twists and turns in my stories and the surprising details my characters reveal about themselves. For example, I recently found myself researching Gershwin songs—apparently one main character plays the piano. His unforeseen talent added detail that led to him recounting one of his most poignant experiences in the book. Other characters revealed secrets that made me have to research garter snakes (often wrongly referred to as “garden” snakes), and Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales.

There’s a lot of me and my history in my books, and I suppose there is in this new one as well. Let me correct that: there is a lot of my history in this book but it’s not about me in the same way Unbroken is. When I went to college, I started a diary. I kept it up for about ten years. I no longer remember why I stopped; maybe I decided to devote more time living my life than documenting it. Anyway, I used those diaries to inform the emotional heart of the book.

In January, when my aunt was in hospice, I spent the day with her—it turned out to be the last time I would see her. While she was sleeping, I sat down to work on the book. I know that sounds strange but there wasn’t anything to do and I found I could write and remain in the moment with her. I had been struggling with a scene in which a character dies and for months I’d put off finishing the scene because it just never felt right no matter how often I rewrote it. I sat there five feet from her and just put down what I’d seen and what I felt and I think I got the scene exactly right, encapsulated in a single sentence spoken by one character.

Recently I was the guest author on The Read, Jarrod King's wonderful YouTube video interview series. He asked me, “Usually, when people write their own story, they mention the difficulty of not being able to tell every detail of their life and experience; that it’s hard to craft it into a story the keeps the reader turning the page. Did you face any similar difficulties? And if so, what did you do to overcome them and create what I would say is a very riveting coming-of-age story?”

My answer was simple: When I write I’m always convinced no one will read the book so it’s easy for me to be honest. But this new book is different because it doesn’t just reveal my own truth but those of others. And that was probably the hardest part to write and get right.

Watch my interview with Jarrod King here.

Celebrating Love: Remembering a Beloved Aunt

Friday, January 20, 2017 was a dark day for many in our nation. For me it was even darker. Our beloved Aunt died Friday. So while for many it was “The Inauguration of the Nation’s 45th President,” for me it will always be the day Aunt Terpe died.

Beloved aunt. Those words beggar description. She was so much more than that. She was a force of nature; she was unconditional love; she was a staunch advocate for those lucky enough to be loved by her.

Euterpe Cleopha Richardson was one-of a kind, as unique as her name.

Though, I never formally came out to her, she always knew; she was the first person in my family to implicitly acknowledge and support my gayness. She made me feel it was ok to be myself. She gave me advice, “Never move in with a man; he can move in with you, or you can move someplace together but never move into his place; that way he can never tell you to leave.” And this,” Never give a man a second chance; if he hurt you once, he will hurt you again.”

Whenever I showed up with a new boyfriend, she simply treated him as another nephew.

She read my books. And told her friends about them. I remember I kept ignoring her when she said she wanted to read “Unbroken.” It revealed too much about me, and there was sex in it. I was afraid she’d be appalled. But as I said she was a force of nature so I relented and sent her the book.

Then I waited anxiously. She called me up one day in tears. I panicked. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I never knew,” she said, “how hard you had it growing up. I am so sorry.”

In truth, I hadn’t thought I’d had it any harder than any other gay kid growing up when I did. And I’d certainly never expected anyone to apologize for my experience. Like I said, she was one of a kind.

She told me a story of two gay guys she became friendly with in the early 50s. They were a couple and lived together, most unusual at the time. To keep themselves, and their friends, safe, they often threw parties at their apartment. Aunt Terpe was a frequent guest, the only woman in attendance, the only straight person they felt they could trust. One day she answered the door and the gay guys on the other side quickly stammered, “Oh sorry we have the wrong apartment!”

“No you don’t,” her friend called out from inside the apartment. “It’s Terpe. She’s ok. Come on in.”

A part of me—I won’t lie—a big part of me worries that that fear and need to hide will return under a Trump administration.

When we got married, Aunt Terpe called me up and she congratulated me, and repeated what she always told me, “Live your life Lawrence, live your life.” Then she asked to speak to Stanley. When he hung up he had tears in his eyes. “What happened?” I asked him. Aunt Terpe had congratulated him and told him we needed to make sure we took care of each other—the same thing she had told. Then she had added, “If you hurt my nephew,” I will hunt you down.”

Yep, that was Aunt Terpe—a staunch advocate for those lucky enough to be loved by her.

I went to visit her in the hospital the Sunday before she died. When she saw me she said, “You came. I knew you’d find me!” I knew she was worried about the hospice we were transferring her to so, before I left, I promised I would come back as soon as she got moved to make sure it was ok. Thursday morning I woke up and made the drive to New York. All that separated us was 117 miles. In my head was one goal: shorten that distance as quickly as possible; on my lips one prayer: Please don’t let me be too late.

I pulled into the parking lot at 2 minutes to 11 and sprinted to the building. She was awake but couldn’t talk. “Aunt Terpe, I’m here. I’m here.” She looked me in the eyes and squeezed my hand to let me know she heard me, knew I’d come as I promised I would.

Later when she fell asleep, I sat crying quietly by her bedside. She must have awakened at some point and seen me crying because she reached out and took my hand and squeezed it with what little strength she had left. And I realized that even as she lay dying, she had tried to comfort me, as she had comforted me, and my brothers, her whole life.

We used to talk on the phone a lot. Still, I worried that I didn’t visit her enough but she insisted I had my own life and my own responsibilities. “I have done everything I wanted to do, went everywhere I wanted to go. Now I can’t do these things. But I have my TV and as long as you boys call once a week, I am content.”

I am content. And that was the other thing about Aunt Terpe. She was always content, always happy with what she had.

Lord, you but lent her to be our happiness.
You reclaim her, and we return her to you
without murmuring, but with a broken heart.
—St. Jerome

A Writer’s Holiday

Because of the way Christmas and New Year’s fell this year, I found myself the beneficiary of a nearly two week holiday from my day job. And I needed it, too. Between my commute, the job itself and the people I work with, I was seriously burned out. But because I am not good at being idle. I decided to make my time off a “writer’s holiday.” I’m seriously behind on writing my new book, so a holiday during which I could just write made sense. Of course, I can never just write—we had friends coming for Christmas, so cooking needed to be done, and the house needed to be cleaned. And of course, the dogs needed to be walked—and spending time with them was a priority since we both work all week, leaving them on their own a good bit.

I realized for this writer’s holiday to work I would have to be disciplined—something I am not naturally. I set two goals for myself: 1) write at least one hour each day, and 2) write 1,000 words each day. Modest goals I know, but no sense it setting goals I couldn’t reach. That would just make me feel like a failure and talk about demotivating…

Realistically, an hour or two was an achievable goal for me. My other goal, the word count was separate to it. So, that hour or two could be used for anything related to the book: research, editing what I’d already written, developing characters, naming them—which can be an ordeal. I read a blog post in which a writer mentioned using a random name generator. I’d never heard of such a thing but that wouldn’t work for me anyway. Each character’s names tells the reader something about him or her. So they often start out named A, B, or C; as I learn about them, they get names.

The word count was again something to shoot for—a ballpark if you will. I know there are writing coaches who recommend sitting down and just writing, then looking back over what you’ve written; goal is to reach your word count for the day/week, etc. That for me is a waste of time. I don’t want to write words just for the sake of counting them. My writing is more organic; it springs from itself—if that makes any sense. And as I’m writing, I’m listening for the rhythms of the words. Thus, each word is carefully chosen to fit. Free form writing robs me of that.

So how did I do? See the chart above. Most days I missed my thousand-word goal but I did write each day. And I loved what I wrote and the story started writing itself. I discovered new characters, one an unexpected ally; I wrote of a first kiss that made my heart sing; one character made me cry. One morning I sat down to edit a single sentence and when I stopped it was 40 minutes later and I had written a key scene that had been eluding me for weeks. And I figured out how to structure the book in a way that made sense for the story.

At the end of my holiday my WIP is just over 31,000 words. I had hoped to reach 30,000. Tomorrow, I go back to my day job and the act of juggling work and life and writing. Though for me, writing is life.

A Gay Son's Musings About His Dad

I love my Dad.

That’s probably not an unusual statement. But when it’s a gay son talking, there is often some history and work that went into making that a true statement.

I love my dad. I saw him two weeks ago when I drove up to visit. I hadn’t seen him in about a year and I realized how much I missed him.

When I was younger, my relationship with my dad was…strained. I think part of it was my own resistance to him, thinking he didn’t like the idea that I was gay. So for some years in there, I kept my distance. That changed one rainy Saturday morning in 1988 when I was racing to work outside of Washington, D.C. I was doing 80 when a car merged onto the highway in front of me. I would guess it was going about 40 miles an hour. I slammed on the brakes. I was going so fast and the other car was going so slow, it actually looked like the other car was moving backwards towards me. I’d decreased speed to about 60 at the moment of impact. My car started spinning and as it started to flip and the sky was suddenly below me, I remember thinking “I’m going to die without ever having been friends with my father.”

Next thing I knew I was standing on the side of the road, in the pouring rain, not a scratch on me, my little red car literally in pieces scattered across the highway. I remember cops and fire trucks and an officer asking, “Where’s the driver of the red car?”

“I’m here,” I said.

He stared at me.

“You were driving that?

I nodded.

To this day I do not remember getting out of the car.

I had a second chance and I used it to befriend my father. I moved to Philadelphia so I was closer to where my parents lived in New York. More than twenty years ago when I introduced my family to my now husband, my father pulled me aside and said, “I like this one. He is what I had in mind for you. Please keep this one.”

And with those words everything changed. I suddenly saw that he didn’t dislike me being gay, he just hated my choice in men thinking none of them were good enough for me (he was probably right.)

Fast forward to two weeks ago. I was watching my dad play with Max, my nephew, his only grandson. He and Max seem to have a special relationship. I was a bit jealous, I admit. And then I realized that my father and I have our own special relationship as well. And maybe that is my father’s gift—the ability to build a special relationship with each person in his life.

He has taught me so much in his quiet way. The dedication in Unbroken, reads in part “And for Space, who taught me the value of silence.” Space is my nickname for him, because he always seemed lost in his own world, kind of “spaced out.” I never thought we had much in common though, until I called him the other day. Hearing my voice, assuming I’d called to speak to my mother, rather than him, he said “Your mother and Vernon are at the chiropractor.”

I could hear him rolling his eyes.

Anyone who knows me knows I am prone to rolling my eyes, and in fact was doing that at the word “chiropractor.” It was delightful to discover that shared tendency.

The Corporatorium: We Are Happy (Episode 13)

Welcome to Episode 13 of my funny, absurdist serial on working in Corporate America. Take a break from your day and give it a read. Guaranteed to make you giggle.
Missed Episode 12: The Brett Factor? Read it here. Or read the series from the beginning here.

“Churl! You—are—late!” Terry announced as I stepped off the elevator.

Now you may have noticed by now that I am almost always late. Normally any statement of the obvious does not warrant my attention, but coming from Terry who was too keen, too creatively sarcastic to use the obvious as a conversational gambit, I turned around and raised an eyebrow. “For?”

“The Lizzie Borden webcast?” he stated more question than answer, raising an eyebrow to match mine.

“Shit! Why aren’t you on it?”

He pointed to the discreet earplug jammed into his head and mouthed, “I am. Your battleaxes are logged in from the conference room.” Then he shouted at my hastily retreating back, “It’s just starting. Technical difficulties, you know, caused a delay.” I could feel the eye roll.

I pushed into the room and no one looked up, damning testimony to the accepted fact of my habitual lateness. Lizzie Borden’s voice boomed from the speakerphone. Nigel pushed a chair out for me. The Cerberus looked at me, disapproval at the ready, then looked at TWO for guidance. As she was studiously ignoring my late entrance, they did likewise and folded up their collective frowns, though I’m sure somewhere another black mark was entered on my permanent record.

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The Corporatorium: The Brett Factor (Episode 12)

Welcome to Episode 12 of my funny, absurdist serial on working in Corporate America. Take a break from your day and give it a read. Guaranteed to make you giggle.
Missed Episode 11, Bats? Read it here. Or read the series from the beginning here.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the flashing blue of the Jabber message window. I felt—like the cold hand of death grasping your shoulder—rather than saw the dreaded name.

Brett Buttler: Are you there?
Theus Jones: I’m here
Brett Buttler: Did you get my email?
Theus Jones: No.
Brett Buttler: I sent it last night at 10.
Theus Jones: I was offline.
Brett Buttler: Offline?
Theus Jones: Did you need something?
Brett Buttler: Read my email. Set up a call for 9:30. Ping me with the call-in info.
Theus Jones: ‘K

Ten minutes later I’d read his emails—the first of which contained few words and little information and the second of which contained many more words and no information—assembled my team: Nigel, Diana, and Barbara the first whom I’d gotten out of bed—and dialed into the conference call where we waited fifteen minutes for Brett to join.

“How can he be late for his own call?”

Barbara the first asked. We could hear her fixing herbal tea in the background.

“It’s a power thing.”

“Yeah he probably read about it in The Petty Tyrant’s Guidebook,” she grumbled; we could hear her furiously stirring her tea.

“Brett...has joined the call,” the disembodied English-accented voice announced.

“Ciao. Ciao!”
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The Corporatorium: Bats (Episode 11)

Welcome to Episode 10 of my funny, absurdist serial on working in Corporate America. Take a break from your day and give it a read. Guaranteed to make you giggle.
Missed Episode 10, Excelleration? Read it here. Or read the series from the beginning here.

As I wrestled my outsized binder down the hall, I passed Diana handing out print samples with unusual energy. “Oh, good, you’re back,” she said in her let's-get-straight-to-the-point manner. “You’re debriefing us at the production meeting. Meeting’s moved to 10. TWO’s running late. Bats.”

Bats?

I was distracted by the familiar “ping” of an incoming MOO. Soon followed the familiar chorus of resigned sighs that seemed to whisper “What now?”

M E M O R A N D U M O F O P P O R T U N I T Y !

From: The Office of the CEO
The Office of the Director, Global Human Resources
To: All Employees

A company-wide web cast has been scheduled for this Friday at 12 noon EST.

While we realize you may have client obligations that will preclude you from attending this webcast, we strongly encourage you to make every effort to attend. We will be announcing important changes we are implementing as we reposition our firm for increased success in the competitive global marketplace. These changes will affect many of our processes and procedures and will impact every employee.

This important webcast will be recorded and uploaded to our employee message board so you can listen to it in its entirety at any time.
A Lotus Notes Calendar invitation with login/dial-in information will be disseminated shortly.

Uh oh! Until now, the new Leadership Team, unable to tell us what we should do, despite the millions poured into their collective purse each year, told us instead what we had done.

The Leadership team, without understanding what was wrong, had apparently now decided to take corrective action.

Nigel was standing in the doorway of Ivy, one of the Cerberus as she read the MOO. “Oh Psshaw!” she exclaimed on finishing.

Ivy was our Miss Havisham, her yellowed, torn dress, the way things were under The Previous; a tattered much read procedures manual clutched firmly to her aging chest, Miss Havisham’s faded bouquet. And like Miss Havisham, Ivy steadfastly refused to believe the world had moved on, her dream vanquished. Dedicated to what had been, she would have had the clocks stopped at the moment The Previous fell if she could.

The Previous was the leadership team who had been summarily dismissed and replaced by the current team led by Lizzie Borden and Capital B. The current team was thus referred to as The After.

“You should come over some time,” Nigel suggested quietly. “You’d like my girls.”

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The Corporatorium: Excelleration (Episode 10)

Welcome to Episode 10 of my funny, absurdist serial on working in Corporate America. Take a break from your day and give it a read. Guaranteed to make you giggle.
Missed Episode 9, : Caipirinha? Read it here. Or read the series from the beginning here.

I spent most of the following two days trying to avoid Brett; as he seemed to be trying to avoid me as well, this was accomplished easily enough. Besides, he seemed too busy with Savannah to bother the rest of us.

Watching Brett and Savannah interact was endlessly amusing for while they publicly professed to adore each other—Brett going so far as to announce boldly, “We’re twins separated at birth!”—they seemed to actually despise each other. Publicly, they always had their heads together leaving the impression that they were conceiving The Next Great Thing. More likely though, they were plotting against the rest of us. Presumably when they were alone, they plotted against each other.
The Corporation was big on discovering The Next Great Thing. A year before the financial collapse it had been helping clients win the war for talent. Now it was Centers of Excellence. So the search was on for the next Next Great Thing. They had even formed Innovation teams to answer the Innovation Challenge whose winning entry would be, by definition, The Next Great Thing.

Meetings began each day at 8 a.m. with a “working” breakfast which meant that you were forced to listen to Savannah while you ate. I attended each meeting fortified with the contents of Nigel’s survival kit, Savannah’s near-senseless words a near-constant assault against the skein of my Xanax-fueled indifference. This indifference had the invaluable effect of sparing me confusion.

Savannah’s monologues were frequently accompanied by stupefying PowerPoint presentations full of Excel spreadsheets, whose tiny print was impossible to read, pie charts and words like “noble purpose,” and “synergy.”

Each day of exhaustive listening ended in a mandatory “mixer.” The stated purpose of said mixers was so we’d each get to know each other better as the Center of Excellence model called for us to function as a cohesive team.

“To create unmatched teams,” Savannah said grandly, “We will harness all of our diversity.” She opened her arms to encompass the room—a room in which, it should be pointed out, all the faces, save mine, were pale and anxious. And while we were about evenly divided between male and female, the women all looked like boyish imitations of the men, a favored daughter pretending to be “dad,” playing up the slight resemblance between them by dressing like him and adopting his mannerisms.

“Doesn’t she mean ‘mismatched teams’?” someone whispered.

“These teams,” Savannah explained raising her voice to silence to offending whisperer, “will create for clients a ‘high touch’ experience stressing sharing and understanding a common set of core values that align with each client’s vision. Each team will work to identify and present a mutually agreeable solution that can be achieved by outsourcing HR Administration and set benchmarks and goals that can be monitored. You’ll promote mutual accountability with focus on having the administrative services align with the pre-identified goals and objectives thus ensuring that the participant experience and performance metrics match expectations. Any questions?”

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The Corporatorium: Caipirinha (Episode Nine)

Welcome to Episode 9 of my funny, absurdist serial on working in Corporate America. Take a break from your day and give it a read. Guaranteed to make you giggle.
Missed Episode 8, Into the Fire? Read it here. Or read the series from the beginning here.

“Huh?” I asked helplessly. We were in the middle of yet another production meeting, and I thought I’d heard my name mentioned.

“You’re going to…” and here TWO named our southern office located in some North Carolina backwater.

“But, why?”

“Training,” TWO said. “Capital B has decided to decentralize certain functions now centralized there. We’ll need you to get up to speed as you’ll be the chief liaison between the Northeast and Southeast regions.

“Why me?” I asked. My fear of flying is well known and to her credit TWO did an admirable job hiding her glee at my discomfiture.

She gave me an answer but what it was I don’t know as her words were drowned out by the sound of smoke being blown up my ass.

“Oh,” she said rising. “One more thing: Brett will be going with you.”

***

Nigel sidled up to my cell, glanced up and down the hall and slipped into the narrow space. “Here,” he said thrusting several small glassine packets at me.

“What’s this?”

“A survival kit for your trip,” he said mysteriously.

***

At the airport, I was accosted by a burly, grumpy woman in a TSA uniform as I attempted to clear security. I am convinced TSA does their recruiting exclusively among ex-Nuns discharged from their teaching duties for extreme cruelty, and who were only too happy to substitute the Word of the Director of Homeland Insecurity for papal infallibility. I caught her eyeing my hand and I knew instinctively she was wishing she had a ruler instead of a gun.

“You can’t take this on the plane,” she said brandishing a large bottle of lotion she had found in my carry-on.

“But it’s lotion!”

“I don’t care what it is! You can’t take more than three ounces of liquid on a plane!”

“Since when?” I challenged.

She gaped at me. “Since, like, forever!”

“Oh, I don’t fly much,” I admitted.

“Don’t you read the newspaper?”

“Um. Actually, no. So depressing…anyway back to your three ounce rule—I’ll be gone for three days, I need more than three ounces of lotion!”

She stared at me incredulously.

I tried again: “I have very dry skin.”

I was forced to check my bag. By now it was so late I didn’t have time to worry about what our latest travel policy said about checking luggage. Luggage checked, I sprinted down the corridor to the bar closest to my gate where I ordered two Churchill Martinis (pour gin over ice in a jigger, nod towards France, and shake). Martinis are the perfect drink for pre-flight jitters, providing maximum alcohol but with little volume thus eliminating the need to get up and pee mid-flight. (Is there anything more terrifying that standing over a toilet trying to pee while suspended in midair?)

Semi-drunk, I arrived at the boarding gate to discover my plane was delayed an hour. It would, in fact, be more than four hours before we took off by which time I was sober and the airport bar closed. I am a barely tolerable flyer drunk; sober I am impossible.

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The Corporatorium: Into the Fire (Episode 8)

Welcome to Episode 8 of my funny, absurdist serial on working in Corporate America. Take a break from your day and give it a read. Guaranteed to make you giggle.

Missed Episode 7, Out of the Frying Pan? Read it here. Or read the series from the beginning here.

I was in the elevator when I got a text from Terry, our receptionist, a fierce, snapping, vogueing take-no-prisoners queen. "Better hurry! The Devil and her evil imp are here." I wondered idly what Brett had done to earn Terry's ire already.

"Chirl!" The word sailed across the lobby and exploded in my ear as I exited the elevator.

As far as I could tell “chirl” was a word of Terry’s own invention, combining the words “child” and “girl.”

"Chirl! You're late. You better move it."
I waved behind my back without turning around.

********************

It was mid-morning before we mushrooms were called into the conference room. The room was so violently hot that each of us staggered a bit on entering.

Capital B was presiding over the meeting from the middle of the conference table. Beneath a soot-colored suit, she wore a high-collared iridescent silk shirt. In the pale light it flashed red, blue, yellow as she moved; with each movement it looked like flames were licking at her throat.

TWO sat at one end of the conference table. Around her and slightly forward were the Cerberus, defying you to get too close. With Capital B in the middle of the table and a seat for Brett across from her, we were left to sit at the other end of the table. Capital B leaned forward to say something to TWO. TWO drew back and the Cerberus leaned forward, teeth bared.

Brett chose that moment to make his entrance. “Hell-lo all!” he boomed haughtily.

He was a small, pudgy man. His face was at once that of a woman and a pig with tiny bright blue eyes and a pug nose. His wide, thin-lipped mouth carried a smile as false as the joker's. His hair was less hair than a kind of living fudge—straightened, bleached, re-colored and layered just so then shellacked into perfect immobility. Despite his perkiness and bright hopeful words, desperation curled about him like cigar smoke, silent, choking.

Being in his presence, caused my skin to prickle and the hairs on the back of my head to stand on end, as happens when the dead walk among the living.

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