Consent: A Memoir

by Jill Ciment

When I wrote the scene (note that I use the term scene, not memory—scenes in a memoir are no more accurate than reenactments on Forensic Files),

While writing a memoir, the time it takes to re-create a moment from your past is usually longer than the time it took to live the actual moment. The memory of writing the memoir slowly accumulates until it usurps the events you are trying to capture. It took me days to compose the scene. The kiss itself may have only lasted seconds.

What writer wouldn’t employ the irony of sleeping in your absent father’s bed after trying to seduce your father substitute?

Was my marriage—the half century of intimacy, the shifting power, the artistic collaborations, the sex, the shared meals, the friends, the travels, the illnesses, the money worries, the houses, the dogs—fruit from the poisonous tree?

The point of view in a memoir is curious. The writer must trick the reader (and herself) into believing that she actually remembers how she felt decades ago. A memoir is closer to historical fiction than it is to biography. And as with historical fiction, the reader often learns more about the period in which the book was written than the period that is being written about.

There are two voices in every memoir: old and young. For the previous scene, I employed the young voice by doing one simple trick. I took reflection out of the equation. The young voice doesn’t reflect; it just reacts.

A story stops when the writer doesn’t know what to say next; it ends when there is nothing more to be said.

It finally sank in: To love wasn’t just to feel love, but to act lovingly.