Author Archives: Megan

Literary Friendship

This essay was originally published at The Nervous Breakdown, along with both versions of Oscar and Veronica. Here’s mine; here’s Jeff’s. I’d like to thank Gina Frangello and Leah Tallon, two women made of all things magic and awesome.

The OMG We’ve Got To Write About This Look

When I found out my story collection was being published, the first person I called was Jeff. He’d been there from the beginning: the writing and rewriting; submissions and rejections; and, most importantly, all of the living that inspired the stories in the first damn place.

We met up to celebrate. We drank champagne. “What did your editor say?” Jeff asked, and then, gleefully, “You have an editor!” We giggled, drank more champagne, and talked about the stories. Jeff had been my first reader on all of them—all except one.

“So,” I said. We’d killed one bottle and had ordered another. Celebration! “There’s a story. In the book. It’s about… us.”

This is a tricky moment in the life of a writer. Let’s call it… The Talk. Historically, The Talk has referred to asking whomever you’re dating whether or not they want to be exclusive, but for a writer, it’s what happens when you’ve written about somebody close to you and you want their permission to publish it. It’s a nerve-wracking thing: You squeezed your heart into this story! It’s a great opportunity for your work! You changed the person’s hair color and made them from Novia Scotia!—still, you care enough about the relationship to discuss it first.

For the record, I knew Jeff wouldn’t care that I’d written about him. Not because I’d done it before (I had), and not because I’d disguised him enough that he’d never be recognized (I hadn’t); rather because hegets it. He, too, has done it. He, too, is a writer.

See, my friend Jeff is also J. Adams Oaks. J. Adams Oaks, author of Why I Fight with his speaking engagements, his YA awards, his Author Page at Simon and Schuster, but just then? Sitting across from me, pouring champagne? It wasn’t J.Adams Oaks. It was Jeff, and when I told him I’d written a story about us he said, “Okay. Which part about us?”

“It was forever ago,” I said. “We were living in Wicker Park, and we played that game called—“

He cut me off. “Oscar and Veronica?”

“Yes!”

“You wrote the Oscar and Veronica story?” There was something nervous about his voice, like how he sounded back when we were both interested in the same guy (this happened a lot). Or when he told me that the guy I was dating was actually gay (this happened three times). Or when he told me that he was gay (this happened once, fifteen years ago, back when I was hopelessly in love with him).

“Is there a problem with the Oscar and Veronica story?” I asked. “You know I’ve written way more personal things about you, like the time—”

He cut me off. “It’s just weird, that’s all.”

“What?”

“I wrote the Oscar and Veronica story, too.”

*

Here’s how it worked: If Jeff called me Veronica, or I called him Oscar, it meant there was a cute guy within earshot so we had to pretend to be brother and sister. The act was to appear natural, but be loud enough for the cute guy to overhear. “Did mom call you?” “Dad called last night.” “Remember when we were six and our cousin Johnny ate that lightbulb?” It was silly and ridiculous and an absolute necessity because wherever Jeff and I went, everyone assumed we were together, thus contributing to all sorts of awkward situations and complicated emotions—the stuff that makes good stories.

To hear Jeff tell it, some ten+ years ago we made a pact that each of us would, someday, write the Oscar and Veronica story. I’m sure it could’ve happened that way. Jeff and I have made pacts to write a thousand different things: the time I told off his ex-boyfriend at a hotdog stand; the time his very fabulous roommate used a loaf of French bread to teach me proper blow job technique; and on and on. The thing is, over all these years, all these stories, all these seemingly secret moments when we’d give each other the OMG we have got to write about this look—up until now, we’ve never actually done it.

*

When I think of literary friendship, I think of the heavyweights: Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. Emerson and Thoreau. Their relationships are full of inspiration, of arguments, of jealousy and letters and reading and late-night talks about life and literature. Are Jeff and I like that? Sometimes. I hand him drafts of stories I’m sure are done, and then he asks a single fucking question that keeps me awake for weeks. He’s the one who put Gabriel Garcia Marquez in my hands, to this day my favorite writer. When his editor asked for yet another rewrite, we spent hours in front of my bookshelf, trying to figure out how exactly writers pull off this whole writing thing.

Every week, we sit in restaurants around Chicago, drinking champagne or coffee, depending on the hour, and typing from opposite sides of the table. Sometimes we talk—I know Jeff’s fictional characters better than I know some of my real-life relatives,—but, more often than not, we work. We type. We Ass in Chair. If I feel stuck, if I feel like walking away from the computer, I look up and he is there, hard at work, and I will not let him beat me! I will order another coffee and keep at it. Whatever it takes.

*

If I’m really being honest? All his literary influence is, to me, secondary. Forget literary friend—he’s myfriend. He’s my son’s godfather. He gave me away at my wedding. He and my husband, Christopher, have weekly movie nights.

In another lifetime, we’d stay up all night drinking bourbon while one of us cried and complained (me) or spoke very elegantly and poetically about how our current misfortunes influenced our growth as human beings (Jeff). When I’d introduce him to guys I was dating, he’d say, “What about that guy Christopher?”

In a lifetime before that, we sweated over grad school and paying bills. When I’d introduce him to guys I was dating, he’d say, “He looks like a troll. You know those troll dolls? With the … hair?”

Before that was the fateful night where, after he walked me home from a late night class, I took a purposely long time looking for my keys, drumming up the courage to look up at him and say, “Would you like to have dinner with me?” I was twenty years old. I’d recently broken up with my high school boyfriend. I was brand new to the big city, brand new to my adult life, and Jeff had walked me home after class every night for months.

“I’d love to have dinner with you!” he said. “You know I’m gay, right?”

Looking back on it, this was the moment where I learned that there are different kinds of love. It’s a long, complicated novel, not a three-minute pop song, and, for me, that’s what Oscar and Veronica is about: letting go long enough to move on to the next chapter.

*

I recently read that Emerson owned the property at Walden Pond, and gave it to Thoreau to build his cabin.

Jeff? Are you reading this?

Hurry up and buy some land so I can build a cabin.

I’d prefer this land to be in Spain.

But I’m not picky.

Stories as gifts

This piece was originally written for the League of Chicago Theaters. WBEZ said it will “make you believe in the power of love.”

The Domino Effect

About ten years ago, I waited tables at a brunch restaurant in Wicker Park called the Bongo Room, known for its insanely amazing Chocolate Marscapone French Toast and the insanely large crowds of people waiting to eat it *. Every Sunday these guys would come in—we’ll call them Steve, Jim, Mark, and Chip. Steve, Jim, and Mark were cool: they talked about last night at the Hunt Club, dressed in head-to-toe Ambercrombie and Fitch, and tried to buddy me up for faster service.  “Hi, what’s your name?” they’d say when I got to the table; then, “Hi, Megan! We’re Steve, Jim, Mark, and Chip!” I didn’t bother saying they’d told me before, told me last week, told me eighteen thousand times so can you just get on with the pancakes and Bloody Marys ‘cause the wait for a table is over an hour, the guy at twenty-three is bitching about his benedict, I just got a nine-top on twenty-four, eight of whom want soy lattes—soy, for chrissakes!—and I don’t have time to yak it up so can you order?

But of course, they couldn’t.

“You see her?” Chip said, nodding at a girl a couple tables over.  She was perfect—shiny hair, great body, big smile; imagine a television commercial for toothpaste or hairspray—and I looked back at Chip and said, “Yeah?”

“Can you find out if she’s married?” he asked, and, right away, Steve, Jim, and Mark started laughing. I should point out that Chip wasn’t like the other three. He was kinda chubby, kinda balding, kinda boring—Like, if I say tax attorney, you might imagine a guy like Chip.

“You wanna date her?” said Steve, Jim, and Mark. This was always how they treated him—sometimes he was the punchline; sometimes the punching bag—and while usually he’d turn red and laugh along with them, today he gripped the edge of the table and said, “No, I don’t want to date her. I want to marry her.”

The reaction was immediate: That girl wouldn’t be caught dead with a guy like you, That girl eats guys like you for breakfast, an appetizer for the main course, know what I’m saying? Ha ha, jab to the ribs—and Chip looked at me and said, “Please.”

It was the please that did it.

I went by her table, planning on doing a quick left hand check—ring or no ring?—and then back to Chip with the verdict, but it wasn’t that simple. The girl was sitting with her left arm crossed over her stomach, her left hand tucked underneath her right armpit.  I watched her for nearly a half hour, and the whole time she ate, drank, and gestured with only her right hand.

“Well?” Chip asked.

“I’m working on it,” I said. Then I walked to her table and dropped a napkin on the floor, squatting down to hands and knees on the ground and looking up at her lap—no go.

“What are you doing?” asked my friend/co-worker, Molly, once I was back in the sevice station.

I told her.

“That’s so romantic!” she said, jumping up and down and clapping. “It’s like when you’re on the subway and you see someone, and you lock eyes, and it gets too intense so you have to look away, and when you look back, they’re looking away, and what I always wonder is, what would happen if you just kept looking?”

I didn’t know.

“We’ll never know,” Molly said, “because nobody ever tries!”

Before I could fully wrap my brain around that idea , I saw that Chip’s girl was standing up. She was reaching for her jacket. She was dropping her left arm down and—no, there wasn’t any ring—because there weren’t any fingers.  There was a hand. And some stumps of varying sizes where fingers ought to be but weren’t.

I went to Chip’s table.  “She doesn’t have fingers,” I announced.

They looked at me blankly, so I held up my left hand and folded my fingers into my palm.  “No fingers,” I said again.

Steve, Jim and Mark nearly died laughing. Leave it to you to fall for a— and Guess she’s not so perfect anymore— and The one time you have balls enough to— but Chip didn’t hear any of it.  He just watched as she left restaurant, and then, when the front door closed behind her, he did the last thing you’d ever expect from a punchline or a punching bag: He got up and ran after her.

About six months later, I was walking around the restaurant refilling coffee and there, at a two-top by the front window, was Chip—who FYI looked fantastic: he’d shaved his head, muscled up a bit, dressed more cutting edge, like if I say CEO of New Social Media Empire, you might imagine a guy like Chip. It was easy to see the reason behind the change, because sitting across the table from him was—wait for it—the girl. His beautiful, fingerless, perfect girl.

It took everything I had not to cheer.

They told me the whole story: how he caught up with her on the sidewalk; how he didn’t have know what to say because he’d never done anything like that before but, dammit, he tried; and how, when people ask where they met, they talk about the crazy waitress at the Bongo Room who crawled around on the floor.

Hearing that story, for me, was a gift. At the time, I was single, sort of bitter—just done with it. Have you been there?—and knowing that these two people were giving it a go—that they were trying—had a huge impact on me. Enough to start trying myself. Enough to tell this story over and over to friends of mine in similar situaions. Enough to write it for a storytelling series I work with called 2nd Story, where we tell our stories aloud in the hopes that they will inspire our audience to consider their own, and how—even as we celebrate our differences—there are still multiple connections in our lives.

For me, this is what theatre does: it gives me a story, like a gift (I imagine it wrapped in shiny paper with the bow, the handmade letterpress card, the whole nine yards) and in that gift, I find parts of myself that have been missing, parts of our world that I never imagined, and aspects of this life that I’m challenged to further examine. Then I take that gift and share it. In the work I make myself, sure, but the kind of sharing I’m talking about here is the domino effect: how I hear/watch/experience a story, and then tell everybody and their mother about it, and then they tell everybody and their mother, and somewhere in that long line of people is someone who, at this exact point in their life, needed its message more than we’ll ever know.

We do this all the time: “Oh my God, I just saw [Liza Minelli’s Daughter or the Brother/Sister Plays or Star Witness or Write Club or the Chicago Landmark Project or Fa$hion or The Ghosts of Treasure Island or Queertopia or Filet of Solo or El Nogalar or The Encyclopedia Show or 2nd Story or insert one of a thousand plays and performances and readings that Chicago offers] and it made me think about—”

What?

What did the last piece of theatre you saw make you think about?

Did it help you find parts of yourself that have been missing? Parts of our world that you never imagined? Aspects of this life that you’re challenged to further examine?

My God—what a gift.

And now, you wrap it up and give it away. Somebody out there really needs a good present. Maybe your friend, maybe a co-worker, maybe that random person sitting next to you on a bus, or maybe the crazy waitress at the that restaurant you go to every single day, the one who’s ready to crawl around on the floor if it helps you find the love of your life.

 

* For the record, The Bongo Room should not only be known for the French Toast. It should be known for the kindness and generosity of its owners—Derrick Robles and John Latino—whose friendship and business supported me while I put myself through school, made art, kicked off a teaching career, and generally figured out what the hell I was doing. I’d wager there are many theatre artists and literary artists and visual artists and artists who can say the same. So, on behalf of us all, I’d like to say thank you to service industry for helping us pay our rent and live our dreams; for allowing us the flexibility to audition and finish projects; for giving our audiences the space to discuss our art over yummy food; for our after parties (!); for coffee; for wine; and, most of all, the lifelong friendships.

Writing and parenting and juggling

I wrote this essay called Juggle What?, about trying to be a writer and a mom and a human being and how do you juggle it all? I fail a lot. And then I try again and maybe I do better. Maybe. Sometimes. It was first published in Hypertext Magazine as part of a really great series on Writing and Living. I’m super excited to be a part of it (thanks for having me, Chris!).

Juggle What?

What is the rudest question you can ask a woman? “How old are you?” “What do you weigh?” “When you and your twin sister are alone with Mr. Hefner, do you have to pretend to be lesbians?” No, the worst question is “How do you juggle it all?”—Tina Fey

I am often asked how I juggle it all. This can mean many things depending on who’s asking: How do I juggle being a writer and a mom, a teacher and a mom, a working mom, a mom [1]? Submitting my writing, marketing my writing, performing my writing, writing? Teaching students, teaching teachers to teach students, learning from these teachers and students and writers and moms—‘cause, really: what the hell do I know?

*

I am often asked how I juggle it all, and the truth is, I’m lucky. My husband is a total hands-on dad and 100% supportive of my work. He even taught our three-year-old to ask, when I get home at the end of the day, “How’d the writing go, Mommy?”

*

I am often asked how I juggle it all, and the truth is, I’m lucky. My kid is spectacular in a thousand ways that, like any parent, I could go on about forever [2] but what’s pertinent here is that he’s a great sleeper. Eleven hours per night and a two-hour nap. Everything I’ve written since he was born has happened during these two hours. He conks out and I get to work. There are dishes and toys and laundry everywhere; a hundred new emails marked priority; the house is on fire, burning to the ground as I type, and none of it matters. These are my two hours. I am able to exist as an individual independent of my role as a mother because of them. I guard them. They are precious, the last canteen in a barren desert.

Here’s how I used to write: my workspace had to be clean; notes organized; a certain kind of coffee; what music would best suit my mood? I’d read a little, stare at the wall, go to the kitchen for more coffee and—whoa. Look at how gross the oven is, better clean it, and—shit. The fridge is nasty, too, and the floor, and of course the kitchen floor is connected to the rest of floor and by the time the whole apartment is spotless, I’ve given up on writing for the day because I don’t “feel inspired.”

Fuck waiting for it.

Sit down and make it happen.

*

I am often asked how I juggle it all, and what I say is, It’s how you use the time you’ve got.

*

Do I sound like I know what I’m doing? It’s not altogether true. I feel a bit fragile about my writing, actually. Here are some reasons why:

1. Sometimes, I can’t write during those two hours because I have to be at work.
2. Sometimes, I can’t write during those two hours because I have to nap.
3. Sometimes, I can’t write during those two hours because my brain hurts and the only way to fix it is to watch Jack Bauer free-streaming on Netflix.
4. Sometimes, when I can write during those two hours, I don’t know what to work on. A short story? This essay? A blog post or two or five, or that interview that was due last week, or my journal? What I want to work on is my novel, but to tackle something so big with only two little hours… it just  seems impossible.
5. I’m ashamed to admit that. My students might be reading this.
6. What I want to work on is my novel. I walk around thinking about it and sometimes I run into walls or miss my el stop. I’ve written short stories for a decade, but this—there are so many characters! Recently, I was talking through some dialogue to keep them all straight in my mind, and my son looked up from his Legos and said, “Mommy, are you talking to yourself?”
7. I thought of the scene in The Hours when Virginia Wolf is going insane and her niece asks why she’s talking to herself and her sister Vanessa is all, “It’s okay, honey. Aunt Virginia’s a writer.”
8. “Yes,” I said to my three-year-old. “I’m talking to myself.”
9. He hugged me. Have you ever been hugged by a three-year-old? It’s the greatest feeling in the history of the universe.
10. He pulled free of the hug and put both little hands on my cheeks. “You don’t have to talk to yourself, Mommy,” he said. “You can talk to me!”

*

I try to juggle it all. I have a very complex system of color-coded Google calendars: CALEB, CHRISTOPHER, WRITING, TEACHING, CTE, 2nd STORY, and LIFE (for example, Go to the dentist. Buy groceries). In fact, I just added a new one! It’s called SELF-PRESERVATION.

This week, there are three things scheduled under SELF-PRESERVATION: yoga class, Murakami’s IQ84, and have a good cry.

*

Recently, when complaining to my friend Amanda about how I can’t juggle it all, I started to cry. We were driving somewhere, my son in the backseat. I went on and on about the pressure, the exhaustion, the mortgage, how I’d cut off my left arm for an uninterrupted week to write, “ …and to top it all off, fucking Halloween is coming! When am I going to find him a costume!? Let alone fucking make one! Some mothers go to JoAnn Fabric and get the patterns and FUCKING MAKE JIMMY INTO A PENGUIN WHO HAS THAT KIND OF TIME!?”

FYI: I didn’t really swear in front of my son.

That said, I wanted to.

Sometimes, it’s all too much.

Amanda listened to me explode all over the car and then, calmly, she got out her cell phone and turned to the backseat. “Caleb,” she said, dialing. “What do you want to be for Halloween?” “Light-up Batman!” he said, which made me cry harder ‘cause it’s so totally adorable, and while I sat there unable to control my gulpy, gaspy sobs, my sweet little boy asking if I was okay, could he please unbuckle his car seat and come up front to hug me?—my friend Amanda got on the phone and ordered a Batman costume. Size 5T. “And if it could light up somehow, that be great.” Then she hung up, looked at me and said, “What else?”

*

I am often asked how I juggle it all, and the truth is, it takes a village. As I type these words, my son is with his Uncle Jeff. Jeff is a bartender at a fancy French place, and wants his godson to be educated in high-end cuisine. To that end, they take a monthly tour of Chicago’s best gastro pubs. My son comes home stuffed and excited, toddler-talking a mile a minute about riette, cornichons and haricot vert, and I get new pages of my novel; maybe an essay or two.

Jeff is also a writer. He understands my need to get the words out of my head and on to the page. He knows it makes me… calmer.

*

It is rare, if ever, that I feel calm. I drop my son off at school and am floored by all the mothers, so put-together, so sophisticated. I am exhausted from teaching til ten the night before. I have probably, recently, spilled juice on myself. A good day is when we leave the house on time with the necessary stuff: Caleb’s backpack and my backpack and student work and books and computer and keys and the avocado plant for Show’n’Share and coffee and did I walk the dog? Did I make my deadline? Did I write down the idea I had in the middle of the night about how to transition between chapters 3 and 4 of my novel? It was a great fucking idea! WHAT WAS IT!? We get everything in the car, Caleb’s strapped in, I’m strapped in—and then I just sit there. I breathe. It’s 8am. The day hasn’t even started but already, I look around for applause.

*

Recently, when complaining to a friend about how I couldn’t juggle it all, a woman I’d never met leaned over from the next table and said, “Tina Fey has an essay about parenting in this week’s New Yorker. Maybe you should read it.”

I love Tina Fey. I have always loved Tina Fey. She’s on my list, the one my husband and I made, prior to getting married, of people we’d be allowed to cheat with if ever the situation presented itself (Tina Fey, Idris Elba, PJ Harvey from the This is Lovevideo). I admire her humor, the doors she’s opening for women in Hollywood and hopefully this country—life follows art, right?—and, most importantly, I’m grateful for her honesty about how being a working mom is hard even when you have help. See how she does that? Admits having help? So legions of working moms don’t compare ourselves to the impossible model of Tina Fey producing a television show, writing a bestseller, dressing up in designer duds and fighting twenty times a day with a toddler about putting chocolate sauce on the broccoli?

How do I juggle it all? I have help.

*

Dear my cousin Aaron: thank you for helping me take care of my son. Thank for appearing out of the clear blue sky the moment my family and I most needed you. Did you hurt yourself on your fall from heaven?

*

Not gonna lie: when that woman—that stranger—told me that Tina Fey’s essay could help with my parenting, I wanted to stick a fork in her eye. I was eating a very gooey Danish with a fork and I imagined reaching across the table, plucking her eyeball right out of her face, and flinging it across the coffee shop.

Giving unsolicited advice is never a good idea.

Especially when it’s about parenting.

*

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I feel a bit fragile about my parenting. Here are some reasons why:

1. As a college writing teacher, I read a lot of My Mother Screwed Me Up Good stories.
2. There are so many My Mother Screwed Me Up Good stories, many of which feature women who are artists but stop making art when they have kids and then blame the kids and then the kids go to therapy and grow up and write books likeRunning With Scissors.
3. I didn’t stop making art when I had a kid, nor have I stopped helping others make art, in part because I love my job but also because I need it (Hi, Fannie Mae!), and no matter how fast I run, no matter how much I write, no matter how much permission I have to be a Working Mother in the Twenty-first Century—I still feel guilty. Last week I got an email from school about which parents would help the kids change into their Halloween costumes and which parents would buy juice. I had two meetings, a four-hour workshop, and an annual report due that day, so I bought the juice.
4. I am the mother who buys the juice.
5. I sat on the kitchen floor and cried about being the mother who buys the juice. I vowed to quit work immediately. We’d pay our mortgage somehow, right? And if not, who cares? We’ll mail our house keys to the bank, pack up the dog, and go live in a cabin. Preferably one with a goat. I’ll help my kid change into his Halloween costume every day and we’ll only drink milk. Never juice. Fuck juice.
6. (This cry had not been scheduled on my SELF-PRESERVATION Google calendar).
7. My three-year-old came into the kitchen, wanting to know why I was sad.
8. I told him, “Because I bought juice.”
9. He put both his little hands on my cheeks and said, “Mommy, I love juice!”
10. Then he said, “Can you be done now so we can play?”

*

I am often asked how I juggle it all, and the truth is this: I can sit there crying on the floor, or I can get up and build a super-ramp with my kid. I can worry about what and how and when I’m writing, or I can put my ass in the chair and do it already. It’s how you use the time you’ve got.

*

In the end, there are these calm, lovely, perfect moments. Everything has slowed down. We’re reading bedtime stories. We’re coloring spaceships. We’re making forts out of pillows, figuring out the impossible, puffy architecture. This month, we made enough to cover the bills so, for a few weeks at least, the weight of the world sits elsewhere, and for now it’s just the three of us.

I think about how lucky I am. It’s a big feeling, a thousand times bigger than my novel ever could be. It’s so big that I almost stop breathing.

My whole life, there’ve been two things I’ve known for sure: I want to be a writer and I want to be a mom. And now? People ask how I juggle it all, and what I want to say is, Are you kidding? My life isn’t a juggle.

It’s a fucking gift.

 

footnotes:
[1] I’m using the word Mom here because that’s what I am, but I think this applies to dads, too, and the Aunts and Grandparents and foster parents and significant adults who are raising super-awesome kids that make this world a better place.
[2] When I get mad because somebody parked in my parking spot, he says, “Mommy, you have to share.” He says, “Mommy? My body needs to run now. Can we go somewhere for this?” He says, “My body is full of bones and meat and mus-kulls.” He says, “Mommy-Ramen-aminal” for Mayor Rahm Emmanual. He says, “Will you be my friend? Friends are super cool.” He says, “Can we listen to that M.I.A. song? M.I.A shakes my butt.” He says, “You’re the best Mommy I’ve ever had in my whole life ever,” and a thousand other amazing things, a thousand times a day. For him, I want to be a better human being, a better writer and teacher and wife and friend.  For him, I want the world to be a better place. I think art can help make that happen. And someday—two decades into the future when he’s finding himself as an adult—I want him to read my stories and be proud of me. Which means that now? I need to get to work.

I like to think I’m above revenge. But… well… that’s a lie.

I am interested in how different people define the same word.

In another lifetime, I had a Critical Thinking teacher who tried to explain the difference between denotation and connotation. “This,” she said, pointing at her desk, “is the denotation of the word desk. The connotation of desk is how we all individually feel about desks.” She paused, letting that sink in, and then asked, “How do you all, individually, feel about desks?” There were sixty-some of us in this class, all college freshmen. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that, at the time, desks were not a primary focus of significant emotion response. Sex, maybe. Money. Grades or jobs or fear or art or all sorts of crazy things. Think back to yourself when you were a college freshman. What did you think about? Me?: my folks were splitting up, my boyfriend back in Michigan was seeing another girl, and I shared a 10X10 dorm room with a girl looped on esctasy three nights a week, I’ll tell you what, desks were the last thing on my mind!

sidebar: this all happened over a decade ago. Now, I have very strong feelings about desks, primarily A) I don’t ever want one in a classroom because pedagogically I find that it unecessarily divides my students and I and B) I’m dying to have one in my house so I can have a place to put all my shit. Right now, it’s everywhere, and I can’t ever find what I need, and my poor husband, he’s got to contend with my paperwork all over the place, and also my kid is at that phase where he wants to draw spaceships on everything, which is awesome except that now there are spaceships on my teaching contracts and time sheets and student work and story ideas and lesson plans and tax forms and schedules, and, yes, I know you’re thinking Get the kid some paper, whydon’tcha? and I promise you, he has it! He has every art supply you can possibly imagine! But why would anyone want to draw on paper when they can draw on the bathroom wall? Or Daddy’s web designs? Or mommy’s… everything? Also: last week, at his school, one of the little girls did orgami for show-n-share and now my kid is convinced that paper is for folding, not drawing, so my tax forms are now little birds. Which is actually pretty cool—birds are way more interesting than tax forms. Also: I’ll never again be able to think of taxes without thinking of birds. Which would mean that birds are now my connotation of taxes! Huzzah! Right back to the point!

Anyhow—desks were, at the time, not quite as ripe for connotation as some other words, words like love or race or faith. I remember, years after this whole connotation/denotation thing, reading One Hundred Years of Solitude and thinking about all the different connotations of the word solitude and how all of them were given to a different member of the (fictional) Buendia family:

You’re so brilliant that no one can understand you, so you’re alone.
You’re so beautiful that everyone’s intimidated by you, so you’re alone.
You’re so old that no one even sees you anymore, so you’re alone.
Your penis is so big that women are scared and men are jealous, so you’re alone.
And on and on.

Genius.

sidebar: Dear Marquez I love you.

Anyhow—connotation. It’s mind boggling to think about how many misunderstandings I’ve had over the years because of differing connotations. On the flip-side, I’m in awe of what I learn by listening to the connotations of others; how much I’ve grown as a human being and widened my world view. I’ll listen to how different people—friends, artists, the guy sitting across from me in a class—define words like marriage and protest and illegal and and parent and education and life. Our connotations of these words shape our politics, our values, how we spend our money, how we love—and the thing that creates those connotations are our stories.

A few years ago, there was some big case in the news about parents who were seeking revenge for something that had happened to their teenage daughter—the clincher was, she didn’t want them to. She wanted it to just go away. I remember talking about the ethical implications of this over and over again: what was justice in such a situation? There’s another word with multiple connotations—justice. Justice for whom? For her, or her family? Did her parents have the right to move forward with something she didn’t want? I remember wondering why she didn’t want revenge. Or maybe she didn’t want the kind of revenge they were seeking—the legal kind. Maybe she wanted a different kind?

What exactly is revenge? When I wrote the story Shot to the Lungs and No Breath Left, I was thinking about my connotation to that single word. And—as often happens in writing—the story became about other things, as well: revenge, and the relationship between a parent and a child, and gender roles, and all this other shit that sort of surprised me, but hey—what the hell. This is what came out. It’s here, let’s examine it.

For over a decade, I’ve worked with a Chicago theatre director named Amanda Delheimer Dimond. She’s the Artistic Director of 2nd Story. She’s my friend. She challenges me to look deeper with every project, to really figure out what the hell I am talking about. I knew I wanted to make some sort of video for Shot to the Lungs, so I brought the story to her and the very amazing Kyle Hammon of KBH Media, whom I can’t suggest enough if you want to explore video/audio/multimedia in your own stories, personal or professional. The three of us got to talking about revenge, and we thought it would be intersting to ask some very different people to speak to their own connotations of the word.

I am grateful to Kyle and Amanda for creating a piece that digs into this question of how different people view the same idea, and what might happen if we take a moment to listen to each other. I am grateful to Ada Gray, Lauren Kelly-Jones, Nic Dimond, Aaron Stielstra, Jennifer Shin, and Coya Paz for sharing their time and their stories. I am grateful to a Faculty Development Grant from Columbia College for helping to fund this project, and to all of you for giving it a look and maybe a share.

“To keep my sanity, I breakdance in front of a mirror several times a day.”

After my son was born, it was tough. I don’t mean the super-scary kind of post-partem, this was no Brooke Shields Down Came the Rain, but it definitely was something. I wasn’t… myself. So what I did was I started writing down one thing per day that helped me get by: Today I made the bed. Today I walked to the store. Today I built a super-ramp with my kid. As time went on, the things I wrote down got more and more ridiculous: Today I sold pee. Today I pocketed free sandwiches at a meeting for Organizing for America. Today I caught all these frogs in the creek behind the house and I kissed all of them and dammit none of them turned into a magic guy in tights who would save me from myself. Somewhere during all of this, the recession hit, and every day I’d read things in the news, all these insane things people were up against, and I’d imagine how they were getting by. How do any of us get by? I wrote a story about it called Times Are Tough All Over, and—as will happen when you share stories—people started telling me their own, the sometimes crazy, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes heartbreaking things they were doing to get by in these sometimes crazy, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes heartbreaking times. Hearing these stories had a profound affect on me: I laughed a lot, cried a little, and—most importantly—felt altogether less alone amidst the mess.

I hope that, in some small way, they might do the same for you.

My husband is a very kickass digital artist. I gave him some of the comments folks were kind enough to share with me, and he built a little place on the interwebs called Times Are Tough All Over. Read through them, see what grabs you, and, if you’d like, feel free to share your own.

No, it isn’t a solution to all the craziness that’s out there, but sometimes it’s nice to know you’re not in it alone.