Day 106/Day 14: Perfectly Clean But Horribly Stained

"Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is." - Nadine Gordimer

I posted the Bacon Strip piece as a work-in-progress for an anthology about laundry. The subtitle of the anthology is something like 'Women, Wash and Words' and eventually I want to move away from these Ladies Home Literary Journal type venues for my work, but there's just so much opportunity there.

That, and I wasn't sure I had a single story about laundry in me. So, it was a good writing challenge. There's another house looking for stories about music...I also don't know I have any stories about that. Except maybe the time in junior high when we all went to the 2 Live Crew concert with the new girl from Louisiana. We were the youngest and whitest girls there by far and were lucky we didn't end up raped, killed or sold to the Russian mob. Louisiana Girl's parents drove us all home and let us take a lap of Third Avenue so we could get a good look at the hookers. We counted twenty-two that night. I was thirteen.

But back to my underpants.

I loved writing the story, but was concerned it'd be 'too much' for a book with 'Women' in the subtitle. It's not the kind of piece you'd see in Chicken Soup for the Housewife's Soul. On a whim, after I sent it to the laundry people, I submitted it to Eyeshot, an online journal I want into so bad I can taste it. (They were the ones who gave me the best rejection of my life.)

Woke up this morning to find this:
"Hi - thanks for sending this lovely, clear-as-clean-undies, thong song of a submission. It's maybe just not exactly the sort of thing I'm looking to post. This could almost be an article in a magazine, maybe, but I guess I'm looking for things that would never be considered acceptable opposite an advertisement featuring a nearly naked, very sexually satisfied model trying to sell chocolate-covered mothballs. By which I mean, I just woke up and am not making much sense, but I thank you for sending this, it reads well, it should have no trouble finding a home, just that it maybe makes too much sense for a room at La Casa Eyeshot."

This may sound a little S&M, but this guy gives good rejection. Including the 'Thanks again' sign-off, he thanked me three times. And much like my first Eyeshot rejection, this is more of an encouragement than a PFO.

BUT. He brings up my fundamental creative dilemma and personal writing nemesis.

Yes, I wrote a whole piece about stained panties, which in some circles would be considered brave and/or edgy. Yes, my grandmother, mother and Boyfriend's mother (all of whom read this blog) probably cringed and are trying to scrub the image out of their minds forever. Yes, it may be too much for Martha Stewart Living Magazine.

But it's too tame for Eyeshot.

The beauty of this blog is that I practice the art of storytelling every day. I try things out. I post works-in-progress. I push my own comfort zone abut what I'm willing to expose. Sometimes more gracefully than others.

But that thong was the tip of the iceberg.

I have a deep drive to muck around with those things we gloss over in polite conversation. The whitewashing and lying we all do to appear Okay or Normal. The things we're all hiding. The things we leave out.

When I was in Paris, Dana told me I'd have to kill my parents. That self-censorship was death to an artist. At the time, even the thought of writing something 'not nice' meant doubling up on the Xanax for a few days. But I moved past it and started telling the truth about lady parts, mole hair and midgets, letting the chips fall where they may.

So, I passed Level One. And now I'm at the next border. On one side lies all the writing I'd show my mother (I've already gone too far for Dad). Across the line is the kind of writing that currently gives me a stomach ache to think about – writing that refuses to pull the punch, that is unflinchingly true. That I may not feel good about showing anyone...other than the editors of marginal lit journals, that is.

It's not about hurting people or keeping things from them. It's the difference between making things comfortable and telling the whole, dripping, stinking truth. I'm beginning to believe this is what separates entertainment from art.

It would be one hell of a lot easier if I called what I write Fiction. Then we could all laugh together at cocktail parties because, hey, I made it all up. But what I write isn't fiction, it's stuff that really happened to me and to people I know. It's very, very close. So close you can taste it.

Dana also said: Sometimes you have to give up one part of yourself to discover another. I thought she meant breaking up with Boyfriend and moving to Paris, but I'm wondering if it's more subtle than that.

I have to give up making things comfortable, making other people feel okay. If I want to tell the truth about the things we're all hiding, that work has to begin with me. I am not the character I act out at dinner parties and in polite small talk. There is so much more to it than that. More horror, sure, but more beauty, more complexity, more paradox.

Maybe this the long way to say Reader Beware. Maybe this is my version of an apology in advance. Maybe this is a cord-cutting, a funeral. I don't know. But I'm on the border now. You may not know when I cross over.