|
I Write Because People Tell Me Stories
EndPiece,
Byline Magazine, January 2005
My mom used to say I had a “come hither” look that invited trouble.
I think it’s more of a “come tell me anything” look that
invites stories.
People tell me their most personal problems, thoughts and feelings.
They relate stories about their jobs, their neighbors, their
Scottish childhoods, and I stand there nodding and wondering why
these complete strangers feel compelled to confide in me.
Personal journal pundits claim it’s cathartic to write things down.
Just “get it out.” Then burn it. Compose a ten-page, soul-wrenching
letter to Mr. Perfect who dumped you in 1989—then throw it away.
You’ll be cleared of your unfortunate past, freed from the rusty
bonds of rejection, open to life’s possibilities.
That sounds too easy.
What if you had to say it aloud? To a stranger. Or better yet, to a
stranger who doesn’t speak your language. I’ve seen it done in the
movies. The sad British chap confesses his failures to the toothless
Italian grandmother shelling peas in a shadowy doorway. She says
nothing as he concludes he’s been a jerk and realizes he should be
telling all of this to his hot European lover. He rushes back to his
life, leaving the toothless woman with her peas wondering what just
happened.
I am the grandmother in the doorway.
Last month, I was in the back room of a day spa getting my lip waxed
and the technician starts with a story of a beautiful young blond
virgin who comes in requesting a Brazilian bikini wax. I
know, it sounds like the beginning of a great joke.
But she wasn’t kidding. The technician said this born-again
Christian virgin wanted the radical procedure done for her
honeymoon. I’m thinking, how does she even know about
Brazilian bikini waxes? Then the waxer said, “Wait. There’s more.”
The girl was a “talker.” A look-me-in-the-eye kind of talker. The
waxer admitted the whole thing made her uncomfortable. (Apparently
it’s difficult to maintain eye contact and chat nonchalantly about
the weather while ripping hair from the intimate areas of a kneeling
stranger.)
How did she think I felt listening to the story? Especially
when she demonstrated the on-all-fours waxing position and how the
virgin had said through her legs, “Maybe I should be walking down
the aisle to you.”
Later, I wondered if the girl had been taking the technician for a
ride. What if she wasn’t a virgin or a bride-to-be at all? What if
it had been a practical joke? Maybe the waxer made the whole
thing up. There are so many ways to interpret a story and just as
many ways to repeat it.
Which of course, I did. Because stories are meant to be told. It
starts with a simple tale and like the game of “telephone,” each
storyteller adds his own spice, a side dish of
that’s-nothing-when-I… and by the time it comes back around—you have
an urban legend, or a novel.
Therapists, bartenders, hairdressers, priests, manicurists, even
gynecologists are all in the confession profession. As a writer, I
listen because it might be important. I listen because I can’t
afford not to.
There are stories everywhere. Material for the taking. Usually it’s
right in front of me spitting on my chin, like the grandfather at
the wine tasting who was seriously contemplating hiring a hitman,
the mother of four on a Punta Cana beach who confessed she’d never
experienced an orgasm, the crying, cheating redhead in the Waffle
House bathroom who should have been telling her husband the stuff
she was telling me, and the black man selling magazine subscriptions
who sat in my garage in the rain and told me of a life in the
country cut short, a city that swallowed him like quicksand.
Why did these storytellers choose me? Was I the first person they
came across on the day they needed to purge a memory, divulge that
secret, share a quirky story? Or do they sense something that says;
she's a writer. She'll understand about hitmen and orgasms and
cheating and quicksand. Whatever the reason, I now hold a part of
them, their stories.
And their secrets aren't safe with me.
 click
on shoes to go home
|