You All Scare Me!

Nothing about writing ever scared me. I've written stories and poetry since high school. I remember spilling my guts in some poem for an English class and having the teacher pull me aside to praise the poem. I suspect she found something disturbing in its subject matter, I don't know. I can't remember the subject, but I never held back any feelings when writing. Maybe that praise was what set me going, I don't know.

I wrote when I first came to San Francisco. Horrible hippie poems. I would corner young women with this stuff, and they were kind enough to be kind, and spry enough to avoid me after that. I tried to write music in my twenties. I remember some woman wanted to form a duo with our two guitars and I was supposed to sing. I hauled out a white man's "What's Going On" I had written and I never saw this lady again. She was a hell of a good guitarist. I could sing, but couldn't play well, and I sure as hell couldn't write music or lyrics.

Until I hit my thirties, I didn't write again, and I had stopped figuring on being a rock star several years after being "dumped" from the duo. Oh, I jammed around town, once in a while getting a little face time at a bar playing the same old tired blues riff. I played once with a friend at UC Med School in SF at a talent show. The crowd wanted us to play another song, but it was one and done. I never wrote songs after my "disgrace."

In my thirties, my good friend Rick Geist started writing. He'd found a great writing teacher in San Diego, Joan Oppenheimer who nurtured him. I decided I could write too again after he started. Joan O. took me under her wing at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I took either first place that year or the next for fiction. I won honorable mention for worst first sentence, something about how the Scottish Highlander always felt uncomfortable while crossing the piranha-filled Amazon in his kilt. Okay, no one said I was subtle. Next year at the conference, I won an award again for fiction.

I published my first short stories in a collection of fiction by mail carriers. The readings were blind--no names were used to decide who got in. I placed two stories in that collection. Okay, I thought, I might have some talent. No, that's not true at all. I thought I was the next coming of Hemingway. Doubt always crept in though. I thought, hey, it's a book where the writers are limited to but a small segment of the population. Then I placed another story in a literary magazine. Then another. I got in very small magazines, then the Santa Clara University Review, twice. And I took an honorable mention in a contest for a story in a Chicago magazine (defunct) known as Hyphen with a real author on the cover! Later I got nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Funny thing about that. This newspaper-type literary magazine someplace in the Midwest, sent me a note telling me that I had been nominated. I was very happy. The Pushcart is a big award. Some major authors have received this. I guess you can consider it the small literary press' equivalent of a Pulitzer. Except I never saw an official note that they accepted this magazine's nomination. I like to say I was nominated to be nominated. In resumes it's nominated. Between you and me, it is the other.

Anyway, I don't remember how I started writing for magazines. I think I pitched a story, the magazine accepted, and I wrote the article. Just that easy, though I didn't know much about writing non-fiction. Pretty soon I was writing for one regional magazine, then this group I was working for put out another, and I had two jobs suddenly. One writing for a pittance. The other working for the Postal Service. Same with the newspaper, I walked into the office, said I could write features, and suddenly I was writing features and straight reporting even. I got a cover story or two or three out of the paper, but when they gave me less than a day to turn around an interview and a short article about Ken Kesey's return to Palo Alto, I had thought I died and gone to heaven. I always liked Kesey, and a chance to chat with him, and then see him, and being trusted with such a piece with such a short turnaround was fantastic. I never thought I couldn't do it, I just did.

Writing has been this great equalizer for me, for what, 25 years now. Otherwise, you folks scare me to death. I want to impress you all. Listen up--Leah, Pamela, Jackie, Ron W., Shelley, my wife, my kids, my grandkids, sisters, my aunt. My boss from Havard. My new friends and old.  I won't bore you with my upbringing anymore. It sucked. I never felt like I was a normal kid. I know, Pamela has told me my misgivings are felt by everyone. I agree. That's true. It doesn't make it any better. For a long time I believed I was fooling people with smoke and mirrors as far as my writing was concerned. Yes, I always thought I could get by, but come on, my grammar was awful, I couldn't speak two words coherently, so how could I write? Surely I would be found out. I have never gotten over wanting to impress you all, either that, or I would rather you would never find out how full of bullshit I am.

So, this boils down to a book review for a book I have not read. Here's how I found this book that is next on my reading list. I noticed that a FB "friend" had Kristen Johnston as a friend. Kristen Johnston is the beautiful, tall, woman who played an alien on "Third Rock from the Sun." So I friended her, or in the parlance of a non-entity like myself, she allowed herself to be friended by me. I'd always been wowed by her beauty and sense of humor.  I felt happy to check out her likes and such. After looking over Kristen's page now and again--god, she is pretty--I noticed she had written a book called "Guts." Okay, so now I felt like an asshole for sending her a link to my Dog Chronicles, because it is like, "Gee, you write. Read my stuff you book writer you."

Well, I find out "Guts" is supposed to be this fantastic and funny book about her out-of-control life as a drug addict, and her struggles with being this big, gawky girl who never felt like she fit in. Hmm. Sound familiar? Today, I was looking over her page, and there was a quote from someone, or maybe Kristen herself, that said, "It's none of your business what other people think of you." Okay, like explosions are suddenly going off in my head. If you don't know, what the hell. So, I suspect all you folks out there feel like me sometimes. I came by my inability to connect by one path, you maybe came at it from another. Who knows?

Look, "Guts" is called "Guts" because Kristen ended up in London lying on a hospital table with her guts hanging out of her stomach. Not sure of the whole story, because I haven't read the book yet, but do not doubt that I will. If this beautiful woman, who was part of that fun television show, felt so disconnected from reality that she couldn't handle the world, what does that say about any of our doubts? That they are unreal? That we all suffer somehow from this anorexic view of our beings, that we are not what we see in the mirror, or in the mirror in the eyes of others? I'd like it if I could step away from this feeling that I don't belong. That I'm not good enough to work as a public relations guy. That I am not a writer. That I am fooling you all into chatting with me, or answering my posts. I'd like to be through with that. I can't say I am, but I'm learning all the time.

Kristen Johnston is a hoot. I urge you to buy her book and "friend" her. I'm learning things just by reading what's on her page. Someday, I may just develop the confidence I have had to pursue writing jobs, and apply it in all my activities. Until then, I remain, your slightly fucked-up friend.