almost famous (or; looking back on my first publication)

musings on memory and mini-fame

a photo i took of my two friends at the bard college at simon’s rock writer’s workshop, 2016

sharing my creative work had always been hard for me; for a guarded girl with heavy gates closed tight unto her own kingdom, the vulnerability of expression was the opposite of the instructions i had given the guards in the high tower. nobody was allowed to see me except in the magic mirror of perfection i reflected back at them. plus, when you’re a teenager, everything is embarrassing.

i can’t remember if i was excited about my first publication. i was seventeen and couldn’t see beyond my clouded gates; creating art was my only salvation (more on that at my post here).

the summer between my junior and senior years of high school i took a young writer’s workshop at bard college at simon’s rock, in the berkshires. it was an alien world. huge skies, lakes. quiet. i had never been away from home before. my dorm room had cinder block walls and my roommate had nothing in common with me. i tacked up some of my photography prints near my bed to make it feel like i belonged.

i remember snippets from the experience. walking along the side of the road and swimming in a lake on the weekends. geese eyeing me as i walked through the wilderness of campus; they owned the place. a big purple sky. going to see a shakespeare play at a local theatre and wishing i could get a glass of wine. standing at a podium in an old cathedral, reading my work to a sea of students (i chose my most impersonal one to recite aloud). a crappy dining hall. climbing a tree.

all i had to do there was write. it was a difficult time for me. i had gotten in trouble with my parents for smoking weed a few months before and had suddenly become Bad. i had been perfect before then, at least through the reflection of my magic mirror. that summer i decided to be Good, not because i wanted to but because i had to; i needed to find my purity, to sanctify myself of my sins, to survive my senior year. i befriended nerdy girls that summer, ones who had never partied, never wanted to. it was my penance.

still lifes from the berkshires, 2016

at the end of each week we wrote a process letter to our professor. this is an excerpt of one of mine, dated july 21, 2016:

Dear Mary,

The most radical shift in my writing that I made this week is that I tried to write in more concise, short sentences. I wanted to try to move away from poetry with flowery descriptions and work on straight prose with some sort of plot. I’m not going to be finished with prose poetry forever; I just wanted to try writing in a different style. I tried to use as little words as possible to get my message across and still paint a very colorful image, since all the writing I do is visual. The two pieces that illustrate this most are “Fourth of July” and “Drive”. They both had the theme of suburbia. I tried to make short fiction pieces that had some sort of action, simple and short sentences, while still being extremely visual. I’m not sure how well I succeeded with that so I’d like to have the most feedback on those two pieces - that’s also why I included both.

In terms of questions, I’m definitely most interested in getting feedback for “Fourth of July” and “Drive” since those are my most experimental pieces. I was thinking that “Fourth of July” was an excerpt of what could potentially be a longer short story, so for that, I was wondering - where were you pulled in? Where were you pushed out? Where would you want me to expand on it? The same questions apply to “Drive” - what did you think was interesting? Let me know how you’re vibing to my pieces.

Thanks,

Lucie

interestingly enough, “drive” was to be my first published piece, and “fourth of july” my second. it was a prolific summer for me, although i was too sunken in my solitude to recognize it at the time. but perhaps there was a part of me that did understand it; the entire memory is hazy with guilt and purposeful forgetting. i’m not sure. but i do know that at the very least i was committed enough to my craft to answer a call for submissions my professor had passed along to me a few months after the workshop. and embarrassing or not, it was something to see my name in lights, even if just the blue light reflection of the computer screen.

Drive (2016)

Matt picked me up around eleven. The sky was still as I climbed out of my bedroom window and ran to his car. I knew I could have walked right out my front door but it was more exciting this way. He smiled when I slipped into the front seat.

“You ready?” he said. Before I could respond he put the car in drive. I answered, “I’m ready”, but only in my head.

We didn’t talk much at first. Everything seemed strange and alien even though I had lived in this same town for nearly seventeen years. There was nobody on the streets. It seemed like a suburban wasteland, and we were the only two people left alive.

“So where are we going?” I said. I tried to fill the empty space all around me but it was impossible.

“The fuck if I know,” Matt said, “but we’re going.”

The two of us had decided to run away about a month ago. I didn’t have a particular reason for it, except for the fact that I was so bored in my town that I was always up for anything. Matt was always trying to do stupid shit, and this was his latest idea. We had been friends since the second grade. I told him I would come along since I had nothing better to do.

I watched my old world whiz by my window but I didn’t feel sad. I tried to think of everything I was leaving behind. It wasn’t much. I would miss my mom a little but I knew that after I called her once from wherever we ended up in I would feel fine. Phoebe was the real problem. I would miss her more than anything. I kissed her goodnight a couple of hours before Matt came to get me and I knew she knew but it was okay. I tried to think some more about what else I was leaving behind, but all I could come up with was a math test, a date, and a pack of gum. All of that was a blessing to leave except for the gum, but there was only one piece left in the pack anyway.

We made it onto the highway. It was deserted except for the orange glow of streetlamps. Matt started driving faster. He rolled down his window and yelled.

“We’re fucking free! We’re fucking free!” he said. He threw an empty Coke can out his window just because and yelled more. I smiled but I didn’t feel free, not yet at least. I watched the red aluminum can fly off into the night until I couldn’t see it any longer.

Matt stopped yelling and slowed down. He was smiling big. “Julia, babe, this is going to be amazing,” he said, “so fucking amazing.”

I laughed but nothing was funny. I stuck my feet up on the dashboard and leaned my head across my knees as I looked out my window. There was nothing to see. I wished we could listen to music but the car radio was broken so the only thing it played was static.

I turned it on anyway. Matt laughed. He said, “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I meant it. I opened the sunroof of Matt’s car and stood up so my head and torso were outside. The wind whipped me hard but it felt good. I raised my hands above me and yelled but the wind stole my voice so I yelled louder. It felt like I was the only person on earth.

Matt laughed from inside the car. “Now you get it!” he said. “Now you fucking get it, babe.”

I didn’t know what I now understood. I kept standing there. We kept driving down the deserted highway. It felt like we would never stop.

the title card of my piece on the literary magazine’s website, complete with a copyright symbol and everything

read my most recently published short story, “heaven is a table at 1 OAK,” online on Hobart here.