Wednesday, June 18, 2008

We're Not in Oklahoma Anymore, Tonto!


I have hardly seen J in about a week. Needless to say, our communication is broken down on the side of the road, with the hood up, and a cute, voluptuous woman posing for help. It seems I neglected to fill him in on some tidbits from the writing workshop...

"So, I'm thinking about writing a pretty riske short story for my workshop." I stated out-of-the-blue, and because I start almost all conversations with 'so'.

"You gonna blog your short story?" J asked, poking fun at me.

Kicking it up a notch, I stated: "My instructor is inspiring me. She is a bi-sexual, Sri Lanken woman in a poly relationship."

"What???????!!!!!!!!! You didn't tell me this!!" J exclaimed as he sped through a yellow light.

"Oh? No? Oh." I said, knowing full well I hadn't told him anything. "She is. By poly relationship, I mean she has a male partner right now, and has a guy she has sex with when they can. And her partner is cool with it 'cause he can do his thing too."

"Mini Me, stop crying. Motor Mouth, leave her alone." Said J, ending a backseat squabble over lord only knows what.

"She has written an erotica book or two. In the past, she wrote porn articles for a porn magazine." I added, sweetening the pot.

"Oh my god." J replied as he swerved to miss an erratic taxi.

"She said she got paid $1,000 for a 7 to 800 word article."

"Hmmm...You should ask her about getting into that kind of writing. You could stay home full-time then." He teased.

"My writing consists of blogging, remember?" I countered and resumed my shock session with: "There is also a flaming dyke in the class."

"Flaming dyke? Are lesbians considered 'flaming'?"

"I don't know. That is how she described herself. Wait. No. Raging dyke. She is a raging dyke. And I think she is transgendered." I replied.

"How did that come up?" he asked, taking the bait.

"Well, the instructor asked us to raise our right hand if we are straight, our left hand if we are gay, and both hands if we are bi-sexual. She also asked us to raise our right hand if we identify with being a woman, our left if as a man, and both if we identify as both a man and a woman."

"So which hand did you raise?" J questioned, rolling with the punches.

"You're an idiot."

Puzzled, he questioned: "What kind of class is this? Like, why would she ask this stuff?"

"The writing is supposed to deal with character identity. How we identify ourselves helps us to understand our characters' identities." I replied.

"I was in this area yesterday. Somehow I got on I-55 and had to go way out of my way to get back to where I needed to be." said J, as we drove through an area we are not particularly familiar with, and virtually ending that line of conversation.

Maybe tomorrow I'll tell him about the 10 tattoos one of the workshop attendees has and that I want to get a new tattoo on my foot done by the guy she got her last one done by.
Writing Workshop Description - Part Two: "...In this summer workshop, you'll be encouraged to write your identities through the lens of fiction and/or creative nonfiction..."

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