In honor of Miel, and of lots of people who are going to spawn in the next few months (Dooce comes to mind), I would like to have a Very Special week at I, Asshole. The gleefully childless may come back next week, because you will not want to sit through this. For those who can stand it, I present: a week of sprog stories.
My life began in one of the most clich
I look forward to hearing the rest….
I remember trying to sleep the night after my mom told me she’d been selling herself in San Francisco, thinking, “Someday this’ll be on a book jacket. Like, ‘The son of a gay junkie who died of AIDS and a schizophrenic coke whore alcoholic, Joshua Norton is…’ and then there’ll be something about the gritty voice of the streets or something. Yeah, boy, you can’t buy publicity like this.”
Even as a teenager, I had modest dreams.
But the narrative was easy to imagine because basically there was just too much of it. There’s some threshold in a story where it becomes stupid. It’s the difference between a car that goes out of control and hits a telephone pole and a car that goes out of control, blows through the first floor of a school for the deaf-blind, smashes out the far side of the building with the corpse of a little blind kid on the hood and slams into a bus full of pregnant refugees. It’s sick, but it’s also genuinely funny in a Trainspotting kind of way.
The second sentence of the novel I’m working on
This is the part where I belch, fart, and go, “Eugh. That was deep.”
I, too, look forward to reading the rest, even tho I be gleefully childless. Boy, after reading this, I feel like my childhood was particulary sunny and happy and nice. I hope that doesn’t make you feel bad; I don’t mean for it to. At any rate, you’re grown, you’re smart, you’re pretty :), you’ve got a great family, you sound like you’re a pretty darn good mom, you’re a damn gifted writer. Something went right along the way, despite the less-than-cheery start. Mazeltov. I’m not Jewish, but, you know, mazeltov to you.
I *am* gleefully childless, but I trust you enough to read on, and honestly, it wasn’t a cheerful story, but it wasn’t that bad. I’m with peep, a story that ends in you can’t be all that bad…
When I read stories like yours, or write about our Mia, I often think about the future and what she is gonna say about her upbringing.
I’m glad you’re not a jerk in spite of all that, SJ. I just wanna hug you and say, “At least both your parents aren’t in insurance, so you’ll have something interesting to say about them.” But I won’t.
arrgh, comments.
(i dunno what to say without sounding stupid, but i’m reading, keep going :)