My Memoir

First I want to start out by saying how I absolutely can not believe that the semester is over. I am overjoyed because this semester has been one of the most stressful in my Kutztown experience so far. I wanted to reflect on how much I enjoyed this class. I enjoyed how much of a laid back atmosphere that it was. It was nice to come to class everyday and know that we would not be lectured at and shown a PowerPoint that the professor had been using for the last ten years. That is always a boring class, which advanced comp never was.

We talked a little bit this semester about memoir and how sometimes memory isn’t the most reliable thing. I actually was assigned to work on a first person essay in my magazine writing class. I was inspired by one of the articles that we read to write a form of memoir. We read an article titled “A Sudden Illness,” and it was all about this author’s experience of a sickness. When I was twelve years old I went away for a weekend with my best friend. We spent the weekend snowboarding at Killington, Vermont. On our final day I fell thirty feet out of a ski lift. I ended up chipping 2 of my vertebrae. So, after reading this article I decided that I would write my memoire-type article about that fall and how it has impacted my life since. I was twelve years old when that happened, and now I am twenty (soon to be 21 J!!!!) it has been close to ten years since I fell. Even though I have told the story more times than I can ever count, some of the details are becoming hazing. As I was writing I kind of questioned myself. Did that actually happen? Was that really the way that it looked? Did I really say that? That’s where we were talking about memoirs sometimes getting tricky. When we talked about it in class I kind of thought to myself that if it happened to me I would definitely remember, but clearly I was wrong. I kept thinking about the people that I included in my story. I was with two of my friends, one was actually holding onto me on the lift and I told her to let me go. I was thinking about them as I wrote, thinking about how much this accident effected them just as much as it affected me. I thought about sending my article to them, but I was nervous. Did they remember it exactly how I did? Did I get the descriptions right? Did I get the quotes right? It is more intimidating than I would have anticipated to write a memoir. I haven’t decided yet if I want to send them my memoir or not. I think it is something that they would enjoy, but I think it would have to be sent at a time that they’d enjoy and appreciate it. I put a lot into my memoir, just like all of my writing, and it would disappoint me for it to be just sitting in someone’s email inbox.

The Ride

So I have revised my third CNF essay, and after today's mini conference with Dr. Morris I feel confident not only turning it in for a grade but also submitting it for publication through PIF Magazine. Here's the essay and wish me luck! :)

“Oh my god I can’t believe she did that,” Kelly said into her Blackberry as she was waiting for the shuttle to arrive to escort her to class, like the chariot she thought she deserved. “No way… No way.” Kelly never walked to class. If she did then she might break out in a sweat, which would totally ruin her hair and maybe even cause her to smell. Gross. “She would sleep with him. Good. I don’t even care. She can have my sloppy seconds. He wasn’t that good anyway.” Kelly had just found out that her ex-boyfriend was exploring his options of other females all over campus.

*

                It’s Saturday night, and my friends and I are ready to party. Our heels clack against the floor as we shuffle to find our seats on the shuttle. My eyes meet a boy’s eyes in the back of the bus. The bus smelled of all the different perfumes and colognes of the passengers on board mixed together. I smiled at the boy in the back before sitting down. As I sat down I adjusted my tank top to show a little bit more cleavage. All of my girlfriends noticed him too. Now it was a battle to see who will get his attention first. I was sitting on the aisle seat, and I made the first move. I got up, walked back toward him, and I took the seat next to him. All my friend’s jaws dropped. “Oh my god. She is totally doing that to get back at Mark,” one of Kelly’s friends said.

*

                “Yeah. I’m waiting for the shuttle now,” Anthony said into phone, “I’ll be down in a little bit. The bus is pulling up.” He was invited to watch a baseball game, play some poker, and drink a few beers down at his friend’s apartment. Anthony was never one to go to parties. He actually rarely drank. Most weekends he went home to work at the supermarket that his parents owned and he despised. This weekend he didn’t have to work. It was the end of a hectic, chaotic semester, and he was going to reward himself with a night out with his buddies.

*

The bus was filled with cat calls as the girl got up. She was wearing a floral tank top, a tiny skirt, and wedged high heels. She looked good, and she knew that she looked good. She was the type of girl that had been around the block a few times. She was walking toward me. Had she noticed me looking at her when she got on the bus? What will I say to her? She’s getting closer now. Oh god. All that for nothing. She walked right past me to the football player sitting behind me. How could I have thought she was interested in me? Anthony thought to himself.

*

                Kelly is being her typical self. She just craved attention all of the time. I couldn’t imagine what her life would be like if there wasn’t a guy around to fill her emotional, more like physical, void. I can’t stand it. I wish that she would respect herself a little more and stop jumping into bed with every guy that smiles at her.

*

                “Aw, did you just see that?” Samantha whispered to her friend.

                “No. What?” her friend replied.

                “That kid back there totally thought that the slutty girl walking in his direction was going back there to talk to him.”

                “What? He thought that she would be interested in him rather than the sexy, football player she’s sitting with?” her friend said.

                “He’s not that bad looking. Actually. He’s kind of cute.I don’t care if Maggie doesn’t think he is cute. I do. I’m going to be bold for once in my life. When he gets off the bus I’m going to get off too. What could it hurt?

*

The shuttle bus was packed. All fifty seats were filled, and students were now forced to stand in the aisles and hold the bar overhead. It was close to 3 am and the shuttle had just stopped at the bar. Sweat and beer aroma’s filled the air. A boy sat between a guy and a girl. His forehead glistened from the florescent lights shining down on him. He was drunker than he realized. He began to sway back and forth with the bus, moving forward and backward as the bus accelerated and slowed. The color of his skin began to pale. Would he throw up?

*

                “Dude, you need to sit up,” Anthony’s friend said to him.

                “Serioussssssly, I’m fine. Courtney’s going to take care of me. Right, Courtney.”

                “My name’s not Courtney. It’s Samantha.”

*

                Anthony drowned his sorrows from the rejection, of “the sluttly girl” or more commonly known as Kelly, in alcohol. As he arrived at his on-campus apartment, Anthony walked as if he were on a rocking ship, rolling side to side from the waves. Thankfully, he had two friends on his side for structural support. 

draft

I’m still steadily (or not so steadily) working on my second creative nonfiction essay. And I kept struggling with the issue of what’s the point, the problem. I just kept running into the fact that I don’t always necessarily write for a point. I write to tell a story. But I had Dr. Morris’s words echoing in my head that I needed there to be a point to this essay and have it not just be a story. So I wrote about the happenings that occur on the shuttle bus here at Kutztown University. We all brought our drafts to class today, and I thought mine was pretty good for a first draft, but I knew that it definitely needed work. I approached Dr. Morris to ask her to read over my draft and give me a couple of suggestions. We both agreed that this portion of my draft was the best part because they connect.

“It’s Saturday night, and me and my friends are ready to party. Our heels clack against the floor as we shuffle to find out seats on the bus. My eyes meet a boys eyes in the back of the bus. The bus smelled of all the different perfumes and colognes of the passengers on board mixed together. I smiled at the boy in the back before sitting down. As I sat down I adjusted my tank top to show a little bit more cleavage. All of my girlfriends noticed him too. Now it is a battle to see who will get his attention first. I was sitting on the aisle seat, and I made the first move. I got up, walked back toward him, and I took the seat next to him. All of my friend’s jaws dropped.

*

The bus was filled with cat calls as the girl got up. She was wearing a floral tank top, a tiny skirt, and wedged high heels. She looked good, and she knew that she looked good. She was the type of girl that had been around the block a few times. She was walking toward me. Had she noticed me looking at her when she got on the bus? What will I say to her? She’s getting closer now. Oh god. All that for nothing. She walked right past me to the football player sitting behind me. How could I have thought she was interested in me?”

Dr. Morris and I agreed that this was the strongest and most compelling part of my essay so far. But that lingering question what’s the point? Well, Dr. Morris, my point is to show that the shuttle bus is obviously a means of transportation, but it is more than just a way to get from point A to point B. With that I know that something significant needs to happen to show that. So, since this part of my story is the strongest I am going to kind of ax the rest of my draft and elaborate on this occurrence.  I want to go into the perspective of the girls friend and have her jealous that her friend got the attention of the guy and she didn’t. And I want to go into a perspective of another onlooker on the bus who notices the disappointment of the kid who was overlooked. That’s where I’m at so far so now I just need to actually write it ;).

love letter

Today in class we worked with point of view. We tried an exercise that would help us to challenge ourselves and our writing. Our challenge was to write a love letter. It was a very broad subject. Dr. Morris said that we could write a love letter to anything or anyone. Classmates chose subjects to write about including chocolate, the earth, poetry, boyfriends, their bed, and many others. I went the somewhat stereotypical route, but I chose my boyfriend as my subject. I chose to write in first person, past looking back. Before I share what I wrote today in class, I want to touch upon something. Our class has a big issue with being wrong. To me I find it a little bit funny. As I have said in previous posts I don’t like to be wrong either, but I think that sharing things is the class isn’t something we should be afraid of. I enjoy the comments of my peers, and sometimes it does help to be critiqued. Dr. Morris responded to someone today saying that they were afraid to theirs wasn’t right with, “Fuck right.” And what came to my mind was, “Fuck right. Go left,” basically meaning that who cares if you’re right, be confident in what you are doing and run with it. Either way here is my love letter, which by the way I wrote in montage style, because I am really trying my hardest to be successful in this form of writing.

You smiled at me from across the table. We sat outside having dinner. It seemed like we were set in Paris. But we weren’t in Paris. We were in New Jersey, where we had both grown up. The night was warm. It was the summer that we fell in love. We were young and in love and nothing else mattered. We finished our dinner at the café. You paid. We walked home together hand in hand. When we got to my house you walked me to my back door, and you kissed me like you had dozens times before.

*

We laid in my bed. I think I was tired, and you weren’t in a good mood after a night of parking cars. I think it was raining and you got off early from work. You asked to come over. We laid together back to chest, and it was like being together and touching rejuvenated us, putting a new life into our night. We watched Rescue Me, a new show on FX. It was a show that we both had gotten hooked on. One of the characters was professing his love to his significant other. I watched intently as I always did. That’s when it happened. The character told his girlfriend that he loved her, and you whispered in my ear, “He beat me to it.”

*

Saying goodbye was the hardest. We knew it was coming all summer, but we avoided it like the plague. We stood in the alley behind my house holding each other tightly in each other’s arms like we had millions of times in the past two years. He was going south, and I was going north. We’d have one hundred of miles separating us for months at a time, rather than 3 blocks separating us for twelve hours. But we were determined to make it work. And we still are.

A couple of my classmates read their love letter out loud. I don’t think I would have been able to read mine out loud, because I probably would have cried. My classmates wrote a lot more prose, but I think mine is well done. I like it. It’s writing to him giving him my impression and my perspective on the events being described. They all are important events to me: a date that we went on the summer that we fell in love, the night that he told me he loved me, and the night that we had to say goodbye before our freshman year of college. I’m not sure if it is my favorite part, but I really enjoy the ending. We will be dating for 5 years this summer, and we have spent 3 years of college away from each other for extended periods of time. We are still determined to make our relationship work.