INTERVIEW: “ADULTS”

Story: “Adults” (<-Click there to read the story!)

Genre: Short Fiction

Keywords: May-September Romance; Bizarre Love Triangles; Imaginary Mexico

Trivia: The story’s original title was “Sugar Skeletons.”

Tell us one thing about this story.

I consider this to be a true love story – not a cynical depiction of a dysfunctional or disgruntled couple. There’s a big age gap between the just-retired professor and the twentysomething chick, sure. And OK, the chick dated the professor’s son when she was younger. Still, these two are in love. I can say this with authority, because I created them. The heart works in funny ways, man!

What parts of this story are true – or, taken from real life – and what parts of it are made up?

The three main characters – Richard (the professor), Bess (his younger girlfriend), and Alan (Richard’s son, who is Bess’s age) – are based on real people. Richard is based on an English professor whose son I dated when I was in eighth and ninth grades. (Well, “dated” meaning we were in an officially committed and exclusive relationship, said “I love you,” kissed twice, he gave me a little ring, we went to the movies a few times in a clump with other kids our age and his mom driving the minivan.)

I later went on to be romantically involved with the son’s dad, when I was 27 and he was 51. We’ll skip how that happened; we don’t have enough space here. That’s one of those things that happens in real life that most people would never make into a story because it sounds so novelistic, which is to say – unbelievable. It just doesn’t sound like something that would happen in real people’s lives; it’s like some weird Greek myth or something, or a soap opera. But it did.

In real life, the professor had talked a little bit about moving to Mexico when he retired and taking me with him. It was never some official plan, but this story was sparked by my imagining what on earth that would have been like.

The Mexican town they live in is completely made up. It probably bears no resemblance to anyplace down there. I have been to Mexico, but just barely below the U.S. border all three times – twice to Tijuana (one was a day trip with my family; it was like "The Brady Bunch Goes to Tijuana") and once to Nogales, which is about an hour south of Tucson. The real-life professor had mentioned retiring in an off-the-beaten-path town in Mexico with a Native American name, but that’s surely where the resemblance between his real town and my made-up one ends.

Have any of the real-life people – the ones on whom the characters are based – read this story? What did they think about it?

Well, I have, of course – Bess is a parallel-universe me with even less ambition. I used to have no qualms about sending the real-life professor the tons of stories I wrote him (or, a parallel-universe him) into. Pretty much any story of mine that has a professor in it is really about him. But he and I are no longer close. And the son – I made a few attempts to contact him years ago, and have finally accepted that he wants nothing to do with me. This was before I befriended his dad, so it wasn’t that Freudian issue – it was just me. The son had no desire to know me anymore. It’s cool.

“Richard” did read this story back when I first wrote it, though. I don’t remember any specific comments he made, but he seemed pleased enough with it. He’s never forbidden me to write about us – he’s a writer, too, so he understands the impulse to make art out of your life. He always said my beginnings and endings were good. I don’t think he much liked my middles. Maybe that’s why we’re no longer close.

This story evolved quite a bit from its original version, correct?

That’s true! I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friend Zack, who read an early incarnation that didn’t contain the whole last third part of the current story, the part where Alan, the son, comes to visit. In that version, the third-person narration mentioned that Bess knew Richard’s son and that they’d dated – but Alan himself never made an appearance.

That story, “Sugar Skeletons,” focused on Richard and Bess as an American couple in a strange-to-them land, and ended on an oddly menacing note. The part in “Adults” where Richard is at the strip club, and Adriana the stripper knows he’s got money – not just wads of it in his wallet, but probably more at home – and exchanges a look with the bouncer who has a mermaid tattoo… Well, “Sugar Skeletons” ends with Bess at home alone, a knock on the door, and a guy with a mermaid tattoo standing there, ostensibly to rob them. The title was supposed to refer to something sweet on the surface but actually macabre.

Zack read the story and let me know it was a cop-out ending – it was this sudden shocking burst of drama that came from out of nowhere. He helped me see that what I really wanted to write about was the relationships among these three characters – he said that Alan needed to show up. I’m so glad for Zack’s insight. Without it, the story would have just been this scenic but ultimately unsatisfying piece written by some American who seemingly can’t imagine life in Mexico without some kind of horrible stereotypical violence in it.

The story as it stands now is much more small-scale, slice-of-life – it resembles real life as I know it much more than the old version did. In terms of action, the plot is much more boring – but hey, real life is often boring.

What were some of your sources for the made-up parts?

I’m a terribly lazy writer in this way – I rarely do anything more than the most cursory factual research about things that I don’t know about. I do it grudgingly – I’ll do the bare minimum to make sure that I don’t lose a reader by setting off some red flag that makes the story no longer believable. Honestly, for most of the images of life in the Mexican town, I relied on whatever came to my mind when I tried to imagine a life there. And that likely came from movies, Lonely Planet guidebooks… geez, Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita,” probably. All sorts of random and laughably unscientific places. 

At the risk of sounding blasé, the accuracy of the setting didn’t matter so much to me. What mattered was the emotional authenticity – that the characters felt real and behaved in believable ways. Mexico was only the background; the story could have happened anywhere, although the fact that Richard and Bess are expats together probably brings them a little closer than they might have been if they’d stayed at home. 

The weird thing is that the place feels real to me, I guess because I spent so much time imagining it. I can see the house that Richard and Bess live in, the sliding-glass door that looks out onto the sea, the path that leads into town, Richard’s favorite bar. Oh, I stole one thing: the little boy who gives his pet tortoise a bath is from this (non-fiction) book put out by UNICEF called “Children Just Like Me.” It’s about kids and their lives all around the world; the kid from Mexico had a pet tortoise, and also a brother who wore a John Lennon T-shirt. It’s a kids’ book but I have it. No shame.

Also, I stole the name of the stripper from a Victoria’s Secret supermodel. And I would like to say for the record that I don’t know why I gave myself (“Bess”) an old-lady name. Maybe it was intentionally incongruous, to make her seem a little more mature beyond her years, or maybe I just liked that name on the day I chose it. Old-lady names for girls are sort of hipster-chic.

What’s the main thing you want readers to take away from this story?

That most relationships have a lot of nuance to them. I think I most enjoyed writing about the dynamic between Bess and Alan. He’s civil to her, but cold – understandably. I mean, if you found out that someone you know, who’s your age – let alone your junior-high significant other – were dating one of your parents? That’s a lot to deal with.

The scene in which the two of them are watching the telenovela while Richard takes a nap (during the siesta time) was one of my favorites – they’re laughing at the same moments, so they’re sort of in sync and you can imagine their having been simpatico at some point in their lives, but there’s an air of very grudging forgiveness or tolerance coming from Alan. As Bess thinks when Alan first enters the house for his visit, “They’re going to pretend it’s normal.”