INTERVIEW: “THE GIRL IN PRAGUE”

Story: “The Girl in Prague” (<-Click there to read the story!)
Genre: Short Fiction
Keywords: S&M lite, Catherine Deneuve in "Belle de Jour," Diet Pepsi
Trivia: This story was written years before “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

You’ve griped before that you can no longer share this story without someone making the obligatory reference – either out loud or in their head – to “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Yes. And thank you so very much for leading with that.

Why did you decide to write a story about an S&M relationship?
The short answer is because it happened to me. There’s almost nothing that happens to me that I don’t want to write about. It’s just how I’m wired.

But I also felt that the dynamic within that relationship – between Bart and me – was inherently interesting. Especially at the time, it was very un-boring. People had heard of S&M – they knew there were these people out there with whips and chains who got their jollies in strange ways – but I could only really think of one instance of the subject being given a literary treatment (Mary Gaitskill’s short story “Secretary,” which was made into a movie). I’m sure it’s been done tons of times and I just don’t know about it, though. … Oh, right – the Marquis de Sade’s entire oeuvre.

But again – I wanted to focus on the relationship over the physical acts. Although you sorta have to at least mention the physical acts, because they’re the very thing that makes that kind of relationship so strange – at least, to your average, non-alternative-lifestyle person.

Which parts of this story are from real life and which parts are made up?
For some reason I always feel compelled to let people know that nearly all of this story is made up, in a plot sense – the only scene that really happened was the very last one, in the woods. I really did go out there with Bart during my lunch break, all of that really did happen, and I really did go back a little while later, saw the condom wrapper, lay down on the log and all that.

The little factual nuggets – especially Bart’s anecdotes, about erstwhile nuns and free-for-alls in Vienna and all that – are all true, but taken from online (IM and e-mail) conversations that I had with Bart, many of those conversations before I ever met up with him in person. And again, I only met up with him in person one time. Well, at the time I wrote “The Bart Stories” – this one plus another shorter one called “On a bed of pine needles” – I had only met up with him once. I did meet up with him again, in a hotel, a few years afterward, but that’s a completely different story for another time.

Also: There really was a girl in Prague, and he never did tell me about her.

Was it difficult to write an S&M story that wasn’t porn?
At times, yeah. I mean, I’ve written that stuff before – I’m a red-blooded woman, a writer, who’s been involved in several long-distance relationships. I’m old hat at doing that.

I think it’s OK to have a few moments that are maybe a little sexy or sensual or nice-sounding – but I felt that this story, to be properly literary and not smut, should be up on a higher plane. It should be concerned with the emotions and thoughts of the people involved, and with the topic in general – the topic being an ostensibly loveless, casual-sex arrangement in which the two people have agreed to act out a certain power dynamic for their mutual satisfaction. … Geez, looking at that last sentence alone, you can’t tell that I am actually very good at writing custom erotica for dudes I’ve known. I swear it’s true!

Did you think much about feminist concerns – i.e., how your female protagonist was being portrayed – when writing this story?
It’s tricky when you’re a woman, and you’re writing about a woman who has agreed to let a dude push her around and insult her and stuff. But I think most of my feminist pals would agree – if it makes her happy, then she should go for it. As I understand it, feminism is more about expanding what women can do – not limiting it.

What it really comes down to for me, though, is that I try to avoid thinking in any overtly political way when I’m writing a story. I believe that art – stories, movies, music – has different aims than political things such as articles, essays, speeches, and some message-promoting documentaries (Michael Moore et al). Political stuff has a clearly thought-out message and goal; art is just supposed to make you think. Maybe art raises questions and politics answers them. Or tries to answer them.

So, when writing this story, I never had some message in mind, such as: “S&M is morally bad” or “S&M is damaging to women” or anything like that. I was just thinking: “This Bart dude and I have some interesting emotional chemistry going on, and I think that might make for a compelling story.” Yeah, the story ends on a bleak note – but that’s more because this S&M lifestyle isn’t right for her emotionally. And so it went for me, too. I satisfied my curiosity and then I stopped.

You don’t seem to have any qualms about sharing details of your past sex life with the world.
That’s true; I really don’t. It’s actually weird to me that anyone would. I think this stuff is fascinating – not because I’m some perv, but because sex is as intimate and close as you can be with another person, so there are necessarily some heavy emotions involved in that. And as a writer, heavy emotions are my stock-in-trade.

I don’t know; to me this isn’t embarrassing. In my mind, it’s just one of many interesting experiences a person can have that give them depth. To me, saying “I have had an S&M relationship” is on par with saying “I went to the Himalayas last year.” If someone said either of these things to me, my reaction would be: “Oh, you did? Tell me more!”

However, I should add that I’m married now, and my husband is a far more private person than I am. So while I might touch on aspects of our relationship – for example, when discussing my story “Afterlife” on this site, I mentioned that I was sad when he decided to stay in Iraq for another six months instead of coming home – I don’t discuss anything that he wouldn’t feel comfortable with the world knowing about.

You’ve said that there are certain songs you strongly associate with some of your stories. What’s a song you associate with this story?
“Every Day Is Exactly the Same” by Nine Inch Nails. That NIN album came out around the time I met up with Bart, and there’s this sense – of someone doing something desperate just to break out of numbness – in that song that, to me, complements this story perfectly.

There’s an irony there – because when you’re suddenly doing something that’s shocking to you, every day isn’t exactly the same. And if that shocking thing becomes your everyday, you’ve just pushed the everydayness to this weird new level, a new high or a new low.

Not to bring this up again, but one complaint you hear about “Fifty Shades of Grey” is that the relationship in it is “bad,” that it’s off-balance and unhealthy and not a good role model for an S&M relationship. You’ve said you believe that your protagonist and Bart have a fairly healthy or egalitarian relationship.
Yes. For one thing, I come right out at one point and say: “Bart’s S&M etiquette is unimpeachable.” Talk about telling and not showing – although I hope that I also showed this in some of the interactions between the two main characters. Each character knows exactly what they’re getting into – at no point does Bart act as if he might leave his wife for the protagonist.

And there are times when the protagonist feels almost superior to Bart, when it comes to things such as having no need for aesthetically pleasing illusions. Sometimes she feels “aloof” to what’s going on, as if she’s an undercover reporter; sometimes she’s “smirking, tongue-in-cheek” at his need for “illusion.” I do think the two characters have a genuine fondness for each other, though.

A key moment, to me, is when Bart is leading the protagonist and her old high-school friend Bridget into the woods, and suddenly the protagonist stops. It’s clear that she doesn’t want to go on. The instant Bart realizes this – he stops. They turn around and drive back to the hotel where they all met. Not for a second does he try to convince her to go through with something that clearly makes her uncomfortable. It’s not a kind of love – but it’s a mutual understanding they have, a sort of honor code he won’t violate.

I realize that I left the reason for the protagonist’s halting there a bit vague. I kind of preferred to let the reader decide what it was – maybe the woods give her the heebie-jeebies because that’s where her first (loveless) S&M experience was with Bart; maybe she wanted to spare Bridget from entering into that kind of emotionally void landscape; maybe she simply resented Bart for encouraging her to bring “another girl” into their world. Maybe all of it. I don’t know. You decide!

What’s the main thing you want readers to take away from this story?That you can be submissive, or even masochistic, yet strong. That sometimes it’s the stronger person who takes on that nominally submissive role, simply because they know that they can. That withstanding what is being done to you – and living to tell about it – is a kind of strength.

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.”