Month: January 2012

Posted on

Why this? Why me? Why now?

I didn’t come up with those title words—they are actually lyrics from an obscure musical version of The Goodbye Girl, written by Neil Simon, David Zippel and Marvin Hamlisch. And now you have another bit of useless information for your next Trivial Pursuit jamboree.

I have to admit, I find myself asking myself those questions as I try to catalog some of these gap-filling stories. I don’t know if there’s a better way of filtering out the things that I’m remembering from the things I’m writing about. But I’m starting to wonder if there is any worthwhile merit to censoring myself.

Up until now (and by that, I mean up until being given this incredible gift of time) I had developed what I’ve come to recognize as a bad habit. I would make sure the entire story was worked out in my head  before I’d even start to write it. I think I was censoring myself into some twisted sense of completion. There’s probably something to be said for that. I mean, why start to write a story when you don’t know how it’s going to end up? Then again, up until now, it has stopped me from writing altogether.

Up until now.

Throwing open the endings of these pieces is a challenge. It flaunts my first rule of the road … DON’T BE BORING. I keep hearing my father in the back of my head. He used to imitate Archie Bunker whenever he was starting to become bored by people. He’d say, “Get to the pirnt, Edith! Get to the pirnt!” With a perfect Sunnyside, Queens, New York accent. Just like Carroll O’Connor. (A favorite son of the University of Montana, by the way … Go Griz! … even more trivia.)

My challenge, (and I truly see it as a challenge, not a problem), is that as I’m banging away, writing about the experiences I had student teaching, or driving my dad to his radiation treatments, or stealing a job from a friend (it’s true, my first job as a dishwasher I completely swiped out from under one of my friends) I keep wondering if these scenes are important enough to include. And I think why am I writing about this?

Why this? Why me? Why now?

I only think about that for a second, though.  Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to stop judging the merits of the story and just tell the damn thing.

I’ll worry about the rest tomorrow. It’s the Scarlett O’Hara school of memoir.

Posted on

Just read a book

Where’s my party?

I admit it. I feel like that sometimes. We give parties for some pretty weird shit. I think every time someone finishes a book they should have a party.

Here’s the thing, the book I just read hasn’t been published yet! And it’s great. It’s a great book. Beautifully written, moving, huge story. LOVED IT. But along with that, there’s something lacking … the book hasn’t been published.

Granted, the book came to me through my ever-expanding group of writing friends. The writer of said book asked me to take a look and tell them they weren’t crazy. Because this whole thing … this book-writing thing … it can be discouraging. Once you get a look behind the curtain, it’s pretty bleak. There’s, you know, a handful of people deciding what’s going to make it into print. It can be disheartening. Much worse than working in the theatre. So much worse. Honest. I know a bit about both worlds.

But here’s the thing about it—I’m new to this, so some of you that are more savvy than I am about it feel free to chime in here—for the life of me, I can’t understand why it has to be so. I know all about valuable criticism. I know all about constructive feedback. Almost every book about acting starts with the same message—don’t do it. It’s hard. It’s unpredictable. It doesn’t pay. No one is ever a star. No one is ever secure. No one is ever what the think they need to be … blah, blah, blah. The good acting books, the ones worth reading, tell you, “Don’t do it … unless it is something you feel you absolutely have to do.

But writing doesn’t/shouldn’t be like that. If it were, there wouldn’t be any books. So I wonder about this book I just read. And the book I’m about to read. The book I’m about to read is written by a relatively young author. Untried, so to speak, but gaining ground. The book I just read is totally new, fresh, and by and large it is a story that needs to be told. Yet I know (or at least I assume) that said book I just read is struggling. That book has met with rejection. Hell, there’s probably a book about the book that could be written. And I truly can’t understand why.

I know, I know. You are all going to tell me about self-publishing, or print on-demand. I haven’t actually dipped my toe into those waters yet. But if/when I do … I’m hoping it can be an optimistic, uplifting, affirming experience.

In the meantime.

Posted on

Housekeeping

I’m willing to admit, there’s a few things that make me impatient. I’m not going to go into all of them here, but as this is awards season, I’m going to let you in on one. I hate it when actors complain about how hard it is to act. In the words of one of my friends, who gets much more work that I do, “Oh please. You stand around all day and people bring you food. How hard can it be?”

So, by association, I become impatient when writers talk about how hard it is to write. I admit, having time to write is a luxury. And I’m eternally grateful to the company of folks I work with who have sacrificed to give me these seven weeks. But I’ve promised myself to not write blog posts about how hard it is to maintain a blog. In fact, I’ve promised myself to not reference the act of blogging in an actual post (like I’m doing now.)

So, in a way, I’ve broken a promise. To myself. But that’s okay because I can forgive myself. Now, when Bruce Willis starts in about how hard it was to make Die Hard, well … I change the channel. So those of you who are like-minded, may want to browse elsewhere.

The blog, and the site (and the webpage about the book) are a way to build what publishers call a “platform”. To that end, in an effort to get the word out, I’ve posted six days a week (as per Stephen King), and mentioned in my Facebook status every time I’ve written something new.

Many of you have commented here, but most of you have commented on my Facebook updates. (Or hit the ubiquitous “like” button.) I’m ever grateful for your support. Thanks! Keep it up!

Now, about the “subscribe” button many of you have asked about. After several rounds of technical support, it turns out the development platform I chose to create my website doesn’t support putting a subscribe button on this blog page. Which to me is okay. Here’s why: I write a post every day. If you subscribed, that means I’d be bugging you every day. And my number one goal in writing is to NOT BORE ANYONE. Honest. Don’t want to do it. So, at least for the sabbatical, I’m blogging using website developer. Once the posts become less frequent. (I’m imagining once a week when the sabbatical is over. Twice, tops.) I’ll archive these posts and switch to a development platform that allows you all to subscribe.

I promise.

Last bit of news: The plays still exist as plays, they just aren’t in the collection. (I think it’s better that way.) Also, I have a goal of 90,000 words for a rough draft. Today I passed the 60k mark.

I’m going to celebrate by making falafel.

Posted on

He said, she said

In 1991, when I was finally finishing up college, I read a book called The Five Clocks, by Martin Joos for a linguistics class. It’s out of print, or I’d link you to a copy. It’s actually a very long essay on language styles. Joos starts his essay by using the five clocks at a London train station as an example. They all have slightly different times, but they are all saying the same thing. His theory, and it’s a good one, is that there are five discernible styles of language. The most formal is the words you use when you are writing expository. Formal because it is written, and intended to be read and re-read. So we have to follow a set of accepted rules (called a grammar) that help the reader interpret the writing.

The hard one, the one that is exclusive in its usage (meaning it’s only understood by the speakers) Joos called Intimate style. And I have to tell you, the difference between Intimate and what Joos called Casual style is an absolute beast when I’m trying to capture dialog. So, in the course of revising these plays … these ten little minutes of dialog … I’ve spent a good deal of time just decoding the Intimate and the Casual. I think I’ve got a bead on where the narrative is likely to go, and I know that’s all I need … a vague idea of the plot … but the simple activity of turning the play dialog into the narrative dialog is taxing my use of what I understand Mr. Joos has to say.

Onward.

Into the land of “Um,” and “Huh?” and “Ah-ha!” When you hear it (like when you are hearing a play) it makes perfect sense. But when you are writing it … well … it just looks … awkward. Just one more thing I have to get over, right?

Posted on

Sore thumbs

Here’s something I know. When you are compiling a bunch of stories you’ve written over the course of ten years, there’s a seemingly endless round of revision. I’ve already decided to scrap the plays and rewrite them as narrative. That was easy. But there’s also passages of interior monologue that I just don’t know what to do with. Here’s a sample. Taken out of context of the collection, this is fine … but inside the book, it’s a sore thumb:

Strange room—nothing familiar. The smells were different than what I remember things smelling before. Back home. When I was back home. Was I back home? Strange person in bed next to me. OK, I think, you just have to get over this sick feeling you get where you don’t know where you are. So I say aloud, “Where am I?”

No answer.

OK. No answer. No light. No smell. Nothing familiar. OK. So I fumble around in the dark for a bit, feeling my way along a wall. Or what I think must be a wall. There must be a door somewhere.

Someone was in the bed next to me. Huh? How do you like that? I was used to sleeping alone. OK. Door handle. Aha! I think. A handle. As if the uniqueness of a door that opened with a handle rather than a knob was still as new as it was when I woke up. Handle. Door. Simple.

So I pull the door open and there it is. The living room I couldn’t remember just a second ago. This is it. I’m in a con—do—min—i—um. Cavalier By The Sea. A condo on the ocean with my family and my cousins. That was Hughie. Was that Hughie? I go back into the room and there he is. Deeply sleeping. OK. Condo. Ocean. Gotta pee.

It’s kind of nice, I think, getting up in the middle of the night all by yourself. Once you get your bearings. Once you know. Really know where you are. And how you got there. And what that strange person was doing in bed with you. Hughie. Cousin Hughie. OK.

So I pee. And there I am at, like four in the morning. Must be four in the morning. Maybe not. I don’t know. I can’t tell time in a place where I don’t know where the clock is. And I hate wearing a watch. Watches are for girls. Well, that’s not exactly true, I guess. Watches on my wrist look like watches a girl would wear. It’s my single physical flaw, as far as I can tell. My wrists. They are so girly. I mean really, really girly. I hate them. OK. Four in the morning. Just peed. Go back to bed with Hughie?

No. I don’t think so. Let’s do something interesting. I mean, here we are by the sea. Let’s do something downright interesting. Make breakfast? No. I don’t think so. OK. I slip back into the room and get dressed. I think about waking Hugh, but I don’t. Instead, I take a long look at the room, close the door and leave the condo. It’s dark, but not really dark. I noticed how it wasn’t really dark, when we pulled into the parking lot the night before. Just before we unpacked and got into fights and had dinner and went to bed. Just before the last thing I remember hearing was the rain. I mean real rain. Biblical rain. Pounding on the roof of the condo. We never get rain storms back home. I mean not legitimate rain storms. Maybe an occasional shower or something. Lightening, thunder, sure. But this was driving rain. Driving. It sure wasn’t raining now. And it wasn’t dark. Not really. It was kinda gray and dark and light at the same time. Must be four in the morning, I think.

Away I go. Trundling down the rickety steps of Cavalier By The Sea to the beach. It occurs to me, like out of nowhere, how what I’m doing isn’t exactly dangerous. I mean, you can’t really get lost on the beach. There’s one way down the beach. There’s the ocean, and there’s the land. Go in the ocean and drown. Go up on the land and it’s pretty easy to get lost, I imagine. But once you’re on the beach, really there’s only up the beach and down the beach.

I like that.

On the beach in the dark at four in the morning. Or what must be four in the morning. Maybe four fifteen.

Anyway. Eighth grade. God. Eighth. Fucking. Grade. This is so going to not go well. I can tell. I tried all summer to not think about it, but here we are, the whole fam damnly at the beach for the last hurrah before I have to go back into that cess pool. School is so stupid. And hard. Well, the school part of school isn’t hard, but the rest of it is so not easy. If I was like Hugh, I’m sure it would be fine. He’s great. He’s great looking. At least, you know, for a boy. And he’s smart and he’s funny and I just bet he has, like, a dozen friends. That is so …  not me. Well, the friends part. And the good looking part. If I wasn’t so fat, I’m sure I’d be OK looking. But I’m not … not fat. In fact, I’m willing to bet I’m the exact opposite of not fat. Let’s face it, OK? I’m fat. Fatty. I’m just fat. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with what I hate about school. I just hate the people. The people are awful. Well, the cool ones aren’t awful. They’re great. But they are pretty awful to me. In fact, if I was cool, I probably wouldn’t be awful to anyone. But I wonder: Do you have to be mean to be cool? Is that what it is? Because I could be mean, I guess. If I wanted to. I’ll have to check on that with Hughie. I’ll ask him, when I get back to the condo, what it’s like to be cool, and if you have to be mean to fat people to be cool. It’s probably different for him, though. In Boise, there’s probably plenty of fat people. In fact, I’ll bet they have their own group that they hang out with. Not me. In Anaconda, I’m like the only fat person. Well, that’s not true, but I’m the only fat person I’d hang out with.

I try not to think about it.

The beach was all full of stuff that had washed up the night before, and I headed past the soft squishy sand to the place where my feet didn’t slip, and my footprints disappear. The fog and the beach and the water and the sky. It was like it was all one color, but not. It was hard to see where the beach ended and the water began. Just like it was hard to see where the water ended and the sky picked up. In fact, I bet I could walk right out into the water and not even know I’m drowning. So, I pay attention to the stuff on the beach. As long as I can see the stuff on the beach I know I’m not in the water, and oddly enough, not in the sky.

The sun was starting to peek over the rim of sea grass that lined the high side of the sand dunes leading down to where I was walking. It was going to be a cloudy day, that’s for sure. Maybe even driving rain. Maybe not. Like I said before, I don’t really know anything about rain. Or the beach. Except it’s absolutely impossible to get lost on it. Even in the dark. At what must be four thirty in the morning.

Posted on

Who said what?

Good God. I’ve just about had it with anyone who said this a lonely pursuit. It’s not. It’s crowded in here. My parents are back from the dead. My teenage sister is as snarky as ever, and my thoughts are just as messed up as they were in high school.

I just slammed through a couple of scenes where I knew I was right, but I was so totally wrong! I had a conversation with a friend of mine a couple of years ago. Very similar to me, he had lost his parents one right after the other. Only he was in his early 30s, whereas I was in my early 20s. Nevertheless, I had enough distance from the spring of 1987 and summer of 1988 (forever known as the most fucked summer of 1988) that I could offer a little bit of perspective. The conversation doesn’t matter, but the question he asked me does. At the end of the conversation he asked, “So, when does the forgiving start?”

And I worry a little bit about that, you see. That question weighs a little heavier on my mind today. Just when do we forgive each other? I said horrible, hateful things to my parents, (and my poor, dear siblings). I was a total smart ass. There’s no doubt about it. The person I projected with my friends was completely innocent of the crimes I committed against my family. Today, as I dove into the scene I had with my father (when I was completely sure he was going to let me leave Anaconda and start singing in bars … I’m not making this up) I remembered saying some horrible, hateful things. And … it was like he didn’t hear them, or he had nerves of steel, because he was so totally cool about the whole thing.

And I was being a real shit, let me tell you. But in a way he was too. Kinda. Well probably not as big a shit as I remember … but still.

So when does the forgiving start?

I get this sense that I need to let myself off the hook, but I gotta tell you, that’s the hardest part of this whole journey.

Posted on

Have you seen this woman?

I wrote this 10 years ago. It’s about an encounter I had in Pendleton, while I was working for the Missoula Children’s Theatre in the summer of 1984. I wonder if this woman is still there.

War Bonds

She wanted to know what it was I wanted. I’d never been here before. It was a forgotten place on the main street of the little town I was traveling through. I had to stop here for a week, though, because that was my job. It’s what I did.

I never told this to anyone, but I’m afraid of old people. Especially old people who are obviously trying to look younger than they really are. I don’t get it. I hope, secretly, that I will never get old, when I see someone grasping at straws trying to stay young.

This woman had the most curiously colored hair I had ever seen. I think it was magenta with pink highlights. She was on the other side of the counter from where I sat. I was looking at the plastic-covered menu. The plastic was yellowish-brown with age, and read Club Cigar. This was apparently the name of the lunch counter where I had chosen to eat lunch. I thought it would be interesting.

The Club Cigar was a smoke shop on one side of the room and a lunch counter on the other. The woman was a fixture behind the lunch counter. She had curiously colored hair and was wearing a waitress uniform that appeared to be forty years old. Her black skirt tailored to be slimming, the white blouse top was starched so tight it looked like it would break if it was ironed one more time. The woman appeared to be eighty trying to look forty. Trying to look thirty? Twenty? I couldn’t tell.

I was looking at the menu and the counter beyond the menu. The counter was a different color yellow than the menu. It had been bright yellow linoleum when it was installed, but now it had faded to a pleasant shade. Faint outlines of boomerang shapes remained in the linoleum. It looked like a pattern of linoleum I had seen before—maybe on my mom’s kitchen table.

I always ordered the same thing in a place like this. I remembered my father telling me about traveling food. He had said, “When you are on the road and you are eating in a strange place, always order a grilled cheese sandwich.” His reasoning for this was that it was hard to mess up a grilled cheese sandwich. Without looking up from the menu, I told the ancient woman before me that I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich.

“And what to drink?” She asked.

I looked up, and for a moment my gaze caught hers. She was looking past me to the other side of the room. There was no one behind me. For a moment I thought she might be blind, but she wasn’t. She was looking out the door behind me. Out into the empty street. But then, a second later, she focused her attention on me. She looked at me.

Eye to eye.

“Well … ,” I began to tell her I wanted a Diet Coke, but I couldn’t. She was looking that deeply into my eyes that I couldn’t go on. I felt like a president sitting for a portrait. This ancient woman was looking so hard at me that she at once knew more about me than I wanted her to know. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t blink. I couldn’t say a word.

For a split second I was a teenager and she was on roller skates. I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich and a vanilla coke. I wanted a dime for the jukebox, so I could play my favorite tune. I wanted the courage to ask my girl to give me my class ring back that she had wrapped with yarn and wore around her neck on a shoestring.

A second later I was a soldier and she was a hot dame. I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee. I wanted to look in the paper to see what Rommel was doing in Africa. I wanted to ask her if it was all right for me to stay until she closed up and maybe we could make a night of it. I could borrow a car and we could drive out past the stockyards and park.

I was a cowboy, just in town for the Roundup. I wanted her to wait for me to go to the rodeo and win enough money so that she could go away with me. We would travel all over the country bustin’ broncs. She could stay in the motel and make it homey while I went out and won big cash prizes. We’d hit all the big rodeos. Calgary, Dillon, Cheyenne, Billings, Laramie, Denver, Provo, Vegas, Santa Fe, Artesia, Amarillo, Muleshoe, Quanta, Dallas, San Antonio.

I’d be back, and I’d have a ring. I’d ask her to wait for me until I came back. “Don’t change a thing,” I’d tell her, gazing at her uniform and her swooping red hair. “You look just like Rita Heyworth,” I’d say. “I’ll be back,” I’d tell her. “Wait for me.”

“I’ll have a Diet Coke,” I said. She turned away from me and started making my lunch.

Posted on

Small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it

I wish I’d said that, but it’s actually a Stephen Wright quote. He also said, “I don’t want everything. Where would I put it?”

Today is a banner day in my gaining some insight into Anaconda, post 1980. I finally went up to the Washington State University extension campus (just up the street, for the love of God) and picked up a copy of Anaconda: Labor, Community and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City, by Laurie Mercier. This was the only area library that had a copy of the book, turns out with good reason. Here’s a brief snippet of dialog to explain:

Me: I’m looking for this book

Librarian: Anacon … I can’t read your writing.

Me: Anaconda. A N A C O N D A

Librarian: Oh! By Laurie!

Me. Yes. Laurie Mercier

Librarian: Well it was just checked in.

Me: Oh good.

Librarian: Are you taking one of her classes?

Me. What? Oh, no. I’m a community user. I’m not a student. This is the only library that has a copy of the … wait, what?

Librarian: Are you taking one of her classes?

Me: Does she teach here?

Librarian: Yes. She’s one of our Professors

Like Mr. Wright says … small world.

So, here’s today’s nugget. I open the book, which is largely based on a number of interviews Ms Mercier conducted with community members, and lo and behold, there’s a quote on the first page from Mary Dolan! Miss Dolan. As in Miss Dolan, THE PRINCIPAL of W.K. Dwyer Elementary School. The very same Miss Dolan who saved me from hating school and … BANG! It was like I’d been shot out of a cannon.

Miss Dolan had a profound effect on me. She was tough … there was no doubt about that … but when I was called into her office in November 1968, it wasn’t because I was causing trouble. But I was in trouble, and she knew it. I had been in school for only three months and managed to have the highest absence rate in history. If I remember correctly, (And we all know it really doesn’t matter if I do, right?) I had been in school a total of 15 complete days.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like school. I hated school. And I remember reasoning with my mother—actually trying to negotiate my way out of having to go to school at all. There was something deeper there, a greater truth I should have learned about myself much earlier than I did. I simply didn’t like being in a group of people. I didn’t like being classified, I didn’t like having to be called on … randomly … to answer questions. I hated the entire idea that I was going to have to spend the rest of my known life attending school. And here we are more than forty years later, and I still feel that way. I don’t think the way we educate people in this country actually works for the majority of the population. To me, the way most students are being taught, learning is accidental. If anyone manages to retain anything, it’s a total, complete accident. Learning (again, to me, I’m not blaming anyone here) should be intentional. It has everything to do with student motivation and very little to do with teaching expertise. Good teachers point the way. Good learners ask for directions.

Miss Dolan made me aware … no, that’s not the right word … Miss Dolan made me understand that I was entitled to my opinion. And that, even though I had major issues with “the system”, I was going to have to make the best of it. Suck it up. Make lemonade. Learn as much as I could about how I learned, so that I didn’t have to rely on the school system to teach me. It’s difficult to explain. In my little first-grader mind, she made me realize that it was completely my responsibility to figure out how I was going to learn, and then accommodate the information being given to me to the style I was going to understand it in. Miss Dolan made me realize I was auto-didactic long before anyone even knew what that meant. And there were teachers along the way … true teachers … who understood that the best way for me to learn from them was to continually question. I remember one of my college professors telling me, “Your problem is I just can’t tell you anything. I have to constantly prove everything.” And I remember saying right back, “That’s not a problem … it’s a method.” Snark, right? Total ass. I know, I know.

Miss Dolan showed up one day, in the back of my classroom when I was student teaching. It was the last time I saw her. I remember I was having a discussion in my class about why we all needed to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There was a student who just didn’t see the point. The class was discussing the merits of having to read the novel when there was a movie available, (I believe they even wanted to just peruse classic comic). Anyway … what I remember is we were truly debating the issue when Miss Dolan came into the room, walked to the back and stood with her hands behind her back, her head bowed. Even from the front of the room, without my glasses, I could see she was smiling.

She was a remarkable woman—she could be meaner than Mussolini—but in a world where it’s easy to be mediocre, she remains one of the truly remarkable teachers I’ve ever had.

Posted on

I pinch myself

There really is something to this “in the zone” thing. I’m telling you. Once I get down to business I get completely lost inside the words and I know how trite this sounds, but … it’s like someone else is writing the story and I’m just reading along, correcting the spelling. I wonder if there’s other times in my life when that has happened. I know there’s been times when I’ve been performing and if you’d asked me afterwards how it felt, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. It’s not out-of-body as much as totally in-body.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t get as far today as I would have liked, but when I finally did get into myself, I just sort of sat by and watched things appear. It was  … exhilarating. When I finally slowed down, I went into editing mode and just sort of plowed through a couple of chapters, changing things like “my mom” to “Mom” and fixing sentences to meet the format.

I know this sounds precious, but I have to tell you … everyone should be so lucky.

Today I filled in some missing meaning gaps in a chapter I started more than a year ago about diving into a wading pool. I really didn’t know why I’d done it, at the time, but through writing the scene, I honestly think I was  doing it just to get attention. God, what an ass!

I spent the morning reading a pamphlet that was published by the Soroptimist Club of Anaconda in salute to Anaconda’s first 100 years called Anaconda, Montana’s Copper City, by Matt J Kelly. A true native son, Mr. Kelly had collected a boatload of information on the beginnings of Anaconda, including many of the facts and figures about the smelter that other researchers would have overlooked.

I took a couple of important things away from the reading. First off, the town was much more sophisticated than I have ever given it credit for. (For this I feel ashamed, in fact.) Also, and this is an important thing to remember I think, there’s more than a couple tales of hard-working folks helping each other through tough times. Mr. Kelly’s description of the depression, for example, shows a town supporting each other, starting a community garden, making sure the hungry were fed. Or the time when the alderman, clearly understanding they weren’t going to stop bootlegging, decided to regulate the speakeasies and charge a nuisance fine … collecting some $650 to add to the city coffers before the mayor called them in and put an end to the regulation program.

I’m sure that other places in the west have similar stories, probably just as colorful, I’d wager. But the fact that I grew up with such history leaking through the bricks of the very buildings is … astonishing. Hopefully, by shining a light into the corners of my own weird little existence there, I’ll be able to find that history and sophistication seeping through the decisions I made, and the reasons I made them. Sometimes, I just have to pinch myself.

Posted on

From the archives

I wrote this as an exercise in a workshop a few years ago. I think it’s true, but I’m not really sure:

Screwed

It sounded horrible. Us neighborhood kids could not get over just how bad it sounded. We heard wails coming from somewhere down the street. Intrepid investigators that we were, we went from house to house, starting at the top of the block, and stood in front of each, listening very carefully.

It wasn’t coming from the Curry’s house on the corner. No sound ever came from that house. The sound was still coming though, only this time it sounded less like people, and more like someone’s dog was being stepped on. Kind of a squeal. And then another one.

It wasn’t coming from the Vine’s house, although the Vines had five kids and you never really knew what any of them were up to. They were all smart kids, and it could have been that one of them was doing some sort of experiment on one of the other ones.

It wasn’t in the next two houses, because we would have known. Those were our houses, and we were the ones who had noticed the strange sound in the first place.

The sound was getting fainter, splitting in two. When it had started, it sounded like someone was being whipped, a girl most likely, being whipped, it had subsided and split into two sounds, one was kind of a grunting sound, like someone was moving something heavy and the other was sort of whining.

Repetitious. Grunt, whine, grunt, whine, grunt, whine.

It was coming from the Boyer’s garage. That’s for sure. There was no doubt in our minds.

The five of us stood on the sidewalk at the end of their driveway and listened to the sound. The Boyer’s next door neightbor, Mr. Andreoli … Jack … was a nice guy, but he didn’t like us kids hanging around his yard. When he came to the door, my first instinct was to run, but I knew he had seen me and the four kids I was with. So we stayed. He came to the door with his finger to his lips, like he was shushing us. He closed the door and walked across his lawn toward us.

“That’s Taffy,” he whispered. “They must be mating her in the garage with another pure-bred cocker,” he said. “We need to let them be and not make any sound for a while now. Go on and play.”

“Is she hurt?” Danny asked. His dog, King, had been hit by the milk truck. Danny was the one who thought it was a dog in the first place.

“Oh, no. No. Well, no, not really,” Mr. Andreoli said. “She’s being screwed, and she doesn’t like it.”

“Screwed?” I ask later in our backyard. “How can one dog screw another dog?”

“Don’t be so stupid,” Danny said. “They were screwing, like, you know, like screwing like people.”

“Screwing? Like with screw drivers and stuff like that? What, are they building something?”

I really want to get to the bottom of this screwing thing. I’ve heard it before from other kids, and I just don’t understand what the big deal is. It sounded like work to me. Why would work hurt so bad?

“No. You know, screwing like when your dick gets hard and you stick it in a girl,” Danny said. He was totally serious. Every time my dick got hard I just left it alone. I didn’t know I was supposed to stick it anywhere.

“Where do you stick it?” I ask.

“I’m not sure. My brother didn’t tell me that. But if you do it a lot it makes the girl have a baby.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Yeah, I thought they came from the hospital, but now I know that when you screw, you make a baby, and only a boy and a girl can do it after screwing a lot. Then the girl gets fat and goes to the hospital and the baby pops out. It must hurt a lot, because Taffy sure was wailing.”

“So, Taffy has to go to the hospital?” I ask.

“You are so stupid! Taffy is a girl dog getting screwed by a boy dog so she can have puppies. I think I’d rather have a puppy than a baby,” Danny said.

“Yeah, me too,” I say.