My friend and I have this joke. Well it's not a joke really, more like a deeply denied sadness, something that must be sublimated each day in order to press on without reliance on MAO inhibitors.
Our joke: because our young lives were so beyond screwed up, whenever we talk or write about it we have to 'tone down' the stories; in fact, if we were to simply describe actual life experience no one would believe it. The characters would be too fantastic. The plots too implausible. The settings, dialogue, the very core would be written off as a bunch of melodramatic hooey. There's a whole other aspect of going the non-fiction route that disturbs us that I won't get in to, but suffice it to say it has something to do with having a genuine affection for our family members, a penchant for forgiveness, and a heart-arresting fear of being brought up on slander charges. Don't kid yourself: more than one Thanksgiving dinner has been saved by replacing the words "auto-biography" with "creative non-fiction". There's great peace-keeping power in being able to say you took a grain of truth and made up the rest.
I got to explore that other aspect while watching Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Plymouth. (It was excellent by the way, highly recommend seeing this cast before it goes rep.) There was a moment that made me think of my friend, of family, and the properties of disclosure. The lights came up for the second intermission and the stranger sitting next to me said, "These people, their lives, it's so..." and paused. In the pause I began to insert 'spot on?' 'eerily familiar?' 'a perfect reenactment of every family gathering ever had?' but instead he finished with, "...horrible. Unbearable. Who could survive that..."
Um....me? With subtle differences, the characters in that play ARE my family. Emotionally unavailable, tight-wad father; check. Drug addicted, non-existent mother; check. Sibling One, a good-for-nothing drunk moocher, Sibling Two, diagnosed with a potentially deadly disease; check and check. And sure, a group of people who sit in a room and criticize each other's bad behavior while simultaneously causing and enabling it IS absolutely horrible and unbearable...only where I come from it's called Monday.
Anyway, I don't know if my friend and I will ever be able to write about our lives biographically. Eugene O'Neill wrote Long's Day's Journey (an auto-biographical play) in 1939 and demanded that it may not be published or produced until 25 years after his death.
I dunno, I say 25 years seems a little risky.
Posted by Antigeist at June 17, 2003 11:50 AM