I was walking the stairs up to a friend's apartment today and passed by a used, dripping condom hanging off the handrail. I glanced at it with minor interest and kept on walking, ever careful to not touch the railings. I never give it much thought--it's a college town so things like this happen all the time. The night before, I listened to my neighbors scream "fuck you!" at each other for hours (you'd think after awhile that they would mix it up, but they never do). This morning, I woke up to find my car keyed, apparently the victim of mistaken identity because said neighbor and I have the same car and I'm pretty sure her boyfriend found out she's cheating on him...
I live in a pretty shitty place. It's kind of gritty here. It's sure as hell ugly. But it's home--somehow, this little grotto of a college town is home. And it's affected my writing, you know? It's changed since I've been living here--I've changed since living here. It's more ballsy. Angrier. Profane. But that's what this place will do to you, I guess. You can only listen to couples fucking on the 6th floor of the library for so long before you know when she's faking an orgasm and you can only be called a dumb cunt for tripping in the cafeteria before it stops fazing you.
This is the stuff Edinboro has taught me. These are the things I know. They're ugly things, but this is an ugly place.
It's changed my writing. I don't lie in my writing anymore. I don't say "sugar" when I mean "shit." I don't gloss things over because they're too in-your-face, too audacious. If you want me to tell you a story, if you want me to be a raconteur, I will--but you're going to be disappointed if you're expecting a nice, clean, neat story. I hate nice, clean, neat stories because they're not true. Truth is dirty; truth is bold and sexual and indecent; truth uses words like "fuck" and "cunt"; the truth gets in your face and spits in it.
And why shouldn't I tell the truth? I used to write nice things, things I could show my grandmother. But that era is over. Now I write things that make people squirm. I write things that make people so uncomfortable that they set the paper down--but even then, it's worth it. Being reader-less is better than vapid popularity; a sincere sinner rather than a bastard saint.
And maybe I'm just saying this because I'm young and maybe I'll sell out my values someday. But, for today, I've got my fucking principles and I'm clinging to them like a herpes on a whore.
POST EDIT: Edinboro has also made me a horrible, horrible, moral compass-less human being. I'm beginning to aspire to the Tucker Maxx level of Hell.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I thought you should go to Edinboro. You get the same classroom education that you'd have gotten at Gannon, but you also get to meet a more diverse group of people. I always went to public schools - I was used to people fucking in the bathrooms - but I doubted that you'd gotten to see the savagery of the human race at First Assembly of God. :)
ReplyDeleteI used to love sitting by Mallory Lake on warm nights, the sound of the fountain lulling me on through deep thought.
ReplyDeleteSunrises over Edinboro Lake were serene, with herons circling, geese munching the grass, fish nipping the surface, and me, still as a statue with a cup of Earl Grey.
I walked the stacks of the library, running my hands over the book spines, stopping to peer into an interesting looking tome, to smell its age.
Vomit on the street near Compton was always interestingly colored, and the hordes of revelers spilling out of the houses there never ceased to amaze.