THAT TIME MY BOOK WAS BANNED

It wasn’t a library. It wasn’t a school district. It wasn’t a bookstore. 

 

No, it was my sister-in-law.

 

It happened eighteen years ago, but I only remembered this yesterday. I’m good at repressing. Family matters can baffle me. I don’t like being baffled. But then, I also don’t like being banned.

 

The book, Fouling Out, is my only one to be published…so far. I keep knocking on agents’ doors and they keep turning out the lights and pretending no one’s home. To be clear, I don’t go door-to-door, throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan, my manuscripts resting in crisp manila folders in each hand. Yes, I’m pitching two novels at present while abandoning hope on a third. I email agents in the manner set forth on their websites. I wonder how long it takes them to clear their new messages. I picture agents sitting side-by-side in cubicles, opening up emails and pressing the delete button like it’s a duel, like it’s preparation to be contestants on Family Feud. It feels like the old days of online dating. I just need one to love me…or my work, at least. Alas, neither manuscript is set in a dystopian amusement park and involves queer body horror. (Yes, that’s “of particular interest” to the agent I thought of emailing this morning. I don’t think my funny, sometimes hapless, relatable main character navigating the West Hollywood gay scene technically includes body horror even if there is a certain scene that would qualify in my mind at least.)

 

Fouling Out, published by Orca Books once upon a time (i.e., 2008) is a middle grade novel which means the target audience is kids in grades four through seven. I was at the family cottage when my sister-in-law informed me that she’d read the book but wouldn’t let my niece or nephew read it. They were both in or around the targeted age group and I tried my best not to show that her matter-of-fact announcement felt like a gut punch. I’ve only seen my niece and nephew a handful of times in my life. When my brother’s family lived in North Carolina, I was in Los Angeles; when they returned to Texas, I moved to Vancouver. Our lives and locations felt worlds apart.

 

I’d been excited about the prospect of my niece and nephew reading my book. I hoped they’d get a kick out of knowing their uncle was a published writer. I thought they might get a better sense of me based on my humour, my storytelling and my connection to kids’ perspectives. (I was an elementary teacher when I wrote it and a principal by the time it came out.) But, no. The book was not available to them. I feel my own sense of horror imagining my sister-in-law telling them their uncle’s book was off limits. Like my work was chock full of sex, gore and gratuitous drug usage. Like I bashed puppies. Like I overtly promoted my vegetarian lifestyle. (That might have caused a sweeping book ban across the entire state of Texas.)

 

The intention of my novel, which features two grade seven boys, was to portray young male characters with expressed feelings while dealing with real challenges. (Sorry, no zombies or vampires. No empires in peril due to a deep-seated conflict between Starman and his evil nemesis.) I wanted to show that reputations embedded at thirteen could be undone. Boys had the power to be better.

 

One of my writing challenges was realistically portraying one of the characters who was seen as an obnoxious bully by his peers. My publisher did not allow any profanity. A bully who doesn’t swear? (I guess they had an idealistic view of how twelve- and thirteen-year-olds talk.) I wonder how many times I had to resort to “He swore” in lieu of actually dialogue. It’s been a while since I perused the book, but I hope I refrained from using, “Oh, fudge” and “Shootsy.”

 

To be sure, the book included some dicey issues like racism, family abuse and homelessness. Early in the book, one character fires a gun but a squirrel is spared due to the quick action of his buddy. Only a window in an unoccupied house is harmed.

 

My sister-in-law said nothing about racism, abuse or the use of a gun. (Why would someone from Texas have any issue about guns anyway?) Instead, her problem was with the language in the book. 

 

I was dumbfounded. Had my editor and I missed a swear word despite multiple readings during the editing process? Had I unknowingly chosen a word that has a derogatory meaning in slang? Had the printer slipped in some offensive phrase? (Backwards, the darn trickster!)

 

No. Up until that moment, I’d been proud of my writing and the word choices I’d made. My editor was a top-notch wordsmith who knew which passages and plot points needed revision. I loved that her job was to point things out while leaving all the rewriting to me.

 

As far as I know, shopping at
Walmart on a Sunday is okay...
even in Texas.

What my sister-in-law objected to was the fact that I had apparently written “oh, my god” once or twice in the 168-page manuscript. In her mind, I’d taken the Lord’s name in vain. I’d broken a commandment. Not murder, not adultery, not coveting my neighbour’s wife. But still a commandment. It’s funny because, for the most part, I don’t swear. It’s even rarer that I take the Lord’s name in vain. I say “gosh,” “oh, my gosh” and “gosh darn it.” I’m an atheist, but I still consciously opt for “gosh” because I was raised with an awareness of the commandments…even though they weren’t yet legislated to be posted on classroom walls when I was going to high school in Texas. I don’t recall being in a quandary when I typed, “Oh, my god” as part of a line of dialogue from one of my characters. I’m certain it fit the context—say, after the gun went off—and it fit the character’s age and way of thinking. As a stickler, I don’t even view lowercase god is sacrilege. When one chooses to use the word as something other than a proper noun, I think this distinguishes the word as something ordinary rather than religious.

 

But I’m defending my word choice too much. Let’s say the commandment was specifically spat upon to cause a stir and to out myself as an egregious sinner. It may come off as blasphemy, but I don’t believe each commandment is equal. This might be an appropriate time to admit that I questioned that whole ark tale, too. I always wondered how big an ark would have to be to get all the animal pairs aboard. And didn’t they get hungry during the forty days and forty nights? Wouldn’t a lion or tiger have eaten the zebras and the antelope? What about the rest of the food chain examples I’d learned about (and been disturbed by) in elementary science class? 

 

It would seem to me that, if my sister-in-law was so duly offended—and I have no doubt that, as a devout Southern Baptist, she was—she could have scribbled through the reference(s) or, better, used it/them as a teachable moment. Your uncle may have been good enough to be a published author—ONCE—but let’s review the commandments, shall we?  

 

Alas, it wasn’t even worth a teachable moment. God comes before some rarely seen uncle—a heretic, no less. My niece and nephew were home-schooled. One attended Baylor, a Baptist university; the other went to Letourneau, an evangelical Christian school. Shelter and protect thy children was probably one of the principles at play regarding their education but I am absolutely certain they were exposed to swearing, sexual references and, yes, “oh, my god” many times at school, in shopping malls and at parks. The world doesn’t always conform. 

 

But I guess the idea was control what you can and so my book was banned. I suppose I repressed this because it breaks me more than a little bit when I think of it. My book was studied in many classrooms. It had a place on many school and public library shelves. I’m proud that every print copy was sold, the publisher turned a profit and the book can now only be accessed as an ebook. Still, there’s a part of me that would have loved it if my niece and nephew had been proud of me, too. Gosh golly, if and when one of those evasive agents takes on one (or more!) of my manuscripts and successfully woes a publisher, my niece and nephew will be sure to pass. I will never write a cleaner novel than Fouling Out. 

 

Maybe it’s a good thing they’ve had such little exposure to me. There are things beyond books they would surely find objectionable. I’ve heard that some authors come to view book banning as a badge of honour but, considering how close to home this incident was, I’m not going to get there. I don’t feel shame, but I find myself shaking my head a lot. Time to repress it for another couple of decades.

TOO MUCH TRAVEL?

I’ve long said that travel is the best antidote to the up-and-down swirls I feel due to mental health challenges. A quick trip to Whistler or Seattle can calm my nerves, lift my mood or just provide a preventive booster to keep me on track. 

 

I’m not sure how I’d feel about travel as part of work, the kind where you check in to one hotel after another and spend 9 to 5 in one office tower after another, then unwind in a bar seven floors down from your room. That seems like travel without the experiences that make being away from home so special. No matter how luxurious they may be, I don’t want to sign up for what are basically hotel room tours. A successful trip involves as little time in the room as possible (and time in an office cubicle doesn’t count at all). 

 

Still, I’ve often thought that, if I could land a kind of job where I’m paid to venture to cities and countries and hop on trains or roam in a rental car from city to beach from art museum to funky café, I’d have found my sweet spot. Bring on the next destination!

 

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

But here I am, momentarily between trips, three days at home after being away most of the past month and heading out again for two more months. So far I’ve covered Taos, Denver, Halifax, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. Upcoming: Portland, Canyonlands National Park, Denver, New York City, Dallas, Aspen and another stint in New Mexico along with a few places that haven’t been slotted in yet. 

 

To be sure, I am lucky. Privileged, in fact. I’ve loved going to each place up till now and I have no doubt I will thoroughly enjoy the places to come but these three days at home aren’t so much about rest but instead are filled with preparation for the next two months: a bike tune-up, an oil change, a laptop repair, a volunteer shift, a mortgage renewal, medication refills, a library stop, an insurance appointment, a meeting with a writing colleague, unpacking and packing, hotel bookings and loads of laundry among other things. No doubt, there is an item or two I’m forgetting. It feels like a lot.

 

I’d be okay with it—I think—if one item weren’t left off the list: writing. I define myself as a writer. Writing essays, outlining a new story and revising a manuscript bring me joy. I don’t have the time or the focus for these tasks right now and they fell off my radar during the most recent week of travel. As I take to the road for another extended period, I don’t see a time in the near future when I can fit in a few decent writing sessions. 

 

That boost I feel from travel is taking a hit from the absence of writing as my passion. I just can’t balance the two at present. It’s put me in an unfamiliar sort of funk that is clouding the glory of travel adventure.

 

Writing just doesn’t fall off my agenda.

 

Even during my first stint in a psych ward, when they took away all my possessions, including my backpack with a writing notebook, I found the fortitude and the supplies—a single sheet of white paper and one of those teensy pencils they give you at miniature golf—to write. I wrote my ideas in the tiniest print possible, filling up every inch on both sides of the paper. In my deepest ever depression, writing was what gave me hope that I could continue to be something once discharged. 

 

It’s scary to not be writing. What if ideas and inspiration don’t come back when I’m ready to slot in more writing time? What if this unprecedented break just keeps going?  

 

I have four days by myself on the road beginning tomorrow. I have a pad of paper, pens and pencils always placed in the driver’s side door pocket. As I navigate some of the less scenic patches of highway, I hope to be that guy talking aloud to himself as speedier drivers pass. Let the ideas flow again. I don’t care whether they’re about a current project or something entirely new. Let me start thinking like a writer again. Let the ideas feel so urgent and compelling that I find myself pulling over at rest stops or even the road shoulder to scribble my thoughts on that pad of paper. I normally enjoy the quiet time but I’m hoping, as this trip begins, there will be a lot of noise inside my head. The good kind. The kind that affirms that, yes, I am still a writer.

 

     

 

  

A SIMPLE CRUSH

It seems I’ve got a schoolboy crush. It’s simple, based on very little and it’s not going to go anywhere. I’m one hundred percent good with that. I just like the fact that, at fifty-seven, this guy can still have such a thing…and pretend the word “schoolboy” has any application to me.

 

I’ve attended lots of author talks, gone to many writers’ conferences and bought some books on writing, but I’ve avoided classes. I feared them. I didn’t want my writing to be dismissed or mocked. I didn’t want to be overwhelmed by the vastly superior talent in the room. More than anything, I didn’t want irrefutable confirmation that I couldn’t write. 

 

At the beginning of 2022, I decided I needed to shake things up. I wanted something more than a one-shot workshop about writing. I enrolled in an eight-session writing class called Queering the Personal Memoir…or something like that. It’s offered by Hugo House, a wonderful writers’ hub in Seattle. I’d attended a few afternoon workshops there in the past, always looking for an excuse for a road trip to the Emerald City. Pre-COVID, these were led by local authors and attended by local writers and Spice Girl song title folks. A sunny side up result of the pandemic is that, by offerings going online, the faculty and the students come from farther afield. Our instructor is a published author who lives in New York City. We’re a small group of students, but we hail from Seattle, Dallas, Orlando and NYC. Two of us are from Vancouver. 

 

During the first two sessions, I was highly distracted by…myself. I’d participated in many Zoom events but, typically, I was a listener, taking in a performance or an interview with an author. Zoom one-on-ones with a mortgage broker or a psychiatrist were brief. I’d see my image in a rectangle on the screen, but I managed a fair job of fixating on the other person’s tie or the yellow sponge resting on the counter in the background. What kind of person doesn’t put a soggy sponge out of sight? But these writing classes go on for two hours. There are usually nine of us in attendance and I can amuse myself by pretending we’re some queer version of “Hollywood Squares” or the opening title of “The Brady Bunch.” But then I get bogged down remembering that closeted Paul Lynde died of alcoholism and closeted Robert Reed died of AIDS. The distracting images lose their fun factor. I stop visual contortionism and, there I am again, right there in the Jan Brady box, middle child syndrome bubbling up again. 

 

Focus! They’re talking about writing. Something about a braided essay. Or, no, they’ve moved on to discussing the stakes in the work.

 

I’m paying for this! It seemed a reasonable amount but then there was that conversion to Canadian dollars. I really need to get something out of this.

 

Still, that face of mine. Disappointing. Frightening. Weary, gaunt, so old. If the Italian mafia, a Mexican cartel or the Norwegian underworld find some need to torture me to confess something, all they’d need to do is sit me in a tiny room and force me to stare at my image. “Okay, okay! That yellow sponge in the background was mine!”

 

Thankfully, someone told me to put a Post-it over my image. Brilliant! My level of technological problem solving. I have to move the Post-it around as my face appears in different places on screen, I’ve gotten speedy at adjusting. It’s like an office supplies version of Whack-a-mole.

 

I’m now drawn to another distraction, a more pleasing one: a classmate. My crush. He had me from the moment he logged in that first class. Feast your eyes on that background! The entire wall was filled by a bookcase loaded with books. 

 

 

And then, of course, there was the figure sitting in front of all those books. A strikingly handsome Black man with closely cropped hair and a starkly serious demeanor that jolted me every time he broke character to flash a smile. 

 

 

This man is not one of those students who needs to speak every five minutes to process his learning or to show what he knows or thinks he knows. There’s one in every class, right? Actually, in this class, there isn’t. These are genuinely nice people, the kind I’d show up to class early for just to hang and get to know each other more. Especially a certain someone. My crush often holds back, sitting silently as others chime in each week. Then, he takes his moment to offer a sage comment about tweaking the structure of an essay in a simple yet shape-shifting way that makes the writer’s work more polished, more powerful. 

 

 

Bonus factor: the clothes! Every week he’s appeared in a gloriously stylish cardigan or hooded sweater, something that tells me it’s brr-cold in The Big Apple, something that begs to be touched. Yes, there’s a sunny side down to all this Zoom-i-ness. 

 

This week the class spent the first hour critiquing my 3,000-word essay. My anxiety and insecurity led me to writing eight possible essays to turn in, each sounding more overwrought and woe-is-me. After slogging through one that was a greatest hits medley of All that I Wrong with Me, I’d had enough. Verbal diarrhea and persistent nausea are not the writerly vibes I strive for. I drafted a new essay, this one “lite” and packed with humor…or, at least, what I think is funny. How would the class react? What if my crush held his starkly serious demeanor for the entire two hours? What if he attacked my work? What if he said nothing at all, eyes downcast as he examined Wordles on the phone resting on his lap?

 

They thought it was funny! Feedback included references to Andrew Sean Greer and the hallowed Nora Ephron. Okay, not with regard to the whole essay but, if someone can cite an Ephron moment, I’m doing an (extremely clumsy) happy dance. 

 

Find yourself a Post-it to block that image. 

 

When my crush chimed in, he smiled. He said, “There were laugh out loud moments on every page.” He cited examples and, by golly, laughed out loud. It wasn’t a throwaway “LOL.” He meant it!

 

My crush chimed in again later, laughing again, saying he wanted to know more about what I’d referred to as a past partner’s “condom collection.” Well now. This was getting intimate. In truth, there was zero innuendo in his comment, but I prefer to misinterpret as I wish. That’s what crushes are all about. Lots of imagining what could be, even when Be Mine will never be.

 

Two more sessions to go. We’ll review his essay on the final day. I’ll be unabashedly biased, gushing over his catchy phrasing, his refreshing point of view and how hooked I was from the first paragraph. If it turns out this man can’t write, I’ll sound like a fool. But then that’s how crushes go. I’m such a silly schoolboy. At my age, it feels good.