My Piggy Sneed Ending, but True: a Christmas Story

In his essay, “Trying to Save Piggy Sneed,” John Irving describes how his first impulses to create fiction came from his childhood recollection of a retarded man who died in a barn fire. Young Irving began spinning wildly unlikely escapist scenarios of how the mentally challenged man had really set the fire on purpose to draw attention away from his flying away, running off to retire—as a rich man—in Florida. Or, maybe he had gone to Europe. In any case, Piggy Sneed, in Irving’s version, duped them all; Irving had saved the man—and maybe himself, as well—through fiction.

I was about the same age as Irving was when he spinned the Piggy Sneed tale when Iexperienced my first real kiss. It was in between the sixth and seventh grades, playing Truth or Dare with my best friend Temple and two boys while my parents were in Europe.

By the time I was twelve-and-a-half, I was getting into trouble for making out with my boyfriend at the school dance. And at a church-sponsored hay-ride. The J.C. Penney shoe department.

Oh, my mother reads this…I’m not sure I should go on…

I’ll just say it was never a good thing, me and boys. I left the school-dance boyfriend behind in middle school, but in high school I kissed boys in closets and at bus stops and at goofy teenage keg parties and, afterhours, in playgrounds. I kissed one in the backseat of a go-cart. In a hot-tub, at Spring Break. By the swimming pool. In the ocean. Once, in the middle of the night, on a golf course. In back yards, and—of course—on my very own front porch.

For my last year of high school and the first two years of college, I dated a pottery major who was sweet, but it was too much, too young. Breaking up with him was one of the hardest--and most important--things I've ever done.

After him, there was one guy who, on our first date, invited me to his apartment after dinner where there happened to be—oops—a pile of pictures of his naked ex-girlfriend on his coffee table. He claimed he had forgotten they were there, and I was the dummy who believed him.

When I was in my early twenties, there was a boy in Russia, where I was living for a while, who asked me to serve him his tea at a party. This request was, in effect, a traditional Russian mating call. He also asked me if I had ever kissed a boy before. He confessed that he hoped I would say no, and that our kiss on our wedding day would be two sets of virgin lips, touching for the very first time…

Uh, no.

And then, I returned, dated a couple of weirdos, and then, and then, and THEN…there was Danny. Danny. The friend of a friend who came to help me set up my computer and then stuck around to ask me to a movie.

I was no retarded man caught in a barn fire, but there’s no question—I was in trouble. And no question, Danny rescued me.

This is all to tell you what my favorite Christmas present of 2011 was. I like it because I like it—it’s a really nice perfume gift set—and also because in a Piggy-Sneed-happy-ending-sort-of-way, it’s just really perfect. The writer in me—and the girl—just loves it.

Here’s what he did: my Danny, my man who wears the same outfit every freakin’ day—and those of you who know him know I’m not exaggerating—teal-green scrubs for work; black t-shirt and khaki pants for the rest of his life. Who wears a beard to cut down on time doing stupid stuff like shaving, who never enters a shopping mall unless he has to, this was the man who walked into a department store a little over a month ago and visited every cosmetic counter. Bless him.

I have to picture it. That’s my gift, my very special Piggy-Sneed-like justice, my Danny, wandering around the department store, a string of overly made-up middle-aged women in white cosmetic smocks shuffling around him in their high heels, vying for his attention, spraying him with perfume. Him, facing that after all the losers I’ve kissed. And coming away with the perfect, perfect thing.

My Piggy-Sneed moment, but true.

Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. I hope you got what you wanted.

Giveaway: The Winner!!

Stefanie Hutcheson, come on down!!!

Thank you, everyone who participated. I really loved reading your comments on the lines that "saved your life." From the literary to the spiritual to the intriguing to the thought-provoking, your lines gave me so much to think about...how very much the printed word can do. Freakin' amazing.

Love to you all, and Merry Christmas!

Never Love a Wild Thing, Mr. Bell

From Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote:

"Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised him. "that was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."

"She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me.

"Moderately," Holly confessed. "But Doc knew what I meant. I explained it to him very carefully, and it was something he could understand. We shook hands and held on to each other and he wished me luck." She glanced at the clock. "He must be in the Blue Mountains by now."

"What's she talkin' about?" Joe Bell asked me.

Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc--it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear."

First Lines: A Giveaway

Sometimes, a book comes into a person's life at the exact right moment.

They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy.

These are the first two sentences of Ian McEwan's on Chesil Beach, and I knew the second I read them that they had saved my life. I went on to read the whole book, of course, and it was wonderful, just exquisitely written, and yet, for me, at that moment in my life, the first two sentences would have been enough.

This was about three years ago. I was working on Goliath, which insisted, from the start, on an omniscient point of view. This book, my book was scaring the life out of me. I mean, who did I think I was, writing omniscience?
 
Which is why, on this afternoon, in the world's tiniest public library, Ian McEwan saved me.
 
I like these lines for what they do with distance, how they define certain parameters of the novel. I also like the first line, in a way, for its clunkiness--it seems to sort of stair-step down on the story. To me, it's a bit like the first line of Anna Karenina, and I like that it almost is fairy-tale-like, once-upon-a-time, again, the parameters, the spiraling into the story. 

I love how the two opening sentences work together. The variance in structure, in rhythm, for one, but also because of, again, what it does with distance. I like that the first sentence is almost formal-sounding, dryly historical in a way, and the second is so much chummier, drawing the reader in.

I like the motion of holding the reader at a pretty sizable distance, and then drawing him in.

Most specifically to the technical issues I was dealing with in my own work, I love them now for how they give the writer such elasticity when it comes to psychic distance and point of view later in the novel. In these two sentences, he's established the rules of this story: he can draw way back, and he can swoop in, very close.

First lines establish setting. They set up expectations. They launch voice. They give us the rules by which to read a story.

At other times, other opening lives have saved my life. Aimee Bender has done this. So has Richard Yates. And Charles Baxter. Elizabeth Strout.

Tell me: who has saved your life? Give me the author, the book, the line or lines, and I'll put your name in a drawing to receive a signed copy of my novel, Goliath, when it comes out in April.

Any takers? You have until midnight next Tuesday, December 20...