Life of a Writer

“Why are you here?” The orientation leader asks the large group of wide-eyed, overwhelmed teenagers. It’s the first day of orientation, an unnecessary introduction to campus. I just want to sign up for classes but they force us to endure two days of campus peppiness to get us excited about what they call “university life”, or the “college lifestyle”. I feel none of their enthusiasm, only a slight hunger cramp and an unwillingness to pay attention.
“Are you here to learn the necessary skills to exceed in your chosen career path?” he continues. This seems a silly question. What other reason do people go to college for? “Are you here for the social aspect? Do you want to join in on Greek Life? Are you here to find your significant other?”
There are a few chuckles at this last suggestion that I don’t understand. If people did come to college to find a husband, then who are we to judge? The orientation leader laughs at his own awful joke, and I tune the rest of his speech out. I can’t respect the narrow-minded.

It’s the first day of classes. My first class is freshman English, which I’m looking forward to. I sit in the back of class, not because I’m a rebel or a nonconformist, but because my head hurts if I sit too close. My teacher, a young master’s student who is quite an attractive man, begins class by handing out the syllabus and calling role, telling us to declare our majors and an interesting fact about ourselves, so we can get to know our new classmates. My name is called.
“I’m an English Literature major,” I say. “And I came to college to find a husband.”
Some in the class laugh, thinking my remark a joke. Others look appalled and begin murmuring behind their hands, as if the thin layers of skin and bone morphed into oddly unique shapes could hide their obvious gossip and hateful words. I always found it funny that you couldn’t hide words. The teacher stared at me thoughtfully for a few moments before he realized there was a growing noise in the room, which he silenced promptly.
“Are you serious?” he asks me.
“Yes,” I reply. I have no idea why I’ve said it, but it is the truth. There is no sense in lying for the sake of a few chuckles.
“But why?” he asks.
“Why not?”

It’s been a month since the first day of class, and I’ve quickly been ostracized by my peers in every subject. I’ve not hidden my desire for marriage, nor have I apologized for my blunt introduction to my colleagues. Many of the girls my age have snubbed their noses to me, condemning me to a non-existent anti-feminist group. I don’t find myself to be truly anti-feminist; I’m anti-label.
My English class has moved on to the structure of the research paper. The teacher tells us to come up with our own topic to research and write about. I choose feminism. I want to understand what I’m supposedly against. The teacher asks to talk to me after class.
“You can’t write a research paper on feminism,” he states.
“Why not?”
“A research paper has to be unbiased. I’m afraid that you’re too closely tied to the subject matter to not put your voice in the paper.”
“How am I too close to feminism?” I ask. “Is it because I’m female?”
“Aren’t you anti-feminist?” he asks me.
“No.”
He looks at me in the same way he did on the first day, but with more awe than before. There is no one else around to distract him this time, so I allow him to stare.
“What are you?” he asks me.
“I am a woman,” I say.

It’s now spring and I’m in the middle of an affair with the teacher from my freshman English class. Now that he’s not my teacher anymore, it’s more acceptable and he’s begun taking me to jazz clubs and poetry readings. His colleagues accept that I’m just a conquest of his, but I know there’s something more to our relationship than just sex. He knows what I want from life and my time at college.
I’ve made one friend since school started. She knows of my affair, and thinks I’m in it as some sort of teenage rebellion against my parents. I don’t have the heart to argue with her.
She’s joined a group of women students who protest for equal rights in the athletics department. She’s not an athlete, but says she believes women athletes should have the same rights as the men athletes.
“Are they as good as the men?” I ask.
“What does that matter?”
“It’s just a question.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter if they’re better or worse,” she says. “We are all human beings and we all deserve to be treated the same.”
I ask her if she thinks the women’s swimming team should also be required to shave their heads, like the men’s. She gets angry and leaves the room. A week later I receive a letter from her telling me we are no longer friends due to my anti-feminist attitude toward the women athletes at our school. I quietly tear up the letter and move on with my life.

“What are you?” I am asked by an English advisor. It is now my sophomore year of college. My affair has ended messily, leaving nothing but tears and a gaping hole inside me. I decide to switch my major to creative writing, and have to submit an original story to be formally admitted to the program. The English advisor has read my story. It’s about a rabid dog who murders his entire family after they put a collar on him. I thought it was funny. She did not.
“I am a woman,” I reply. It’s become my explanation for everything.
“You’re deeply disturbed,” she corrects me. Who am I to argue my character? “Write a new story, one that’s not so disturbing, and we’ll reconsider admitting you into the program.”
I agree, and proceed to leave the building. On my way to the bus stop, I run into my freshman English teacher and ex-lover. He’s accompanied by a tall, slinky blonde woman who reminds me of the kind of woman who would be willing to pose nude for a gentleman’s magazine. She’s draped over his arm and chattering away about something, but they’re too far away for me to hear. In the midst of her story and while her attention is diverted, he looks at me and I can see a sadness in his eyes that wasn’t there before. I try to smile at him, but my face has stopped working and I duck my head and walk away.
That night our affair resumes, more passionately than before with the added intrigue due to the feeling that it was wrong because he was involved with someone else. There is no longer the tone of romanticism, but there is a comfort that I’ve become familiar with. At that moment, I know he is mine.
After he leaves, I write a new story, one I felt people could relate to. It’s about love, but the conventional love that leaves everyone with a good, happy feeling. I’m admitted into the creative writing program.

It’s now the night of my graduation commencement ceremony. I now wear a tiny diamond on my ring finger, and haven’t told my parents about the baby I’d made with my freshman English teacher that is growing inside me. They don’t approve of my young marriage, but have the decency not to say anything about it. I’m twenty two years old, after all.
At the ceremony, I run into my freshman friend, who has grown fat and cut her hair so short it looks like a boy’s. She’s elated to tell me about her realization of sexual preference, and how she feels liberated from all social standards of what is considered normal. I tell her I’m engaged to a man, and that I’m expecting. She asks me why I’m limiting myself to what my lover wants from me.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“He doesn’t have to confine you,” she says. “You could be happy with a career! You shouldn’t let him decide your life for you!”
“But this is what I want,” I say. She doesn’t understand, so I walk away. If she’s happy with all the statements, then who am I to prove her wrong?

It’s nine months later, and my husband cradles our beautiful daughter in his arms. He looks at her in the same way he looked at me on the first day of class. I recognize it now as a look of stunned admiration. He still teaches freshman English at the university, but he’s now a professor.
My first short story is published in a literary magazine, and it’s met with mixed reviews. It’s the story about the rabid dog. Some say it’s symbolism for a protest against the confinements of the government. Others say it’s a satire reminiscent of Vonnegut. Still others say it’s a crappy story written by an immature, unrefined writer. I say it’s a story about a rabid dog who murders his family…

I’m a stay at home mom to my three year old daughter and five month old son. I’m working on a novel, but it’s absolute crap. I’ve had two more stories published, also met with multiple mixed reviews. One was about a girl who was raped by her father, and I labeled it a comedy. The other was about a blind baseball player. My comedy was viewed to have dark humor, but I wasn’t surprised. Everyone missed the punch line: the daughter was never actually touched by her father. My husband thinks I’m going crazy. Critics think I’m writing about a sort of Electra complex I’ve been harboring. I have no desire to sleep with my father. Some viewed it to be inspiring; I think they read it wrong. Not a lot of people like the one about the blind baseball player. They thought it was a very redundant story.
My husband has begun having an affair with one of his students. He thinks he’s being sneaky about the whole thing, but he doesn’t know his mistress has written me numerous letters proclaiming her love for him and his love for her, and telling me to back off. I send her a reply letter, stating that sex did not love make and he still comes home to me every night. My only adult friend tells me I should leave him because he doesn’t respect me, and he doesn’t love me.
“He loves me,” I say. “He hasn’t left.”
“He’s too scared to leave,” she insists. “You’re too good to him. Don’t you have any respect for yourself?”
“I do,” I say.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asks.
“Not really,” I say. She accuses me of being a mindless sheep. She urges me to take up arms in the feminist movement and be an independent woman. I tell her I am a woman, and I’m being myself. She gets frustrated and leaves, murmuring about idealism and blind marriages. I never hear from her again.
My husband’s mistress tells him that I know and he comes home ready for a fight. I tell him I don’t mind his sleeping with someone else, as long as he doesn’t get her pregnant; we didn’t have enough money to support some bastard and his unwed mother. My husband gets angry with my response.
“How can you not be jealous?” he yells.
“You come home to me,” I say. “We still sleep together. You’re still mine. What is there to be jealous about?”
“Seriously?” he asks me. I shrug and go to put dinner on the table. He follows me around, watching me in wonder, the way he always has when I’ve done something to astonish him. He breaks off the affair with his mistress that night. She sends me threatening letter to me every day for a month, but after the shock has worn off, she moves on to her next college professor.

It’s my daughter’s first day of school. My husband takes her into her class, leaving me home with our two year old son and a stomach ripened by a seven month pregnancy. There has only been one affair in our marriage since, and it was I who slept with one of his colleagues at a Christmas party. When he found out, my husband went nuts and got me pregnant with our third child. The affair lasted only the one time, and I’ve had no desire for anyone ever since. Our marriage is happy again.
My husband has written a book and it’s in publishing. It’s about a college professor who falls in love with and marries his student. I refuse to read it, but it’s received good reviews. My own novel has been in print for over a year. It hasn’t sold over five thousand copies. My editor calls it a failure. I call it a first novel and begin writing my second.
My parents are killed in a plane crash coming back from vacation. I speak at their funeral and my family inherits their entire estate, which includes the house I grew up in. We decide to move there, which is in a different state. My husband takes a new job in a university.

“Why are you here?” My husband asks me. He’s in the orange jump suit they force prisoners to wear, sitting at a table that has a Plexiglas divide between us. He’d had an affair with a freshman who had not yet turned eighteen, gotten pregnant, and whose parents turned him in for statutory rape.
“You’re my husband,” I say.
“You should hate me,” he sulks.
“I don’t,” I say. He doesn’t know that I’ve begun an affair with our neighbor, a married stay at home father of two. Our daughter is seven, our son is four, and our baby just turned two. He doesn’t know I’m pregnant with our neighbor’s child. I don’t have the heart to tell him. He doesn’t know I’m having an abortion. He doesn’t know that his newest conquest has died of a botched abortion. The four walls of his cell not only confine his physical self; they confine his knowledge and his sanity.

It’s the day of my husband’s trial. With the girl dead, her parents are extremely interested in my husband’s fate. I sit alone on a bench in the courtroom behind my husband and his lawyer. The girl’s parents sit on the other side of the room behind the prosecutor. The judge, a graying man with a belly that could rival mine when I was about to give birth, sits at a large desk, looking slightly bored with the proceedings. He inspires me to write a new novel, and I quickly take out the small notebook and pen I keep with me to jot down a few notes.
The trial takes no time at all, since my husband pleads guilty, and he is sentenced to fifteen years in prison. I am now a twenty nine year old single mother. My husband does not even look back at me as he is led away by the bailiff.
I go home to my three children, all too young to understand that their father isn’t going to come home. After I put them to bed, my neighbor and lover comes over. His wife is out of town on business and he’s hired a babysitter. He knows that my husband will be gone for many years.
“Why don’t you divorce him?” he asks as he unceremoniously throws decorative pillows off the bed onto the floor.
“Because I love him,” I say. “He’s my husband.”
“Do you love me?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“More than your husband?”
“Yes,” I say. It’s the truth.
“Would you divorce him if I asked you to marry me?”
“Would you divorce your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, yes.” I tell him I haven’t had the abortion yet. He’s elated and we have the most passionate sex yet. Sometime after I’ve fallen asleep he slips out to relieve the babysitter.

It’s four months later, and I’m in another courtroom, divorcing my freshman English teacher. I’m beginning to show in my pregnancy. He’s grown a beard that I find oddly attractive on him. He urges the judge to give me everything I want, and doesn’t bring himself to look me in the eyes. Before they lead him away, I go up to him and tell him I’m sorry.
“Whose is it?” he asks, staring at my slightly engorged stomach. I tell him. He nods his head and walks away.

It’s the next day and I’m packing my house. My lover has divorced his wife and gotten custody of his two children, so we need a bigger house for all of us to live in. I’ve sold my parent’s home and we’ve found a better house in a better neighborhood with a better school.
We get married in a courthouse with his now ex-wife as one of the witnesses. She’d been having an affair as well, so there is no love lost between them. My new husband takes a job for the same company as his ex-wife, making more money than my first husband did. I’m writing a third novel, yet haven’t finished my second one. The third is about finding a second more fulfilling love. It’s a sequel to the short story I’d written in college. My editor digs up the short story and has it published in its own jacket cover. It’s met with raving reviews.
My daughter is the same age as my husband’s youngest son, and they are put in the same class in school. My daughter says my stepson bullies her, and she comes home with more bruises every day. My husband says it’s because his son likes her. I think it’s because his son is a bully.

“Why are you here?” my daughter asks me. She’s fifteen now, and she has her father’s eyes. I’m picking her up from school to take her to the doctor’s office. I’m thirty seven years old and I think I’m going to be a grandmother. I tell her where we are going and she grows silent.
The doctor tells me she’s four months along, making it too late to abort the pregnancy. In the car ride home, I ask who the father is. She tells me it’s her stepbrother, but the older one, who is nineteen. I tell my husband, who doesn’t believe either of us. My marriage has been failing for years, almost immediately after it began. My sons are twelve and ten while my daughter with my second husband is eight. My husband is on his fourth affair, and I’m certain he’s going to leave me for her. She’s a twenty year old college student who babysits our younger children. She’s tall, young, and very pretty. She loves my husband more than I do.
I’ve become a bestselling novelist. My second and third novels are hugely successful. I have enough money to sustain myself. I’m also having an affair, but this time it’s with a woman whose acquaintance I made through the PTA at my youngest daughter’s school. I wouldn’t consider myself a lesbian because she’s the only woman I’ve ever been attracted to. She doesn’t argue that I’m not a lesbian. She’s also married and still loves her husband. Sometimes he joins us when we have sex. I like him as well.
My freshman English teacher has been dead for two years. He was killed in prison, but they wouldn’t tell us what had happened. My children and I were the only ones at his funeral.

It’s five months later. My oldest daughter dies of an aneurism while giving birth to a girl. My stepson claims paternity to the child and passes guardianship onto me. I name the child after her mother and have her father arrested for statutory rape. I find my daughter’s diary and discover that the making of her child was not consensual. I submit the diary as evidentiary support against my stepson, and he’s put away in prison. My husband files for divorce, which I gladly consent to. He loses all guardianship rights to our granddaughter, and custody of our daughter. I also get the house.
My affair with the married couple is still ongoing, but I’ve lost most interest with the wife and now spend most of my time with the husband. He encourages m to write another book to help deal with the loss of my daughter. I follow his advice.
A month after my daughter died, my oldest son is killed at school by one of his classmates. He jumped in front of another student before she was shot. There was a large funeral in which the parents of the girl he saved paid for all the expenses. They said it was the least they could do for what my son did for their daughter. I bury my son next to his sister and two plots away from his father. I tell my lover that it’s ironic I should outlive my children. He holds me while I cry.

My remaining son is now eighteen, and it’s the day he’s moving out to go to college. I’ve remarried; this time to a normal man who’d never cheated, but lost his first wife to cancer. I’ve only had one affair in our five years of marriage, but it was with the married couple from before. We’ve since lost touch.
The book I’d written after my children’s demise is my last novel. I’ve given up writing and taken a job teaching creative writing at the local university. My remaining daughter is sixteen and my granddaughter is eight. She’s being bullied at school by a boy and shows up with more bruises every day. I reflect about how life has a way of repeating itself.
My second husband has remarried twice, grown old and fat, and now lives alone in a trailer. Our daughter refuses to see him. I don’t blame her. He eventually dies of a heart attack. I don’t go to his funeral. He leaves everything he has to his youngest son, who’s married and beats his pregnant wife. I wish to take no part in his life.
My son asks me for advice before he leaves for college. I tell him to find a wife at college.
“Why?” he asks.
“Why not?” I reply.
“Because I don’t want to,” he says.
“All right,” I say. He looks at me in that thoughtful way his father used to look at me with, then kisses me goodbye and leaves. He’s my first child to leave me by another mean then death. I still cry.

It’s my son’s wedding day. He’s twenty years old and is smiling brightly as his bride walks down the aisle toward him. She’s a beautiful virgin my son met the first day of classes his freshman year. They’ve never broken up and he’s never cheated on her. They make me believe in true, pure love.
I’m still married, but my husband now has cancer, and the outlook for him isn’t good. He’s lost his hair and will lose his life two days after my son and his wife tell us they’re expecting. They lose their child early on, and I never remarry.
My daughter, now eighteen, is becoming a creative writing major at her college. She’s a better writer than I am. She starts an affair with her math teacher’s graduate assistant. He reminds me of my freshman English teacher. When she asks for advice, I don’t give her any. She has to make her own decisions, I say. Their affair is messier than mine was, and ends more disastrously. My daughter, a passionate version of myself, hangs herself in the community bathroom in her dorm and is discovered by a boy wishing to take a shower. The boy cuts her down, and since her neck isn’t broken in her fall and she hadn’t strangled herself, she lives. She survives multiple throat surgeries, but is rendered mute in the process. She moves back home and becomes a hermit. Unsurprisingly, her writing becomes better and she is a bestselling novelist by her twentieth birthday.
My ex-stepson is released from prison on good behavior. He fights me for custody of his twelve year old daughter and loses. I grant him supervised visitation and he now comes over every Saturday. He’s a changed man, but I cannot forgive him. One Saturday while I leave the room to cook lunch, he kidnaps his daughter. I never see either of them again.
My daughter and I take walks in the afternoons. I’ve returned to writing and have quit my job at the university. Aside from the occasional visit from my son and his beautifully sad wife, it’s just me and my daughter. She communicates to me by writing on a notepad she carries. She asks if I’m happy.
“Of course,” I say.
No really, she writes. You have no regrets? In all your life?
“Of course I do,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not happy.”
What are you? she writes. I take a moment to think, pausing now when there used to be no hesitation. I realize there’s nothing about me that’s changed; just the things I was surrounded with.
“I am a woman.”