It Is Good To Be Very Normal
Hot girl summer? No: weirdo humid season – microdosing madness, fantasizing America, and maybe writing a little.
“Oh, you’re a librarian? I go to the library to take out books.”
She pauses. Weighs in the guilt, realizes I’m not in a position to judge. Literally: I’m lying back, she’s above me, she has all the power.
“I’m lying, I go to borrow DVDs of tv shows. Do you like your job?”
It’s good she has her hand in my mouth. It gives me some time to think of a way to evade the question. Although, she gave me an easy way out by talking about one of the two things that will derail any conversation I’m a part of: pets and tv shows. Show me your pet!
Quickly, before I can’t speak again: “Wha’ ha’ you been watchin late-y?”
She wants to create a connection. And I appreciate that. I do.
“My husband and I have been watching Game of Thrones.”
But during a dental cleaning appointment?
She starts attacking my teeth with her tiny metal hook again.
Earlier, she cracked a joke about Gilmore Girls – because of my name. A classic. I welcome it. When people seem cool, or when they’re complete losers, I reply that I’m as hot as Lorelai. They either get it and laugh at the self deprecation, or they squirm because they don’t get it, and either way, it’s a nice moment for me. The only thing I have in common with Lorelai - besides the name - is that I will gladly make people uncomfortable for the sake of a joke.
And now Game of Thrones. It’s great I can’t talk.
Gives me some time to filter my thoughts.
So I don’t immediately yell:
“FUN FACT: WRITER JANE ESPENSON WROTE ON BOTH GILMORE GIRLS AND GAME OF THRONES.”
Because that’s the first thing that pops into my mind and it makes me so happy I want to yell it.
Like a very normal person.
Not only is it a normal thing to know, my dental hygienist is going to understand why I think that’s super exciting.
Right?
I mean, “A doodle. I do doodle. You, too. You do doodle too.” Jane Espenson!!
I remember reading her blog in the 2000s. I was a high school dropout living in a small town in Europe. I had always been too poor to travel. My understanding of English was basic. I started really learning English by watching Friends and Buffy. Over time, I tracked my progress based on how well I understood Deadwood each time I re-watched it (about every three years for the past twenty years).
I knew America was a real place, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. The land of Starsky & Hutch and Quantum Leap and The West Wing. These were people on screens, people bigger than life, places bigger than life. The Grand Canyon, Times Square… None of it seemed really real.
I was surrounded by medieval villages, cathedrals and castles I had always known. American tourists must have wondered how we could be real people - tiny cars in narrow streets, small people, not on screens.
For an American, who was doing something as strange and magical as creating tv, Jane Espenson seemed strangely normal. Brilliant, hilarious but also warm and very real. She was writing about alien things, though, that I didn’t understand nor care about – Hollywood? Fellowships? ABC? Surely, that couldn’t be real.
She also deconstructed jokes, talked about theme, structure, dialogue… And that, I got, even with my broken English, even if I didn’t get the Seinfeld references (I still don’t). And I loved it so much – for no practical reason at all. What was I gonna do? Write? Of course not. I loved reading about story for the same reason I love facts about bats: some things are super cool, and I want to know everything about them.
A pipistrelle can eat up to 3,000 insects in a night.
I’m a little embarrassed to see myself at the bottom of the screen, taking my glasses off to wipe tears away.
How did we even start talking about Supernatural?
I genuinely don’t remember. I just know that if I’m comfortable enough with someone and they let me, it will happen.
When I need to forget the state of the world for a few minutes, I go to Pinterest. No words. Please, no more words.
The algorithm demon knows what to show me to numb and tease at the same time. Cottage core, lesbians, 1969 Chevelle SS, moody shots from Supernatural. Those first seasons, man.
On Twitter, when I remember that platform exists, the algorithm tries to revive my Spuffy interest. I let it. Before Benny Laffite (Supernatural, season 8), there was Spike. I guess I have a type: vampires that can rip someone’s throat out with their teeth but who are also too tender to get along with monsters. Impure, not one thing or the other. I know what it’s like to be too sensitive and too much of a brute.
Sometimes, I see a picture of Sam Winchester, and I miss him. I think he and I would be great friends. I think Sam Winchester and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce would respect my professional knowledge of metadata and controlled vocabularies and we would have great conversations to plan the digitization of some of their material. I’m worried those boxes in the Men of Letters bunker aren’t acid-free, and the impact it has on the preservation of the unique records they hold.
I think that’s a very normal thought.
I’ve never written fanfiction. Not that I think it’s beneath me, not at all. I just thought I couldn’t write.
That’s not entirely true. I just didn’t think of writing, only did write sometimes, by accident, so I wasn’t sure I actually could. I had bits and pieces in notebooks I threw out after a while, without re-reading what was inside them. Why bother writing when I can keep editing forever in my mind?
I have my own private fanfiction pieces, that I don’t just write – I also direct and produce. Who’s gonna stop me? Meds or therapy, maybe, but we don’t do that here and what some call dissociating, I don’t call anything at all because I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal until fairly recently.
It’s not just “maladaptive daydreaming,” I’ll have you know. No, my favourite shows also haunt my actual dreams at night. One of the most amazing dreams I ever had was: that my dream was being directed by Kim Manners, as it was unfolding. In my dream, I was filled with a sense of awe and gratitude - my own private episode, directed by Manners, I thought! Elegant circular movements, and a Manners close up of Fox Mulder. Thank you Kim! Thank you crazy brain!
So, here I am, catching up on FaceTime with a person I did my master’s in library science with, that I hadn’t talked to in years, and that I don't know too well yet. And they say something beautiful about a twenty year old show, they see layers I see, and they also show me a new perspective, something I hadn’t seen. What a gift.
We share a deep appreciation for Dean Winchester’s sluttiness. We make it philosophical.
Everything I love.
And it moves me so much I cry a little.
Spotify updates playlists when you let it create them. I have a Lynyrd Skynyrd inspired playlist, to which the platform sometimes adds whatever else it thinks I might like. I enjoy the mix of familiar and new. It allows me to slowly discover the band’s catalogue as well as other musicians.
I recently discovered that American Girl by Tom Petty is, in fact, longer than the twenty seconds from Silence of the Lambs? Who knew.
I’ve been listening to that Lynyrd Skynyrd playlist on my drive home from work for months. It recently added On The Hunt (listen to it at the end of this post), which I love, and I’m sure Dean Winchester does too - hunting as a metaphor for being a happy slut.
But recently, it added Carry On Wayward Son.
Without asking? You don’t do that to people!
They might start crying on the highway. That wouldn’t just be ridiculous, but also dangerous.
I can’t even watch the Youtube video I linked above. Summer is far from over, I need to pace myself, I am microdosing my nervous breakdown, thankyouverymuch.
I did not get into the Lambda Literary's Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. That’s fair. Am I emerging? Not really - more like, submerged, buried. Am I LGBTQ? Yes, but am I LGBTQ enough? Depends on who you ask. Am I a voice? Pffffff.
Am I even a writer?
The question is so typically writer bullshit it’s a little boring.
Many folks will tell you “if you write, you’re a writer.”
Cool. What if, let’s say, you don’t write that much?
If I daydream a lot, does that make me a writer?
“We do want to let you know that although your application was not selected this year, we were very impressed by your work, and your application did make it into our top 30 candidates in your genre.”
How many did they receive — 31? 250,000? I don’t understand numbers. I find them scary, and not in a sexy way.
Honestly, I’m just grateful a reader read my script and didn’t email me personally to say “You dumb bitch, what made you think anyone would let Rasheed Newson read this piece of trash?”
I call that a win.
The main reason I apply to those things is to have a deadline that forces me to finish a piece. I have taken classes, read books, had one-on-one meetings with super smart, talented mentors, and to this day, the best advice I’ve ever received is: FINISH IT.
And dammit, why is it so hard?
While I love classes and writers’ groups, learning from my peers and being asked “is the violence necessary?” (yes, that’s the fucking theme), I need deadlines.
I need loving encouragement, and the threat of shame for not respecting some made up date and having wasted money.
I apply, I fill out forms, I attach pdfs. Not very often, just from time to time, for a little thrill - “well, I have to finish a portfolio, now! Let’s go!”
I’m not afraid of rejection because I never really consider being accepted.
Imagine my surprise when I did get into the MFA in creative writing at UBC. Now people might think I’m a writer, and I might have to keep writing just to avoid the guilt of having tricked them.
It’s working! It’s great! It’s terrible!
Do I have to keep this up for the rest of my life, now?
I’m nervous about it, but I’m also very much looking forward to it. Yes, let’s spend an hour discussing a poem or the motivation of a character. I’m gonna be surrounded by writers (intimidating), who will open their hearts and show us how weird and messy they are too. I can’t wait.
During the WGA strike, I heard professional writers give this advice/warning: don’t try to befriend writers on the picket lines just to get your script in their hands. It’s crass.
Which was wild to me, because one of the main reasons I force myself to get things out of my head and actually fucking write is first and foremost to befriend writers. Would I like my work to be published or produced? Sure. But mostly, I want to be friends with Jane Espenson.
I just want to spend my time discussing stories, joking, making people cry a little, and wondering what we’re gonna eat. And write a little, sure, if I have to. Which, from what I understand, is a very reasonable ambition for anyone interested in writing for TV.
Look at me, I’m normal!
Finally!
It feels good to be so normal.
I write so that I may befriend writers. We’ve determined this is normal, right??
Love your writing and your thoughts! I especially liked how you started this piece, very fun and funny! Can't wait to hear about your journey at UBC!!!