Now We're There: mapping time through fictional realities

The recent trend of sharing then-and-now photos has me thinking of the years spent between major accomplishments, and how we document our lives. I mark my timeline by novels, and where they took place has been aided by old analog maps, memories and photos, from slides to prints and now online searches.

I remember a lot, which is good, because a few pivotal moments' memories never got mapped or on film.

Now I'm Here... now I'm there, too

The years that my novel Now I'm Here took place, 1970 and 1980s, are countered by my many return visits home, where the story seemed to be accumulating like slow ivy. The two main characters are Joshua, a piano prodigy, and David a pumpkin farmer.

For piano provenance, proving the years of my musicianship existed, I offer a newly found (see PINS photo/map search above). The piano itself and its location in our home is the dining room. I'd play for hours, but also at the local (then) Ashland College studios, choosing from Yamahas and Steinways.

For farm boy authenticity, sadly I never documented my pumpkin farm experience in any 1981 photos. It was often beautiful amid the labors of hauling truckfull after truckfull for months, but not a camera-ready environment back then. I never even remembered to drive by years later and get an image of the farm house and barn. Now it's all floral greenhouses, as I included in the story.

All I have left are the Red Wing boots I bought for the job, which lasted 40 years. But they're in the basement and you don't need a photo of a pair of boots. You'll have to settle for the 1998 image above.

Meeting Sam Shepard in a Dream; lofty ambitions and gutted fish

   I met Sam Shepard in a dream last night, my last one before waking, on an open cement flat construction site with poles sticking up. It had been turned into a movie set where I was working on as Assistant to Something. 
   A crew man drilled a hinge on a doorway and it fell over.

   ‘One door, two people,” I muttered as if it were a common safety saying. 
   Oddly, actors rehearsed while hammers were banged on set pieces. 
    The director, finished arguing with someone, huffed off the construction site. Someone called ‘Break,’ and people sat where they were, took food out of lunch boxes.

   One man at the edge of the site/set seemed sad, without a lunch, in a red flannel shirt, rumpled jeans and boots, his craggy face looking disappointed, sitting with his back against a scaffold. I recognized him.

   “Hey, Sam,” I said, “Can I have a hug?”

   “Not a good idea,” he scowled, looked away.

   I knew he was dead, but figured he’d be bothered by my reminding him.

   “You know, thirty years ago, I directed a few of your plays.”

   He didn’t seem to care which ones.

   "I liked the monologues in ‘Action,’ I said. “They worked real good. Once the actor muffed his lines, but got around to it, made the point.”

   “I hate when that happens,” he muttered, looking around, realizing it wasn’t his set, his movie or his play. He didn't seem hungry, but glanced at someone else eating.

   “Hey, can I ask you–“

   Another crew man got up, tripping over Sam’s legs.

   “What was that?” he looked back.

   “That’s Sam. He’s dead.”

   “Right.” 
   The crew man seemed like he was trying to laugh, couldn’t see what he tripped on.

   “Well, better get,” Sam said, and leaped off the edge of the cement flooring, which had become a few floors higher above ground. He just stepped off and disappeared into the wind.

   The other crew man stopped, about the walk away, wavered. “But what did he–”

   “You saw him?” I asked.

   “Saw what?” he seemed confused by himself.

   “Never mind.”

     * * *

I think Sam would have appreciated that dream, since it felt like a scene from one of his plays. People feeling out of place, confused, stunned by the loss of their purpose, or knowing a dark secret, were part of his artistic style. 

Shepard's death has been well documented, and one of his first collaborators, Patti Smith, had some touching remembrances of the Pultizer Prize-winning playwright and understated film actor. Author Don Shewey wrote about being Shepard's biographer years ago, and how the playwright was in a way his alter-ego.

Actually, those plays I mentioned in my dream to dead Sam were preceded by my small production of poems and prose pieces from his first collection, Hawk Moon.  As a sophomore at Kent State University's Theatre Department, I enlisted some actors and musicians to join me in performing most of the collection, with live musical interludes of Rolling Stones songs and other music.

What I Didn't Write: Terrible Tragedies, Tempests & Teabaggers

Penn campus Ben Franklin statue

In setting a pair of novels from 1979 to 1983, I had the fortune of discovering historical events that matched the stories I wrote. But omitting several other events, while big on a local scale, weren't relevant to the stories. And recent odd controversies, gave me a bit of anachronistic relief for not including them.

Pennsylvania played a strong part in establishing the setting of Every Time I Think of You, my fourth novel. The energy crisis and the nuclear plant accident at Three Mile Island in Harrisburg are given a mention. But narrator Reid is distracted by his boyfriend Everett's situation. His mother even shows surprise at nature-loving Reid's disinterest in the environmental hazard. 

Message of Love, excerpt: Naked Handstand

Ah, new year's resolutions. We resolve to cease some behaviors and start others. The night had a special meaning in the previous book, Every Time I Think of You. And again, what happens a few years later on the same holiday reflects how Reid and Everett's relationship has grown, and changed.

I resolved to break a literary rule once again, as I did in Message of Love. One of the main conceits of the romance novel is the idea of monogamy; one love between two people. But what if the rules are changed because of a variety of reasons, or just one reason?

In this excerpt, set after a New Year's Eve party in Pittsburgh, boyfriends Reid and Everett push their own boundaries of honesty, faithfulness, and fidelity. Critical reviews have called it "cheating," but others who know how love works, and that sexuality between young men isn't always the magical happily ever after.

Pennsylvania Pride

As LGBT Pride events fill our national (and international) calendars, I want to focus on Pennsylvania, and the setting of my two most recent novels, where it seems the fictional dreams of my protagonists have come true.

Some background about the two novels Every Time I Think of You and Message of Love (with some minor spoilers).

Dancing in the streets of Pittsburgh

In 1979, Everett Forrester's sister and father live in Pittsburgh, and in the first novel, the two young men's first awkward romantic night is spent in Squirrel Hill, a scenic neighborhood similar to Shadyside.
 
This May, people were dancing in the streets in the neighborhood of Shadyside after Pennsylvania's same-sex marriage ban was declared unconstitutional. (Photo by Michael Henninger/Post-Gazette)