The Meditations is a curated series of reflections on writing and storytelling from contributors to the thirty-third issue of Going Down Swinging. This reflection comes from Rafael SW on his story ‘Deep Throat Jesus’.
I HAVE PROBLEMS DRAWING THE LINE BETWEEN LIFE AND WRITING. Since I started treating writing like a job I’ve become like one of those real estate agents that can’t visit a friend’s house without knocking on the walls, mentally assessing the area, putting figures to faces. I’ve always drawn a lot from real life, and now I do it even more. Conversations, parties, snippets of four a.m. But that doesn’t mean it’s about you. This is an important thing to get clear, that while there will be parts of all writing that are true, it’s the writer’s job to obfuscate which parts these are.
‘Deep Throat Jesus’ was a gamble. I cherry-picked bits of the story from various places: a dress-up party where someone came as a sexy nun; my fascination with, and lack of skills regarding the mechanics of one-night stands; small morsels of twentieth Century history I had recently revised. All this together gave the story a fumbling well-intentioned naïveté that was intrinsically humorous. Though I’m not usually a humorous writer (I’ve spent too much time writing about ex-girlfriends to trust that my writing can be funny and not just a painful kind of catharsis). But there was something in this discomfort, in the process of gleaming and blending ideas that led to a story that was a little bit absurd.
It was about 70% complete when I realised how well it fit with the theme for Going Down Swinging’s 33rd issue. I developed it a little more, trying to dredge up what I remembered about the Cold War and Jesus. I’d read a fair bit of GDS before, and knew that while they wouldn’t necessarily shy away from being contentious, I would have to make the writing strong enough to get away with any crassness. Even when the piece was finished I was still unsure about it. Although there were autobiographical elements, I didn’t want it to be seen as autobiographical. There are a few similarities (as well as anecdotes) I share with the narrator, and I thought this might prompt the reader to all too easily insert me into the story. Besides this being potentially distracting, I thought the blatantly sexual content could be problematic for me as an emerging writer, either by people thinking less of me because of it, or it coming back to bite me later. And even if all this wasn’t a problem and it was good enough to publish, what would my mother think? I showed it to my housemate who, although I could hear him laughing down the hallway, warned me against submitting it. He said his had been incredulous laughter, and that sending in something like this would probably discredit me as a writer. I told him that they read blind and that was the end of it.
Part of it too, was a test. My first ever published piece, ‘Fucking’ (Voiceworks #74) was a similar kind of scenario. Although totally different in writing style, there were still lots of things in there that the eighteen-year old Rafael wanted to see if he could get away with – the title just the first.
In terms of crafting the work itself, the parts I found hardest were remaining objective about the humorous elements and developing a strong female voice. The female voice was tricky because I wanted to give the illusion of naïveté while showing it was actually her in control. I was also hoping to be sexy without being sexist. With the humour, I wasn’t sure what parts worked. I just had to show it to other people and gauge their reactions, but it wasn’t always helpful. I ended up going by some kind of perverse rule that said if I still laughed at my own jokes, even after the third edit, then maybe they were okay jokes.
Like a burglar that breaks into your house and then sues for tripping down your stairs, I feel as if I’m in people’s lives just to steal inspiration and then blame them for it. I don’t think this is a bad thing, it just means my relationships are a lot more complex. Which, while it has the potential to be problematic, is at least great for my writing.
By Rafael SW
Buy your copy of the issue here, or from your local bookstore.
