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Audio Magazine Issue 3: Heroes
327 Plays2 years ago
Michael Cuglietta, Andrew Sottile, Lori Sebastianutti, and Shawna Kenney bring you essays on the theme "Heroes."
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Social: @CNFPod or @creativenonfictionpodcast
Show notes/newsletters: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Heroes
00:00:01
Speaker
Well, CNFers, at long last, we come to issue three of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, Audio Magazine, the theme being heroes.
Types of Heroes
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm unsure what struck me about heroes as a concept. I am particularly drawn to heroes of
00:00:22
Speaker
stories who sacrifice themselves as the means to redemption or heroes who are maligned and castigated until the end when they're revealed to be heroic. Alright, examples.
00:00:37
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Charlie from Lost, he sacrificed himself, like drowned himself to atone for his addictions and to try to help people get off the island. His death really didn't matter in the end due to some storytelling snafus, but in the moment it was definitely a tearjerker.
00:00:57
Speaker
Bing bong from inside out, realizing he has to give himself up and yelling, take her to the moon for me. Eddie Munson on Stranger Things not running away and saying in his final breaths after playing that magnanimous riff from Master of Puppets that he didn't run when confronted with helping his friends or himself.
00:01:21
Speaker
And then there's Buddy the Elf, who rides in the back of Santa's sleigh, and then when he looks back at everyone who didn't believe him the whole time, and they finally get it, and that music over the top makes me tear up every time. Every year. I know it's coming, and it doesn't relent, and it doesn't. It doesn't.
00:01:43
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That's what drew me to this topic.
Personal Heroes and Superhero Culture
00:01:45
Speaker
I don't have heroes in my life. I don't revere any family member. I don't revere athletic figures anymore. The closest heroes, if I can call them that, in my circle are the band members of Metallica.
00:01:59
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They have meant more to me over the last 30 years than just about anyone or anything. I've wavered on whether I want to pony up several thousand dollars at a meet and greet before a show. I'm leaning towards no. I think I want to keep them on stage and watch their godliness from afar.
00:02:20
Speaker
Anyway, point being, you can take the hero motif, the hero mystique, in any direction you like. It goes all the way back to the Odyssey, probably earlier. You know, we crave mortals doing immortal things. Like, shit. As a culture, we can't get enough, though maybe that's changing, of superhero movies. And we love to see Tony Stark and Black Widow and Vision give up the ghost for the greater good.
00:02:47
Speaker
Self-sacrifice appears to be the ultimate heroic move and we, as the audience, get to see the result of their heroism, even though they cannot. Though, in their final moments, they hoped their sacrifice was worth it. In any case, many of us, if we're lucky, live ordinary lives with relatively no drama, you know, invisible lives from birth to death, with few people really knowing who we were or what we stood for.
00:03:16
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So we look to books and movies and superheroes with superpowers to spackle over some primal need to matter.
Essays on Heroism
00:03:27
Speaker
So we have for you here four essays on a wide spectra or spectrum. A spectra of the plural spectrum, I don't know, of heroic topics and heroic interpretations that I hope you will enjoy every much as I did.
Michael Kuglietta's Essay and Jamie's Story
00:03:43
Speaker
Now the first essay is from Michael Kuglietta, titled All the Time in the World. His work has appeared in Noon, The Gettysburg Review, Hobart, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. He is the author of the fiction chat books Vertigo and Clams and White Wine. So without further ado, here is the first essay of issue three of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast audio magazine.
00:04:17
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My sister was hesitant to deliver the news. Is there some place where you can pull over, she said? I'm stopped at a red light. What is it? Just tell me. When she found out, she was blindsided with grief. She worried I would be too. The first image that came to my mind was James and his sister, Samantha. He would have been 11 at the time, while Samantha would have been nine, the same ages as my sister and me.
00:04:44
Speaker
My family had just moved into the neighborhood. We were playing in the front yard when James and Samantha rode by on their bicycles, slowing to get a closer look at us. At that age, friendships were like arranged marriages. Our parents bought a house and we sought out the kids closest by. Later, I recalled the last time I saw James at his sister's wedding.
00:05:07
Speaker
He was playing DJ. I was annoying him with song requests, not my intention at first, but when I saw how irritated he was getting, I put pressure on him to play every Madonna song I could think of. We were in our mid 20s. As much as we may have wanted to cling to our past, we were headed in different directions. Then I thought of his mom and dad, who were there to see him take his very first and 40 years later final breaths.
00:05:38
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like a decades long project that had abruptly concluded. In the last year of his life, James signed up for Twitter. He was fearlessly candid, treating his Twitter feed like a diary. I didn't discover it until after he was gone, the gift from beyond the grave, a final conversation with an old friend.
00:06:01
Speaker
Thanks to Twitter, I now know James's real name was Jamie. He changed it to James in the second grade, after catching shit for having a girl's name. Before he died, he told his family he was changing it back, and he changed his pronouns from he him to they them. On June 1st, three months, 18 days before their death,
00:06:24
Speaker
Jamie said they felt like they were, for the first time in their life, able to be a part of Pride Month. They credited their therapists for helping them reach this milestone. Jamie also celebrated International Asexual Awareness Week in October, 11 months prior to their death. In the same post, they confessed to having a low libido and said they did not try masturbation until they were 18.
00:06:53
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In high school, one of our mutual friends routinely stayed up all night practicing. He kept a running tally of how many times he could finish and what's constantly trying to beat his personal best.
00:07:06
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When I was a teenager, I suspected the reason I needed glasses was because I'd ruined my eyesight after spending so many hours squinting at the sleeve of my Woodstock 94 CD that featured an aerial shot of the crowd. Each person so small they could have fit on the head of a thumbtack. I'm nearly certain some of the girls were topless. Jamie, not so wholly consumed, had a wisdom the rest of us lacked.
00:07:33
Speaker
I once fancied myself the leader of our little crew of misfits, but, looking back, I believed Jamie to be the real leader. Jamie was living with their parents at the time of their death. They had the top floor of the house to themselves and would go days without seeing anyone. There are multiple tweets in which they reference their hypersensitivity to light. They posted a picture of their favorite lamp but said it was merely ornamental.
00:08:01
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They had a phobia of mirrors and would go long periods without seeing their reflection. This was due, in part, to their body dysmorphia. On June 25th, 85 days until their death, they wrote, I like my body in terms of proportions. I like my big hands. I like being lanky. I don't mind being hairy, but I don't like being nearly 6'1".
00:08:27
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I guess my body dysmorphia is being too big. I wish I was like 5'8". Perhaps had they existed in a well-lit space with mirrors, they would have noticed in their final days, their complexion was taking on a yellow hue as they were going into liver failure. Or had they been living a less isolated existence, someone else might have noticed. The cause of their isolation was COVID-19.
00:08:57
Speaker
Years prior, they spent three weeks in the hospital with a blood clot in their stomach. Blood clots were one of the comorbidities. They were convinced had they caught the virus, they wouldn't have survived. On their last Mother's Day, four months, nine days until their death, they were not yet fully vaccinated.
00:09:18
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They woke up at 6 a.m. and cooked a Mother's Day feast for their fully vaccinated family members to enjoy without them. They prepared foods which could be easily reheated, so the mothers in their life wouldn't have to go to any trouble. Jamie had a lifelong devotion to art. Mostly, they drew comic book characters, dark androgynous figures, often vampires. I always suspected their drawings were autobiographical.
00:09:48
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On May 28th, with little more than three months left, they confirmed this. Anyone else think I'm going to separate myself into three people in a weird, complicated, semi-romantic relationship, then draw them? It was accompanied by a series of portraits. A young person in a black baby doll dress with a Peter Pan collar, not a boy or a girl. Their clenched fists held up like a boxer, a black eye,
00:10:17
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A line of blood trickling from the side of their mouth. A man and a woman named Skip and Susan. Skip in operatic character in a Victorian error suit. His shoulder length hair parted down the middle. Dark skinned and standing behind Susan. His arms locked around her midsection in a calming restraint. His fingers covered in bandages. Susan is attractively built.
00:10:44
Speaker
She's wearing a blouse, which is halfway on button, revealing her bra. She has vampire fangs. They are dripping blood. They were convinced their blood was trying to kill them. Three months, 16 days until their death. Ads telling me to donate blood really bummed me out because I have bad blood no one can use. Reading their final tweets, I try and piece together exactly what went wrong.
00:11:12
Speaker
I tell myself it's a search for closure, but really it's a selfish attempt at distancing myself from my own mortality. They said they had an unusually high pain tolerance, which means they sometimes didn't notice injuries or health problems. Unlike them, I don't have a high pain tolerance. I am fully aware of when I am injured or sick. They'd been taking medication to thin their blood. They tweeted about finding blood stains in their bed.
00:11:42
Speaker
And if I found bloodstains in my bed, I would call a doctor, especially if I were taking a blood thinner. Their final tweet was on September 8th, 10 days until their death. I haven't been sick aside from allergies and migraines since the start of 2020 lockdown. I forget that since I was hospitalized, I start panicking.
00:12:07
Speaker
Like I'm worried my organs are failing right now. When I read about a celebrity dying while engaged in some act of lunacy, a skydiving accident or wrapping their Ferrari around a telephone pole, it's easy for me to distance myself. But when an old friend dies in their bedroom, doing nothing riskier than writing their health problems off as mere anxiety, it's not so easy. The other night, they dropped into my dream.
00:12:37
Speaker
I stepped into a room and there they were in a pair of black skinny jeans and a dress shirt, Ray-Ban sticking out their front pocket. They were playing Mario Kart with their sister. They took their eyes off the game for the briefest moment to say hello. It was such a casual greeting, like no time had passed since we'd last seen each other. In one of their last tweets, they shared a video of their cat Nero.
00:13:05
Speaker
I physically feel like shit. I mentally feel like shit. And the world is nosediving into a literal, not hyperbolic apocalypse. So here's a short video of Nero playing when he was about two-third grown. It cheered me up. Had I stumbled upon their Twitter page just a week earlier, I could have used the comments section to tell them I was sorry they were feeling down. I could have thanked them for sharing the video of Nero.
00:13:33
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told them it cheered me up too. I could have shared a photo of my cats, poked fun at two of us for being such proud cat parents. Had it been just a week earlier, it could have been that simple.
00:13:52
Speaker
You can find more about Michael at michaelcuglietta.com. C-U-G-L-I-E-T-T-A. And you can follow him on Instagram at m-c-u-g-e-s-m-cugs.
Andrew Satilly's Family Reflections
00:14:09
Speaker
For our next piece, we hear from Andrew Satilly. No relation to the great Leah Satilly. This one speaks in reverence of his late grandfather and their shared love of donuts. And I miss the donut shop. It originally appeared in Kitchen.
00:14:27
Speaker
Andrew has most recently published work in autofocus as well as kitchen. He is an associate professor of English at Manchester Community College. He lives on the Connecticut shore with his wife and son. Here is Andrew Satelli's essay. I missed the donut shop, but the donuts never stopped. Takeout.
00:14:57
Speaker
curbside drive-through. The current go-to comes from Stonington behind Sea Swirl, where when I was a kid on summer nights, pot took us for clam bellies and fried haddock. Ketchup, vinegar on the side. The day we buried him on the bank of the Mystic River, after the bugler played taps and the vets gave their blank shots salute, I ordered half a dozen cinnamon and sugar and waited at the picnic tables.
00:15:28
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Sea swirl was boarded up for winter. A man in a mask brought the box to my trunk. I thanked him and took a drive. Left out the lot, right to the river road by the seaport and the cider mill. Up the hill, past my pal Pat's parents' house, the high school, the ball fields where I never hit home runs, where dad coached first, where Pa always cheered in this folding chair.
00:15:58
Speaker
There's an all-timer in Kittery Main, a piped crawler, eggy and light, dipped in sticky glaze. I can take down six in a sitting. We got them last summer and will this year too. Order online, select your time, and your donuts appear on a folding table outside, eating some barren parking lot. But I missed the line. The extra hot latte, the smell of citrus and fennel seed, the sound of spattering breakfast meat,
00:16:30
Speaker
We, dad and me, took Pa there once. When he saw the line and commotion inside, he decided he'd wait in the car, coffee with milk and a sugar, he said, and bring back something sweet. As soon as he smelled them, he said he'd have one now that he didn't want to wait. We ate crullers pulled off on a side street. The last Father's Day I spent with Pa was two years back. I have it on video.
00:16:59
Speaker
My wife was 12 weeks pregnant. We wrote our news in a card. On hard days, I replay the footage. Pa reads the note aloud. He always read cards aloud. Then he stops. He looks up knowingly, smile, wide as watermelon. Whoa, hey, he calls out into the day. The morning after our son was born, he rang and left a message. How do you and your lady, he said.
00:17:27
Speaker
And that little baby, he looks pretty good to me. A warm morning last winter, we took a dozen to his grave. The clouds were low and gray, to the north was the bridge and the soft thrum of the highway. I wore my son on my front and told him about his great grandparents, how they lived by this river for 35 years and were together twice that. It's true, a donut made things better.
00:17:57
Speaker
But I missed two donuts most. When I was a boy, Pa piled my bicycle and a basketball into the pickup and drove us to the town park. This was a no egg, not far from the mouth of the river. Pa played college hoops at UConn and still loved to shoot. But first we walked to Carson's where we sat at the counter and I wondered about a jelly or honey dipped where Pa took his old fashioned and coffee to go.
00:18:27
Speaker
He removed the top from the cup on the bench and dunked his donut in while I tore laps on my bike around the tennis courts. Once he finished, he showed me how, when he was young, they hit foul shots by squatting down and lobbing the basketball underhand. Then he dropped three in a row the modern way. The other comes from a long-closed shop on Colonel Ledyard Highway. Now it's a packie. This is beside the hardware store and nursery.
00:18:56
Speaker
On half days or early dismissals when Pa got me from school, we headed to the center and stopped before the roads where Kota was snow. We found a seat with an abandoned paper. He passed me the funnies, which I pretended to read but never got. So how about them lady huskies, Pa would say. An old timer said he turned it off at the half. But they pass it so smooth and fast, Pa said. I wondered why he didn't mention his basketball pass
00:19:26
Speaker
The counter gal refilled his cup. Yukon beat Baylor last night. On his early morning walk today, Dad bumped into one of Pa's pals in the neighborhood. He would have loved that game, the old friend said. As he tells me this, it occurs to me, it's not the donut shop I miss. It's the trips to the dump, the wood piles, and coffees on the breezeway. More, it's how he visited her every day, spread a napkin in her lap.
00:19:55
Speaker
She's gone now too, buried beside him by the river and broke the donut in two so they could share a meal or at least a treat. Something sticky and sweet the way they did before.
Laurie's Infertility Journey
00:20:14
Speaker
Crossing into international areas of interest, the Canadian Laurie Sebastian Nudie draws inspiration from Mariah Carey's hero during a particularly trying time when she and her husband struggled to conceive. So here's Laurie's essay. Mariah Carey was right. I'm driving in the car when I realized that it's over.
00:20:42
Speaker
That song gives it away. Something about being a hero and having the strength to carry on. I switch off the radio. I'm done being the hero. I want to be the one with the baby in her belly. I can't believe I'm still here. Seven years, seven in vitro fertilization procedures, and I'm still not a mother. Isn't that number supposed to be a lucky one? I am usually crushed at the thought.
00:21:10
Speaker
But over the years I have become numb, like when my fingers go tingly after lying on them in sleep. I am unable to grip, fully incapable of holding on to any emotion, most certainly not the blistering pain of saying goodbye to another chance at motherhood. In the early years of my infertility journey, hearing that song would give me comfort. See, it will happen. Even Mariah Carey thinks so. But as the months turned into years,
00:21:40
Speaker
The song transformed from a soothing assuagement into a shrill warning, foreboding the inevitable, and signaling me to get ready to be a hero yet again. Stopped at the red light, I decide I don't want to wait for my scheduled blood test. Waiting for bad news is an extreme form of cruelty. One screen, I check my rearview mirror,
00:22:04
Speaker
make an abrupt lane change, and head straight for the nearby drug store. Another cycle down the drain, I think as I stand in line, waiting to buy my home pregnancy test. My little baby is no more. Well, it wasn't actually a baby, more like a cluster of cells. But if that song is any indication, it has probably stopped developing inside my body. Arrested is a clinical term, what an embryologist would say. What it really means is dead, gone.
00:22:35
Speaker
already reabsorbed by my body's cleaning system, its way of getting rid of the rubble. In recent months, they moved the home pregnancy tests behind the counter, so you have to ask the pharmacist to get them for you. The last time I bought one, I asked why? Because they're a high theft item, she informed me. The thieves in question? Maybe they're teens too embarrassed to bring their purchase to the counter, or infertile women like me.
00:23:03
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not wanting to pay 20 bucks for another negative result. I stuff the white paper bag into my purse. It crinkles loudly. I look around to see if anyone has heard as I quickly make my way to the exit. I always feel like an imposter when I buy one of these. Some desperate loser like one of those slot machine diehards who refuses to abandon their spot on the chance that this press of the button will be the one that finally makes it go off.
00:23:33
Speaker
but looks like I was never able to catch my lucky break after all, and I'm done rolling the dice. Infertility is a ruthless affliction where hard work doesn't always translate into success, and the price of failure is high. Strained relationships, disrupted careers, fractured identities.
00:23:53
Speaker
I read somewhere that psychologists define infertility as a complex trauma with research indicating patient levels of depression and anxiety similar to those with cancer, HIV, and heart disease. I toss my keys on the washing machine and start rummaging through the cupboards, looking for a plastic cup. On the way to the bathroom, I grab a bottle of water to make sure my bladder is plenty full. Time to drink up. It's like I'm toasting.
00:24:22
Speaker
Never my pregnancy, always someone else's. During the years, pregnant friends and family members have surrounded me. Excruciating waters to navigate, we all did our best. And while most relationships survived, others were lost, unable to stay afloat during the most turbulent of storms. My sisters, while taking care of the lives growing inside of them, were also burdened with the task of keeping me alive within my own family.
00:24:50
Speaker
They kept their pregnancies on low heat, simmering in the background while I tried and often failed to keep myself together. On my husband's side, a brilliant flame was raging. A first grandchild, a male heir for my father-in-law was gestating. His 13-letter surname would be continuing from Udine, a region of northern Italy inhabited since the Neolithic age to Stony Creek, Ontario, Canada.
00:25:20
Speaker
Their happiness cannot be dulled, so I had to force a smile and join them around the flame even though it scorched me. I've been taught from a young age that when it comes to family, you do whatever it takes to keep the peace. My relationship with friends and coworkers did not fare so well. To many of them, I was selfish when I couldn't bring myself to attend their baby-focused events.
00:25:45
Speaker
This is my time a pregnant coworker was rumored to have said when I began skipping lunch in the staff room, eager to miss the daily welcome to my uterus hour. She should be happy for me, and I should have. But how do you reconcile the fact that other people's joy intensifies your pain?
00:26:06
Speaker
I could have been more open too, but how do you mention in between comments about last night's episode of The Bachelor that your period just started? In addition to a few cramps, there's a $12,000 fee on your credit card that you haven't paid yet. I rip open the box and toss the instructions aside. I've become proficient in the art of peeing in a cup. After I submerge the stick for five seconds, I replace the protective cap and let it teeter on the edge of the sink.
00:26:35
Speaker
It's about three in the afternoon and I have nowhere to be. I'm currently a freelance fertility patient. After years of trying with no success, I've decided to take some time off from my teaching job to eliminate the last piece of the puzzle that might be contributing to my unexplained infertility, stress. Who knows if it'll help. I don't buy into the relax and you'll get pregnant narrative.
00:27:02
Speaker
but more in the I've tried everything and I don't know what else to do version. I've also begun writing again, resuscitating a long neglected passion from childhood. I may not be able to create another human being, but maybe I can produce something with my mind, leave a legacy of a different kind. In three minutes, I will get the confirmation that I am at once anticipating and dreading. I take a quick walk around the hallway, looking out windows,
00:27:32
Speaker
searching for signs, something from the universe that might tip me off as to whether or not my five-day-old embryo has found a soft, warm place to snuggle up to for the next nine months. Sometimes I feel as if the northern cardinals perched on the snow-covered trees of my backyard are trying to tell me something. I read once that these birds with their crimson feathers and majestic crests are your deceased loved ones reincarnated.
00:28:02
Speaker
Perhaps my maternal grandmother, the only grandparent I ever knew, is delivering good news in the form of the bird's upbeat whistle. At about two minutes in, the phone rings. I rush to the kitchen to get it. My husband's work number flashes across the screen. Just calling to say hi, he says when I answer. He has no idea I've bought a home test and that it's almost time to check the result.
00:28:30
Speaker
Through every injection, early morning procedure, and negative result, he has been an unbelievable source of support. The eternal optimist, he would always remind me that no matter what happened, it would be okay, that we would be okay. Of course, it's been far from easy and the tense moments caused a strain. How long do we keep trying? Are we open to non-genetic parenthood?
00:28:56
Speaker
Will our marriage survive without bouncy castles, soccer practice and minty bedtime kisses? We also cope with grief differently. He likes to be around other people, interact and try not to think about it. Well, I am the opposite. I need my dark cave to feel the loss deeply and build up strength to move forward. But I always reemerge the sunlight on my face, a reminder of the beauty and possibility of the outside world.
00:29:25
Speaker
We joined forces again, a family of two. He asked me what I'm doing. Nothing, I say as I walk back to the bathroom. With the receiver pressed up against my ear, I lift the stick off the counter and bring it close to my face. A familiar melody floods my brain and the words that accompany it hypnotize me. Truth, hope, hero. There is a second line
00:29:54
Speaker
Not as dark as the test line, but it's there. I blink hard and hold the stick up to the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the window. That numb feeling is back. Is it safe to believe what the second line is implying? Do I dare even think it? I think we're pregnant. I grasp the stick tightly in my hand, afraid that if I let go, it will give me a different result. He is silent.
00:30:23
Speaker
I say it again, only faster and a little breathless. I think we're pregnant. I bought a home test. I think it worked. I think I'm pregnant. I keep repeating it as if saying it enough times will finally allow me to believe. I don't. Okay. Okay. He responds. Just relax. He probably fears that I'll have a stroke. I can sense both the elation and complete fear in his voice. It is an echo of my own. I'll come home. I'll have a look.
00:30:52
Speaker
He is a non-believer. How can I blame him? I'm staring so hard at the second line that a dull throb begins to form at my temples. I pace our entrance hallway stick in hand. I think back to the last 10 days since the embryo transfer and try to recall signs that could corroborate the second pink line that I still don't trust. I run down the list of early pregnancy symptoms
00:31:19
Speaker
that all the websites with the smiling cherubs tell you to look out for. I have none of them. I've been peeing a normal amount, smells don't bother me, and my breasts aren't sore. Just good old non-pregnant me. He works close by and it's not long before I hear the garage door open and close. Once he reaches me, he takes the test from my hand, gives it a long look, then places it gently on the bathroom counter.
00:31:49
Speaker
He doesn't say much, just takes me in his arms and holds me. We still have the official blood test and the first ultrasound to get through, but we've never had this. So we hold on to each other as tightly as we can. That night we go out to dinner at a nearby restaurant. We want to wait until it's official, so we tell no one. It's a Friday in early December and the restaurant is busy.
00:32:17
Speaker
We're given a small plastic object resembling a hot keep up. When it lights up, your table is ready, the hostess informs us. I scan the waiting area. There are children everywhere, pre-teens playing on their phones and toddlers trying to escape from their parents' arms. I can't picture it, not yet, but at least I'm starting to feel. The heat is beginning to penetrate, moving up from my bulky boots,
00:32:46
Speaker
continuing through the rest of my body and settling in my cheeks. I feel them flush as I acclimatize to the stuffy, crowded room. The puck lights up and vibrates in my hand. I hand it back to the hostess. My heart begins to beat wildly, though I'm standing completely still. A new girl carrying menus arrives to seat us. Your table is ready, she says. My husband places his hand on the small of my back
00:33:15
Speaker
as we make our way to the table. It's time, I think to myself. It's finally our turn. Mariah Carey includes Hero on the set list of all her tours, usually performing the ballad as the closing number. When asked why, she said she's afraid that if she doesn't perform it at every show, she might miss the opportunity to help someone. Hero spent four weeks at the top spot, 16 weeks in the top 10, and 25 weeks in the top 40.
00:33:45
Speaker
At four weeks gestation, we received the blood test results confirming the pregnancy was viable. At 16 weeks, I felt my son move for the first time, and by 25 weeks, he was a fully formed human with 10 fingers, 10 toes, and the most beautiful face a 2D image could render.
00:34:11
Speaker
Lori is a writer and teacher from Ontario, Canada. Her essays have been published in Canadian and American journals, including the Hamilton Review of Books, the Humber Literary Review, the New Quarterly, Nurture, Porcupine Literary, let's say that again, Porcupine Literary, and Serotonin Poetry, among others.
Shauna Kenney's Rock Star Admiration
00:34:36
Speaker
You can read more of her work at her website,
00:34:42
Speaker
I'll just spell it out L-O-R-I-S-E-B-A-S-T-I-A-N-U-T-T-I dot com and you can follow her on Twitter at SebastianL74
00:35:00
Speaker
And batting cleanup is Shauna Kenney. CNF pod superfans might recognize Shauna from episode 47. It's more than 300 of these things ago.
00:35:14
Speaker
And here she brings us a short essay about her love of a particular rock star called Your Biggest Fan. I love how this essay ends, and I think it's a great way to bring this issue to a close. So here is Shauna Kenney closing us out. February 18, 1986.
00:35:43
Speaker
I know you must get tons of fan mail, but I just had to write and tell you that I have so much respect and admiration for you and others like you who are doing what you're doing. You are what my image of punk slash hardcore is, peacefully fighting the bullshit and making your life slash self the way you want it. I wrote these words and more to a singer in a band when I was 16 years old. I was living in a small town in rural Maryland and I'd already been following his music for a couple of years.
00:36:13
Speaker
my mom noticed an interview with him in the Washington Post where he shared he answered all of his fan mail. So I got to work in writing him a letter to let him know how much his music and philosophy meant to me. I wrote him again a few months later. I'm sure you don't remember me but I wrote you around January and February of this year and received a postcard from you a little later. That letter included money for his new record and admission I'd seen him at a show but was too chicken to introduce myself.
00:36:41
Speaker
and more words of gratitude thanking him for his encouragement. Between homework and my afterschool job, I started to work on my next zine. In December of that year, I wrote again, hi, got your postcard, still working on zine number two. I've been thinking a lot about stuff lately, and I'm not sure if I want to keep putting out that kind of zine. I want to do more than review records and print skate photos. I want to do something more worthwhile, you know?
00:37:09
Speaker
I went on to work as a music journalist in my 20s and 30s, and I interviewed this person several times for national magazines over the years. And yes, we eventually met in person, and I can call him a friend. I recently arranged a phone interview with him for a book project I've been working on. I called at our prearranged time, and after he answered his phone, he began reading something that sounded vaguely familiar. I know you must get tons of fan mail, but I just had to write and tell you.
00:37:37
Speaker
Was my cell phone getting hot? My face burned against its flat surface. Words from my 16-year-old self washed over me, and I was momentarily transported back in time. I was sure he could feel the embarrassment transmitted through the airwaves. Stop, I ordered, drowning out his monologue. OK, that's enough. Can you feel me turning red? Why, he asked. I think it's quite sweet. You're a sweet kid, and you still are.
00:38:05
Speaker
I was 46 at the time. He was 52, so I guess he could still call me a kid. He went on to read from the second one and a third. Why do you still have those? I demanded. Do you keep everything? He assured me that he had indeed kept everything from the 80s, but threw away a lot of stuff from the 90s. A friend was helping him to scan and organize things people had sent him over the years. And knowing I'd be calling soon, he pulled my letters from the archive, then later emailed them to me.
00:38:35
Speaker
After getting off the phone, I thought a lot about this musician's response, his openness and generosity toward an earnest teenager just learning to find her way, his accessibility then and now, his humility and compassion, a rare combination I appreciated after years of interviewing artists. Seeing the letters again brought another revelation. There, amidst the bubbly handwriting, the repeated smiley faces, the misspelling of vegetarianism, the inappropriate use of quotation marks,
00:39:05
Speaker
The shy fangirling was me. There was a girl trying to connect with people through words. A girl who admittedly struggled to remain positive at times. A girl who wanted to do more with her life somehow, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it just yet. A girl who understood the audience slash artist separation in the mainstream rock world, but wanted to believe in the egalitarian nature of punk rock and acted on it. But also a girl who felt unmemorable.
00:39:35
Speaker
That girl grew up to survive a broken heart and broken bones at the hands of an abusive boyfriend. She briefly lived in her car, a woman's shelter, and on the couches of friends. She clawed her way into college and made lots of mistakes along the way. Through it all, she wrote hundreds of thousands of words, and the story's not over yet. Receiving these letters back has been a gift, a glimpse into who I was and who I am. They helped me have compassion for myself.
00:40:05
Speaker
What if we could each see past the awkwardness and flaws enough to see the good things in ourselves as much as we saw them in those we put on pedestals? What if we could all remember who we were at 16 and become our own biggest fans? Here's a writing prompt. For me and you, finish the letter. Be your own hero, your own biggest fan. To yourself,
00:40:29
Speaker
I know you must get tons of fan mail, but I just had to write and tell you that I have so much respect and admiration for you. Doing what you're doing, making your life the way you want it.
00:40:47
Speaker
Shauna Kenney is an award-winning memoirist, essayist, and pop culture journalist. She's an instructor with the UCLA Extension Writers Program and co-leads Hamless Hideaway, a summer writing retreat in Denmark.
00:41:03
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed issue three of the audio magazine. Took a while, but we got there,
Closing and Engagement
00:41:10
Speaker
didn't we? If you care to share, link up to the show on social. Tag the show on Twitter and Instagram. I'll be sure to give you those James Hetfield gifts.
00:41:19
Speaker
and spread the word. So people can enjoy the work of the writers who appeared on this show. You can visit BrendanOmera.com for showing notes and to sign up for my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter first of the month no spam as far as I can tell can't beat it.
00:41:38
Speaker
also you can consider visiting patreon.com slash cnfbot shop around support this enterprise because the show is free but it sure as hell ain't cheap also some some of the money raised through the patreon funds helps pay writers for their contributions to this audio magazine so
00:41:58
Speaker
That's nice. So you know that your dollars are going right into the community, supporting the community. Not many literary journals pay the writers, and for now, as I like to say, you can give them that fat burrito money, because that's about what it amounts to, a couple burritos at Chipotle. But maybe, just maybe, we can raise enough where it's like four burritos. All right. Thanks for listening, CNFers. See ya.