Writer's block

When you write non-fiction it is generally accepted that what you put on paper is true. When writing a blog post, I need to pull from real life incidents and remembrances, but sometimes my life and memories are really just not that exciting. So, I am just going to start typing and wait for a story to develop. This one seems to be going nowhere. I’m sorry.

It’s not that interesting things have not occurred over the past several weeks, they certainly have. But to hold a story together, there really should be a central theme: conflict and resolution.

I attended a family wedding and a thirtieth high school reunion in the past two weeks. Entire books have been devoted to those topics, so you would think that a lousy blog post or two could develop. But, no, my mind has decided to keep these stored for a while. My friend Sam told me that there is no such thing as writer’s block. It is only that the writer is afraid of expressing his emotions. Ah, so that’s it! Good, now we have some conflict. Maybe sharing just a few observations will get the old juices flowing.

Let’s start with the wedding. If I were going to write a story about it, I would have to write about the brother of the bride’s toast. Aside from his joke referencing spousal abuse and the quote from “Slaughterhouse Five” it was a good toast. OK, maybe it sucked, there is just no sugar coating that one. Watching the bride’s face turn from a smile to a wince was painful for everyone. I don’t think I can turn that one into any more of a story.

I suppose there was one other interesting incident at the wedding. There was a photo booth, the kind you might find in a suburban mall. Paul and I slipped in and had some photos made. Long story short, we shared our hotel room with my Sister-In-Law and had no alone time  Suddenly, we were alone in the dark, one thing led to another and well, you get the picture. No, you won't get the pictures and neither will we. It turns out our pictures were the only ones that did not make it to the photo booth’s website. I wanted to order re-prints, but the company said something about how our pictures became corrupted on their hard drive. I guess there really isn’t much of a  story in that one either.

The reunion, there certainly should be some stories there. Here I am, thirty years later returning with my husband to a high school reunion in North Carolina. As a back story they have just passed a resolution to let the people of North Carolina vote to amend the constitution to prohibit same sex marriage. This one has comedy written all over it!

It’s really hard to know where to start. I could talk about the wife of one of my classmates who was Muslim and felt a kindred spirit with the only two gay men at the reunion. Paul kept calling her muslin. When I told him she was not a cheap fabric, he failed to see the humor. Or maybe I could write about the woman who lost the love of her life after only being with him for one year, but still harbored a deep seated hatred for a classmate she had not seen in thirty years.

Perhaps the best story could center on the classmate who entered the men’s room shouting “Are there any Homo’s in here?” shortly after Paul and I went to the men’s room.  When I told my mother about that story she offered "Well remember you beat him in the individual medley at the city swim meet when your were fourteen."  She said this with a satisfied look that seemed to say "You'll always have that!"   No, none of that stuff is very interesting.

I wish I could make a story out of the past couple of weeks for you, but as I said, I have writer’s block. Something will come together next week. Until then, I’ll leave you with a quote, said in all seriousness, by my mother after I attended the reunion. And just to give you the background one more time: A gay man married to another man returning to the south for his thirtieth high school reunion when the state is considering a constitutional amendment outlawing same sex marriage: “Well, Bill, you didn’t have anything to prove.”

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