Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Mary Gaitskill: Dont Cry

So tonight I'm pleased to welcome Mary Gates Gill. She joins us tonight to speak on her work. Don't cry don't cry the third collection of short stories when as Gates go we find ourselves uncomfortably close to some very private themes for the Boston Globe. A good school crosses a continent in this collection with the boundaries on one side being a gross hash of sorrow and desire and on the other a haunting longing to love and be loved. In later stories kids go seems to travel through a lifetime of perception moving in a progression from raw and violently sexualized to tender and regretful with every character knowing the intimacy and exhaustion of sorrow and from the L.A. Times we find the Don't Cry is intense and thought provoking compelling and often tragic yet filled with the subtle magic it so explores the spectrum of emotion lust greed sorrow hope anger and many forms of love. Miss Kate's girls work has appeared in The New Yorker Harper's magazine Esquire The Best American Short Stories in the O'Henry price stories among others. Previous works include bad behavior Veronica two girls fat and thin and because they wanted to get schools honor include a Guggenheim

Fellowship in 2002 and a PEN Faulkner Award nomination. Veronica was a National Book Award nominee as well as a National Book Critics Circle finalist. We are honored to have her here with us tonight so will you please join me in welcoming Mary Gates. OK. I'm going to read from the title story of Don't cry because I'm starting towards the end as opposed to the beginning. I need to give you some setup which is this the narrator is a woman named Janice who before the start of the story her husband has died six months earlier. He was much older man. She had to nurse him while he was ill. She's at the beginning of the story has just come to Ethiopia with her friend Kucha who's there to adopt a child. Except he has a pretty severe misunderstanding about how things actually happen there and so is just doing everything wrong and completely running afoul of the bureaucratic

situation has just succeeded in breaking through it when civil insurrection occurs. That's all you need to know except it might be helpful to know the people's names. Narrator is Janice conscious her friend Sonny's the little boy that they've trying to adopt. Thomas is Genesis husband and Jonas is their driver. My time alone with Sunny was dreamlike and lonely dull the surreal darkness of grief blended with the bright reality of caring for a frail child. Sonny was not only frail he was underdeveloped from his early life of illness and malnourishment. We had not seen the extent to which this was true. Possibly because his spirit had stood out to us with such force. But our first day at the B and B we saw him with another child close in age and in comparison His movements were weak and coordinated somehow partial.

He couldn't walk more than a few steps and his gaze was intense but not quite focused as if he was as if he were suffering from a mild psychic fever. He didn't walk well and at first he didn't want to walk at all. He just wanted to be carried around the house out into the yard and back again and again. The first day I carried him until I couldn't take any more than I lay on the floor and rolled back and forth with him as he clung to me weakly but with a hint of triumph in his raised head. I rocked him and crooned to him and dreamed of Thomas. Of rocking him and crooning and being rocked by him. Of struggling my husband in kissing him bending to touch my breasts against him of straddling him and struggling to reposition him on the bed. Thomas cursing me with strange half words because he could no longer position himself.

Sonny put his hand on my face and it came away wet. I kissed his tiny palm and held it. Thomas had lost motor control and could only get into bed by taking a sitting position over it and then letting himself flop backward. I had to let him do it that way. It was important for him to do what he could. But I had to reposition him because if I left him if he fell he woke in pain. It made Thomas furious to be straddled and positioned and it hurt me to feel that he had I treasured it. I treasured his anger as a vestige of his pride treasured that it could still make me angry make me feel once more like a normal wife with a strong husband to quarrel with. I gave Sonny my finger. He squeezed it and I rolled into a seated position straddling him. I wondered if the baby wanted

so much to be carried because his mother a day laborer had carried him strapped to her body or if it were something even more basic that he was like a plant and I random patch of earth from which she wanted to draw all the nurture he could get. Lest he be uprooted again. I looked into his eyes and remembered Thomas's eyes restless strangely shapeless at the end he still had the childish pleasure of sweet tastes of touching the soft fur of Zuni the cat. To see that pleasure was a kind of sadness I had never felt before. Sunny fluttered his lids then half opened them checking one more time then slipped his soft fist against my chest. Friends ask me when I suspected that something was wrong with Thomas. I don't know how to answer. I think I knew before I knew.

There were indications most of them disguised as agent and its eccentricity but at least once the disease paraded itself garishly before me and I didn't see it because I couldn't categorize it. Four years before he was diagnosed we went to Spain for three weeks. We got back home in the evening. I left our bags in the front hall and went to bed. The next morning I found him sitting in the kitchen visibly afraid. He had no memory of our trip yet he realized when he saw our bags in the hall that we had been somewhere. I made breakfast. I described to him everything we had done on the trip. He said he remembered and I made myself forget it. And because nothing quite like that ever happened again I could. After a few days Sonny began to eat in earnest. Mashed bananas

cereal formula pasta all of it. He built pyramids of empty film containers and prescription bottles and then knock them down. He unscrewed unscrewed the top of the milk bottle over and over. He discovered he wanted to walk and then as if a bomb had gone off in his brain he discovered that he might walk up and down the stairs. I passed through a set and enchanted mirror. I woke Sonny like I had walked Thomas his hands in mine giving him a footstep pattern to follow. Holding his eyes with encouragement. Everything depended on the slow movements of his blunt feet of their exact position trusting it finding it again. Everything depended on it. I pulled my husband out of bed to a standing

position and let him backward holding hands. I smiled at him and he smiled back at me. I got him on the john. I waited for him to finish and wiped him. I bathed him in the marble shower which was so big it made the whole room a shower where we could be naked together. We sat on the fancy marble floor and played passing the hose back and forth spraying laughing and Sonny with his little forehead ablaze several times nearly falling. I climbed the stairs leaning heavily into my hands. His hands radiated into my hands imparting his being and sampling mine. Look I said aloud. Look. My husband my father my child my lover. Look at this little boy and bless him.

When Kartik came home she would jealously take the baby from me. Of course jealously every day she walked in and saw me having intimacy she couldn't have because she was out doing the shit that had to be done. What she didn't say was that it didn't matter. Sunny knew that Kashi was his mother and that I was his nurse. The uncanny gleam we had seen the first day had found mental form quickly but still Kucha grabbed him jealously and fed him and talked angrily about the head of social services while I ate dried fruit and nuts. I have listened. I looked at the spoon going in and out of the baby's mouth. I thought if I'm the nurse and she is the mother who or what is the birth mother to him. Is she the earth of Sunny the sky the unseeable place the child walks when he

sleeps. When I asked Thomas what he remembered about the birth mother who had abandoned him he just said that he liked her. He said he'd like to picture her getting on the bus with a battered suitcase and a long coat and flat shoes her large eyes bold and intense her hair like a movie stars. She was an adventurer he thought and he didn't really blame her for leaving. On our seventh day Kucha succeeded. She came back with a letter from the head of social services and another letter from an orphanage that said they would sponsor the adoption out of fighting mode she was dazed and unsure of how this had happened. We were going at it as usual she said. I told him I'm going to be back here in this office every day until I get permission. And he said fine you do that. And then a stomach cramp doubled me over my head went between my legs my teeth were gritted and my intestines made this indescribable noise. I thought I was going to have diarrhea right there.

The only reason I didn't leave was that I was worried about what would happen if I got up suddenly. He didn't say anything. He just looked at me like he felt sorry for me. And then he got a piece of paper and wrote the letter and pushed it across the desk and said no go. That night we finally went out for dinner. She wore the dresses we had brought to celebrate in sunny were his orange jumper. I chose an Italian restaurant we walked past several times because the people in it always looked like they were having a good time. But not this time. On the way there the streets were nearly empty and the few people who were out seemed angry and tense. We were almost the only people in the restaurant. He didn't feel well enough to eat more than a few bites of pasta and she was too tired to talk much.

The next day cutie and Sonny went to the American embassy in the morning and returned early in the afternoon. Sonny was tired and cranky. So cut he wanted to rest before going to the travel agency to arrange our flight out the next day. They nap together while I went to the laundry room and washed her clothes. While I was in the dining area waiting for the clothes to come out of the washer I met our host's Italian mom. She was feeding her pug dog sliced fruit from a dish and her lap. I told her we were about to leave. She said it was a shame we hadn't gotten to Lalibela. I just hope you can get out she said. You chose a terrible time to come. You didn't know about the election. I pointed out that she was here. She shrugged and meticulously peeled the skin off a fig. I grew up here she said. I know the place. You don't.

I will caution we tried to call you on us. We couldn't reach him. This was unusual. We waited an hour and tried again. Nothing. We waited another hour. We heard the huge gate open. People came in talking loudly. Someone ran up the stairs past our door. Cutie and I stared at each other. Sonny stirred. He was in right then that we heard gunfire but maybe 10 minutes later it wasn't close by but close enough to hear not steadily but off and on during the afternoon and into the night much closer than the gunshots was the machine of my body buzzing inside me. It came from inside me and also enclosed me like the darkness and the warmth of the night he said. It doesn't matter if you die here

might be better if you die here. But Katia and Sonny have to get home. It will not be better if they die. The next day Jonas came in his uncle's car instead of his taxi. We saw him pull into the driveway and we ran out to meet him from the car. He held up a hand indicate he was talking on the phone. We stopped. He had never signaled to us to wait before the signal scared me more than anything else so far but he didn't keep us waiting long. He put the phone down and got out to tell us there'd been a demonstration about the election. Twenty five people at least had been killed and the city was under martial law. He couldn't take us anywhere but he'd be in touch. He had to get home as quickly as he could. We played with Sonny all day both of us going up and down the stairs

knocking the film containers all over the stairs and picking them up again. When we heard shots we looked up and then went back to what we were doing. The buzzing said your parents are dead. Your husband is dead. You should be dead. But Katia and Sonny don't deserve to die. In the early evening Katia said we've got to get something to eat. We haven't eaten for almost 12 hours. We can't go out. I said it's not safe. Sonny is out of food. He hasn't eaten for eight hours. Kucha Nothing's open. You heard Jonas the fruit stands going to be open there's no way they'll close. They're just down the street. We're hearing guns shots aren't close I can tell I have to go out if you're not going to go I'll go alone. We took Sonny I carried him because he was too weak.

Outside on the street people and animals were walking around like normal. Who were they. I felt half scared of them. I have linked with them and didn't know which feeling was most real. I reached inside my shirt and held the wedding rings for a moment in my cupped hand. Thomas's face flat and beautifully mis shapen rippled in me like a reflection in water. There was a boy at my side trying to push a cow out of the way. Thomas's face stretched unrecognizably on the moving water. The boy came suddenly around the cow and tore my chain off my neck. I screamed. He flashed on the street. I was after him. My legs are long and I almost had him but I couldn't grab him because Sonny was screaming forgotten in my arms. I darted back to Kucha who was standing motionless and thrust in matter. The boy was a quick

pixelation of limbs disappearing Kucha shouted. I ran. The boy was a bright movement that I chased like an animal with a single instinct. I turned a corner stumbled into a pothole full of warm brown water and nearly fell. I staggered and bent to catch myself with my hands. He was gone. I whipped my head around looking at my instinct trying to leap in every direction. But it had nothing to leap at. I panted raggedly sweat running in my eyes. My instinct exiting through my eyes as I stared around wild. Women holding children stared back at me. The faces appeared from the broken hole of a window. Dogs fierce and cringing watched with starving eyes. My instinct felt them all as it felt itself quick force and slow mammal bodies soft brain and hard bone. A

machine of thoughts a machine of sex the dark radiance of emotions the personality eyes nose mouth. A little boy with a large round head looked at me and said words I couldn't understand. My instinct broke everything that had been joined was now in pieces again. I put my face in my hands and cried like an animal. I came out of the alley to find my way back to Katia. I tried to stop making noise. I couldn't. I felt people following me. I understood the current had reversed his I had chased the boy they would follow me they would kill me. I heard myself sobbing. Thomas was dead.

I had betrayed him. They would kill me. It was right. Miss miss a small voice was at my side gently tugging me without touching me. Miss. What's wrong Miss. I looked at the voice. There were two young girls maybe 13 years old tugging at my side. They were dressed in school uniforms. Their faces were soft but intensely focused. I wiped my face and glanced behind me. There was a small crowd following me made up mostly of teenage girls and a few boys with curious faces. I turned to face them. My husband died I said. He died and somebody stole our wedding rings and now I don't have anything. Tears ran down my face. Human tears now. I have to find my friend and her

baby. Thank you. The girls nodded gravely. I continued to walk. One girl followed me. It'll be alright she said. God will help you. I said thank you honey. Machine gun fire sounded in the distance. The girl dropped away Janice. He was caught here rounding a corner. Sunny in her arms. What happened. Why did you do that. I was just robbed. That kid took my wedding rings I couldn't catch him. Well then we need to call the police. She hadn't been holding Sonny I would have slapped her. You know how stupid you sound. Call the police. Chant to us what. Look look look around. I was trembling still dripping tears but with no force there in the middle of a war. You think the police are going

to come because of your rings my rings. Janice shut the fuck up. I turned to get away to go back to the B and B. In my head I saw Thomas well and Beryl Thomas sic her house with its marble shower its riches of detail its condiments and candies paintings and knick knacks baskets all over the wall baskets from all over the world from places we travelled together. Shelves of books the books he had written the languages he had spoken his children my students myself kneeling my legs spread. Now I don't have anything. But once I'd had everything I betrayed everything so I could fuck somebody I didn't even live.

Stop someone touch my arm from behind. I turned a very small old man stood before me. What I thought or asked. Stop he said. Don't cry please. It's okay. He said please. But his eyes had an expression of command. I lifted my hand to wipe my eyes. He reached out and took it. He held it palm up. He put my rings in my hand and closed my fingers over them. Okay he said. But how. He shook his head and said. Just don't cry ok.

I stopped crying. He turned to go. Wait I said. There was a chain too. He turned his head and looked hard at me. The rings were on a change you know about that. He shook his head and walked away. Years later I told the story at a party at the university. I told it to a woman who had traveled extensively in Africa. She was a big blond woman very grand with a high chest and a chunky necklace made of precious stones. When I told her how I had lost my rings and how the old man had given them back she made a face. She said Really you make too big a fuss out of yourself you shouldn't go to Africa or any place really and make such a fuss. I answered her vaguely. I allowed myself to be chastised

because right there in that room. She was right. She was right. In that room I was a privileged and foolish woman running around bawling about rings while the whole city fell apart and people died. But I did meet the old man in that room. I met him in a place of biblical times and modern times for people walked back and forth between times all times in this place. I walked back and forth between the time of the living and the time of the dead. In the middle of my walking more Broca and the path between the living and the dead opened and everything dear to me fell down the crack I fell to and I might have fallen forever but the old man came and said

stop. And I stopped. That same night at the university somebody else asked Did you even thank him. And I was amazed to realize I didn't know. Probably I didn't. How could I thanking him would have been like thanking an angel. I sit in my darkened house sometimes holding a glass of wine and I thank him thank you thank you. Honestly I understand what you're perturbed. Some stories especially if they're written in the first person are part of the power of them derives from the idea that you're reading about something someone really experienced. But fiction is it's made up stuff. And the reason it's set in Ethiopia Honestly there's not an elaborate reason that story was told to me by someone.

And I saw no reason to move it to someplace else. It's not the end toll thing isn't told I made. I added things and changed things. The woman who told me was not an academic. She and her husband didn't die of Alzheimer's. He was not older than her. She didn't have an affair with anybody else for her so I know I kind of it actually came second I wrote another story in the book is called description and it was written about two young guys who one of them has and if he really admires one of his teachers and because she sits through an illness with his mother is very ill and she supports him through it he is very attached to her and he finds out his friend has screwed her basically and it just kind of upsets everything. And I wrote that story first and then I didn't intend to make the teacher a full character. And then when I heard this story it was like it was just like kind of like getting hit between the eyes. I don't normally take stories that someone else has told me but but I do sometimes. And really it was such an extraordinary story.

I felt like if I don't use this I mean I'm not doing my job basically. I mean it was who would even. It's almost like you can't make things like that up that this man somewhere. It's so extraordinary doesn't know that there's a story about him you know in the middle of all of that would actually be in the middle of that kind of crisis probably somebody with very little money would go out of his way to return something to somebody. That's just amazing. That's the kind of thing that makes life worth living. And it does matter where he is and I mean it doesn't have to be the opium but it does matter that he's in a place where there's poverty and there's chaos he was Streets true to life to what actually happened and also That's what makes it powerful or part of what makes it powerful I mean you could be here I suppose too but I saw no it would almost seem artificial for me to force it to be transplanted to another place. I saw no need for it. I mean it was just so extraordinary. I almost wondered if I could make it believable to me that was a child I thought.

This is there's something real and nobody's going to believe it but nobody complained about that so far. That's a very complicated story. I don't know if everybody here knows about Leroy or I don't know if it's worth repeating really he is to short to I don't know how to make it short Actually it's quite complex He's somebody he wasn't he actually but it was someone that I thought who was first approached me as this tell me I thought he was a 16 year old boy I was on the phone. My agent called me first just back in 1980. It's 8:00 and I was in before. Well that's when you met me but this had been going on for a while it was in 96 I think that I first heard from my agent called said there's this really talented young boy. He was picked up by his mother. Since twin age of 10 or something he's 16. He's got HIV but he says he's written this really great book and he would really love to meet you. He calls me he's got this really high voice she

sounds frightened. He says he's scared of women but especially older women. But he'd really like to meet me because he admires my writing so much. We had this very long conversation and thinking God this kid's brilliant he sounds so smart and touching somehow there's something very arresting about the energy the whole thing. So I agreed to meet him. We come to this little cafe. I come and sit there for half an hour waiting. Seems like he's not going to show up. Finally these three kids stumble in kind of looking screwed up somehow and they come up and they introduce themselves this little blonde voice says I'm Terminator he's whispering He's got huge sunglasses on a baseball cap on thrust the package on me like balsamic vinegar at a bar of chocolate and a manuscript and bolts out the door. And his friend explains to me he's so scared to meet women because of what his mother did to him and he really loves you though and he really like you to read the manuscript I sit there and talk to a young woman named

Speedy who seems really nice to me I'm really interested in her she seems really like a nice person. Smart. I mean that's the thing I noticed. Smart as hell. Frighteningly so almost. But meanwhile this I have contact with this person J.T. LeRoy for years over the phone. Very emotional very intense contact. I mean I've never had somebody get so close to me so fast I'm bawling on the phone with him talking about my personal problems. OK. And so I feel very close and very protective of this young boy who's gone through so much. So when he sends me his book wanting and wanting a blurb I'm a little thrown because it's I don't think it's very good actually I call my age and I said look I don't I don't think you're doing him a favor to publish him now this is he's very talented but this really isn't that good and if you publish it now it's going to be all about his personal story it's going to be all about his suffering it's it's

not going to be good for him it's going to screw him basically he will never even write anything good you know he'll get too confused. And he said I married Normally I would say you're right but in this case we've got to take into account he is very ill. He could die at any time. He's not going to have you know 20 30 more years to develop as an artist. Whatever he has now we've got to totally give it and I'm like You're right you're right. So I have the book. It goes on to publish many more and there's a whole I don't know how to fast forward this in the future at a certain point he's not only talking to me he's talking to every writer on the block he's talking Finally he moves up to movie stars and rock stars. He has this read in public for him because he's too terrified to read in public he can't be in public so could you please read for me I'm so afraid. So we're kind of reluctantly say OK. And they're fun they're fun to do the readings and they're with you know all these like Charlie Manson his tears of some pink and and and at a certain point it begins to get weird. One of his movies is optioned

by Gus Van Sant. He's not afraid to meet him optioned by somebody else I can't remember a name anymore some Italian movie star there are stories about him making out with her. Not afraid to do that with her. Like all this stuff starts happening. The pictures start appearing in Vanity Fair this kind of odd looking person who doesn't look at all like the boy I remember meeting. But whatever I say you look different is we're communicating through e-mail so you look kind of different. I'm on cortisone now because I'm trying to trim on all these hormones and I'm trying to turn into a girl just like my mom was one. At this point I'm thinking something's funny here. I don't know what it is that something funny is going on anyway doesn't have any time to talk to me anyway because he's on the phone with movie stars all the time and the conversations began being weird. I mean they just were weird. I remember at one point hearing about Shirley Manson I was being read and email pages long from Shirley Manson at one point and I held the phone

away. I came back to still going on. Here it is a can of whatever this is it's not a conversation I don't want to have these things anymore. But when the story broke that actually this JT that I was not a boy at all was of middle age woman named Laura Albert who I had met in the coffee shop and actually looked incredibly young I thought this was an 18 year old she was in her 30s. I actually was kind of relieved. I didn't feel cheated or horrified or hurt at all and maybe I would have if it happened during the initial romance with the you know song playing in the background and the baby would not not that it was like that but you know what I mean the feeling was really strong. I might have felt really upset then. But I mean anybody by that point anybody was paying any attention would have to know there was something weird happening here. I didn't know what it was but it couldn't. Clearly that was not being as it was represented. And I actually found it kind of delightful.

I don't know why that is. People I understand people being angry but it was such a brilliant put on. I mean my God it was so funny. He made fools of everybody. She she she I should say. And it was almost like if you ever saw the movie called The flim flam man how many I've seen that's an old movie George C. Scott isn't it. It's some trick where you pretend you found a bunch of money and you approach a stranger and try to persuade them to trick the bank into doubling it for you. It's basically you can only trick the person as it is it's part to the extent they're willing to be dishonest in a way that's what she did. She like mirrored back to people these very flattering images and to the extent you got drawn in to the extent you were willing to be fooled. So it was really kind of it was really kind of perfect and it was just also very it was just such an interesting experience. And I didn't I had to ask myself at one point why are you matter about this. And partly it's because I was just over it. I

just knew this is bullshit. I don't know what it is but suppose that I wasn't involved anymore. But also I. I actually asked myself was there malice here was this person trying to hurt me or anybody. I can't speak for other people but I never felt she was out to hurt anybody. I felt that she needed to rep to do this because most people could not maintain it it went on for over 10 years. Most people could not do this it would drive them insane. No sane person would want to do this that could have been that much money involved when there was money but. Oh I think I really believe she had to. It was her only way of being in the world I mean I understood. Apparently people were saying all the whole time they would talk she got this weird person who I was seeing pictures of named Savannah the blonde girl was a girl she was a relative. I don't remember Steve the niece or something and she was she was. People would cluster around her thinking she was the

magical J.T. LeRoy and say about this crazy bitch Laura Albert. You should ditch her she's awful. She's creepy. She's manipulating you not realizing that was who they were in love with. She couldn't be loved as herself she had to make up this beautiful boy. I mean when I talked to her about it afterwards I said why do you make yourself a boy why couldn't you be a girl. She said nobody gives a shit about girls. I don't know if that's true but she believed that she could say girls get raped all the time. Nobody gives a fuck about girls rape a boy it's a tragedy. I don't necessarily believe that but she did. So anyway that's it was interesting. Also she was funny. I e-mailed her and I said she thought I didn't know it. Well I don't know I shouldn't told this person with this point I shouldn't. Anyway anybody

else. I really don't know. The hardest part about writing is doing it. I think writing is horrible. Occasionally it comes easily to me but mostly it doesn't. Somebody once said to me he was a journalist so he was talking about a different kind of writing but he said there are two kinds of writing assignments. The ones that you think are going to be easy and turn out to be hard and the ones that you know are going to be hard and turn out to be hard. I pretty much find it like that too. Relatively speaking there are some that come out pretty clear pretty quickly but most of them don't. That one I just read took me over a year to write and I had to do it eight times. I had to rewrite it eight times. But I don't know how I got here. I mean I mean that sounds really stupid but I don't I can't really say I did this and then I did

this and this is how it happened I mean I could give you technical things about finding an agent or how I met an editor but I don't know. I'm not sure how I developed my writing and I hope it gets better. I hope it keeps developing. I have a fear of just being stagnant and not being able to keep going. I think there's a danger when you develop a critical reputation that you start believing it. Whether it's bad I mean some of it's not good actually Or it's good you begin to believe it and then you start writing like Mary Gates Gill or whoever you are. And it's it's it's a problem. So I've always I hope I've other a few myself more free of that now actually I include them if I think they're good enough to be published. Although there's one story in here I'm out Asli not crazy about. I went back and forth with my editor about it. I finally included it as line by line I think it's good.

But that's really the only thing I think about as this is good enough to be in print. There were three stories that got left out of this. I had of the how I will order them is just kind of intuitive. I loaded a lot of the lot of the weaker stories are up front in this one. They start in my mind to get better as they go along. But I don't and perhaps that wasn't a good idea strategically but that was just how they were connected in my mind like I always almost always put a story about young people at the beginning. I put college town in front just because they were young people. You just start out with youth so and middle age woman ending at the end with a life crisis death your child being brought into the world. That just to me is a logical order. And then I put I think folksong second because it's so extreme in the surreal and the beginning story is so quotidian and normal mundane almost. So I want to just flip kind of to the opposite and

then I think the old version is next just the one that almost didn't get included because I think it blends the serial in the serial. So it connected that way. The I going to space because I actually think Old Virgin is rather turgid and filled with kind of morbidity and the I specced is kind of on that subject. The treatment of morbidity or the deep subjects that can be treated morbidly and. But after that well you get the idea. Just the connections are in my mind. Little boy is about a woman a mother feeling very maternal towards a boy that she's just seen. And the next day after that a man is traveling to visit his foster mother. It's kind of indirect mothering that way. That's the question is how do I decide when I'm done rewriting or working on a story it's purely intuitive. At a certain point I hope

that I know I hope I don't rewrite. Sometimes I wouldn't torture things to death. It's just in in to I just know. I'm very I when do I give up on a story I'm incredibly tenacious is both a flaw and for a writer it's a good thing. You kind of have to be in order to get published. I'm very reluctant to let go of a story. I'm like I squint my jaws on it and just chill until I feel it's finished. But a couple of times I have forced myself to drop it because it almost bothers me sometimes. I mean sometimes I'll be like this is a piece of shit it's awful I should drop it is terrible blah blah blah but I cannot let go of it. And one point only once can I make myself drop something. I said you're just going to you're done you're going to do this you're just going to let it go. You're just going to say to yourself you hate it it's a piece of garbage. Tear it up throw it in the garbage literally and I did and I regret it to

this day. I wish I had not done that. I mean in a weird way it was good to do it because I just I'm so nutty about finishing things whether I like them or not. But because the thing is you sometimes I know I've sometimes worked on things and thought they were awful. Put them away took it out six months later and it was actually one of the better things I've written. Sometimes you work on something you think it's great you look at it a year later it's embarrassing. Fortunately some time hopefully realize that for you put it in a book but I just think you can't know when you're working on it that's why I don't like 0 of them. Because you're I'm just been wrong too many times and I still think I probably should have thrown that one away. All right thank you very much.