Back on my bullshit & back on the ‘Brance
By: Allison Gruber
Tags: Election 2020, LGBT, Breast Cancer, Meaning Of Life

I started writing a play today.

Thinly, oh so thinly, based on my experiences in this past year.

Whatever.

Very little fiction is pure fiction — most fiction is cut with a fair amount of lived experience, lived truth.

So I’m doing absolutely nothing wrong. I am violating no “writer’s oath.”

I always love when Terry Gross (I love Terry Gross!) is interviewing a novelist and she says something like, “So the main character’s mother goes into a nursing home, and I know your own mother went into a nursing home — is there any connection?”

C’mon, Ms. Gross. Quit being coy. You KNOW there’s a connection.

No writer worth their salt WOULD NOT USE

their mother-in-the-nursing-home or their really-ugly-breakup or

their shocking-stage-iv-cancer-diagnosis as a prompt.

If you are a writer

and you never draw from your own suffering

you are only

making your job

tougher.

Trust me.

Don’t run out and get cancer or have a bad relationship or throw your mother in a nursing home, but if you ever have a tragedy

(and if you live long enough, I’m sorry, but you will),

and you’re a writer/filmmaker/playwright/dancer — whatever

— and you don’t use that tragedy to your art’s advantage?

You’re not thinking well.

It’s not exploiting your own suffering.

You can’t exploit yourself. (Well, you probably can, but that’s for a different post.)

You can only use your own very real bullshit to

help other people know they’re not alone

in their bullshit or at the very least,

to help other people know

there are other people out there

with bullshit way worse

than your own: so be NICE.

Today was day six “back on the ‘Brance” — back on the Ibrance, I mean.

I feel a little tired. Ibrance always makes me feel gross, but

that’s what caffeine and cannabis and hard laughter are for.

Tomorrow, after my online classes, I’m masking up and heading to campus

to have “one last class” in the room where I’ve taught for the past (nearly)

seven years.

My students will consist of six former students.

Some are done with college,

some are just beginning.

Some never went to college at all.

We’re going to mask up and stand in Room 13, with its beautiful view, and read some good quotes about life, about beauty, about truth. And then we’re going to say “see you later, room 13” — and maybe none of us will ever

see room 13 again. Maybe none of us,

including me, will ever see this room again

(for one reason or another) and

that’s absolutely okay.

Nothing, and I mean

NO THING

is forever.

The biggest regret

with people and places

always comes from the omissions —

“should haves.”

Should have seen the Tower of London.

Should have stopped smoking.

Should have told ___ what s/he meant to me . . .

I have no space

for “should have,” so

I’m going to say goodbye, even if

it ends up being a simple

“see you later.”

I’m tired of goodbyes. I want more “see you laters.”

Because of COVID, and Trump’s mishandling, I haven’t

seen my sister in more than

a year and a half. And if you have a sister, or sibling

whose company you really enjoy, who you really love

you know fully

how long this is. Had I known

when I last saw her

in the summer of 2019

that it would be the last foreseeable time

we would see one another . . . well . . .

I probably would have never

let her or myself

go.

The sibling shit is real, my people.

If you have siblings, you know what I mean.

Anyway, I’m tired of goodbyes.

I’m ready to move to Tucson and start over, to

see Biden/Harris peacefully transferred into the White House

to have a dishwasher (as I told a friend today: deep, deep down

inside of me is a very, very basic bitch who wants a dishwasher

and central air and bedroom doors that

actually close.)

In my mind, no matter what happens to my body or my mind,

I am already somewhere else, somewhere better — I am awake.

Awake for

perhaps

the first time in my life.