Flirt: The Interviews by Lorna Jackson
Authors: Lorna Jackson
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Language Arts & Disciplines, Short Stories (Single Author), Communication Studies
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ward?
âYes.
âSo they pumped my stomach and stitched my wrists â
âWhat was in the stomach?
âTurpentine. Champagne.
âI wonder if that kind of corrosion would permanently damage a stomach?
âI wonder, too. The doctor said, âWe donât want a woman who carves and poisons herself living in our community. Come back when youâre ready to be part of the community.â And the next morning they flew me down to Comox in a little Cessna 180.
âSeems like a hypocritical thing for a doctor to say. After all, Iâm sure there were worse than you in the seventies in a place like that.
âTough love?
âNonsense.
âIt was a good time to leave. I remember not much.
âMemory is a very interesting organ. I bet if you started to write a story
â not autobiographical, but personal â about that time, I bet youâd begin to recover details and feelings and events. Theyâd be suspect in their accuracy, of course, but youâd have them.
âNot yet. Iâm not hungry for those details yet. And the story seems sort of bewildering and pathetic. I was wrong about everything.
âOh, the story could work around that. Give that young woman a little more power, blonder hair and a head scarf, or maybe set it in the sixties, and really work out the landscape so the storyâs also about that, and I think youâd have an interesting moment to play with. But these things take time, youâre right. A story canât always be squeezed out of history. With me, writing has something to do with the fight against death, the feeling that we lose everything every day, and writing is a way of convincing yourself
perhaps that youâre doing something about this. Youâre not really, because the writing itself does not last much longer than you do; but I would say itâs partly the feeling that I canât stand to have things go . . . Speaking of hungry. Thereâs a Dutchman down the way who makes divine sausage and bakes his own sourdough buns. He usually has a bottle of Kenyan beer tucked in a cooler under his tailgate.
âIt seems to me your stories are getting sexier.
âWell, you may be right. Hello Harry! Heâs handsome, donât you think? His wifeâs arms jiggle and she talks about her sonsâ PhDs too much. Still.
âMost of them begin with a paragraph loaded with female desire, female want, some naughty language. And later that desire is mocked, then refused and finally satisfied in some way.
âWhat story are you thinking of?
ââFloating Bridge.â
âOf course. You would like that story, given the lives youâve led.
âI love that story.
âI do, too. But tell me why.
âFor all the right crafty reasons: the invisibly-stitched physical description of characters; the ambiguous relationship between the cancerous woman, Jinny, and her asshole husband, Neal; the plottiness that has become a bit of a pattern in your later work whereby a caregiver or nurse â a third party â is introduced into an existing relationship; the class-conscious settings of paradise and its opposites; your weaving of present and past. I love it for your skill, is what Iâm saying, and how you manage to dance so much so fast, without your tights getting saggy.
âIâm not sure that metaphor quite works. But add it to the list.
âAnd because Iâm getting older and because men . . . I, but they, we â well, the ending.
âRickyâs kiss on the bridge pleases you, doesnât it.
âIt really really does. When the boy drives poor Jinny home â theyâve only just met â and he stops and they look at the stars on the bridge. Sheâs forgotten her hat in the corn field and she has only a nob of a head. He
touches her waist and kisses her. He says âoh.â I asked my friend Johnny why Ricky kisses her.
âOh, Iâd like to hear a
âYes.
âSo they pumped my stomach and stitched my wrists â
âWhat was in the stomach?
âTurpentine. Champagne.
âI wonder if that kind of corrosion would permanently damage a stomach?
âI wonder, too. The doctor said, âWe donât want a woman who carves and poisons herself living in our community. Come back when youâre ready to be part of the community.â And the next morning they flew me down to Comox in a little Cessna 180.
âSeems like a hypocritical thing for a doctor to say. After all, Iâm sure there were worse than you in the seventies in a place like that.
âTough love?
âNonsense.
âIt was a good time to leave. I remember not much.
âMemory is a very interesting organ. I bet if you started to write a story
â not autobiographical, but personal â about that time, I bet youâd begin to recover details and feelings and events. Theyâd be suspect in their accuracy, of course, but youâd have them.
âNot yet. Iâm not hungry for those details yet. And the story seems sort of bewildering and pathetic. I was wrong about everything.
âOh, the story could work around that. Give that young woman a little more power, blonder hair and a head scarf, or maybe set it in the sixties, and really work out the landscape so the storyâs also about that, and I think youâd have an interesting moment to play with. But these things take time, youâre right. A story canât always be squeezed out of history. With me, writing has something to do with the fight against death, the feeling that we lose everything every day, and writing is a way of convincing yourself
perhaps that youâre doing something about this. Youâre not really, because the writing itself does not last much longer than you do; but I would say itâs partly the feeling that I canât stand to have things go . . . Speaking of hungry. Thereâs a Dutchman down the way who makes divine sausage and bakes his own sourdough buns. He usually has a bottle of Kenyan beer tucked in a cooler under his tailgate.
âIt seems to me your stories are getting sexier.
âWell, you may be right. Hello Harry! Heâs handsome, donât you think? His wifeâs arms jiggle and she talks about her sonsâ PhDs too much. Still.
âMost of them begin with a paragraph loaded with female desire, female want, some naughty language. And later that desire is mocked, then refused and finally satisfied in some way.
âWhat story are you thinking of?
ââFloating Bridge.â
âOf course. You would like that story, given the lives youâve led.
âI love that story.
âI do, too. But tell me why.
âFor all the right crafty reasons: the invisibly-stitched physical description of characters; the ambiguous relationship between the cancerous woman, Jinny, and her asshole husband, Neal; the plottiness that has become a bit of a pattern in your later work whereby a caregiver or nurse â a third party â is introduced into an existing relationship; the class-conscious settings of paradise and its opposites; your weaving of present and past. I love it for your skill, is what Iâm saying, and how you manage to dance so much so fast, without your tights getting saggy.
âIâm not sure that metaphor quite works. But add it to the list.
âAnd because Iâm getting older and because men . . . I, but they, we â well, the ending.
âRickyâs kiss on the bridge pleases you, doesnât it.
âIt really really does. When the boy drives poor Jinny home â theyâve only just met â and he stops and they look at the stars on the bridge. Sheâs forgotten her hat in the corn field and she has only a nob of a head. He
touches her waist and kisses her. He says âoh.â I asked my friend Johnny why Ricky kisses her.
âOh, Iâd like to hear a
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