Another MFA prep class tonight - and my work's under the group's gaze. As I mentioned earlier, the workshop has a silent subtitle none of us knew upon entry: An MFA Prep Course: Give Us Your Gay.
And the silent 7th step: Now Go Be Happy and Super Sub-Textually Gay!
Yup, you heard me right. Every single story we've read so far has focused on gender-bending and as much as I hate to admit it, my submission's not totally in the clear, either. What is it about my generation, perhaps this specific fiction-writing central-Brooklyn-dwelling slice of it, that so wants to explore gender and the dramatic tension of homosexuality? And why am I doing it too? Where are the good ol' boy stories of dogs with horrible diseases that Pa needs to shoot, or the Great War ambulance drivers impregnating frigid nurses, or fourteen-year-olds doing blow? Where are the traditional story-lines on which we were raised?
Well, I'll keep you posted on how it goes. Seriously, though -- more stories with minors doing hard drugs. Less with the same middle-class twentysomethings trading chaste kisses in the name of sexual exploration. It takes a village, after all.
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