What Can We Not Talk Abou ?
Yes, The T Is Dropped Intentionally
What Is Your Douche Commercial?
At the holidays my family gathered in crowded, multi-generational get-togethers. An over-heated farmhouse, the fireplace always blazing. Yet we didn’t really talk, not about anything more important than, say, our jobs or the weather. A loud television always blasted away in some room. We all ignored the TV and mostly each other—that’s until a douche commercial came on. The sudden appearance of something so lovely-&-pastel-&-soft-focused-yet-so-radioactive drove everyone into talking at full volume. WHAT ARE YOU STUDYING IN SCHOOL THIS TERM?! HAVE YOU MET ANY NICE GIRLS?! Everyone engaged with everyone for the duration of the douche commercial—here’s five minutes of them, and if Amy Tan is still stymied about how mothers and daughters can bond, well, this seems to be the answer.
This clip depicts the family dynamic perfectly.1
Which Leads Us To …
Over-talking. This past week I was invited to a political meeting. A gathering of artists and writers and filmmakers, we’d been asked to contribute ideas to the platform of a rising local candidate. It was more or less this. Minus the robust singing. And minus the romantic yearning between Beatty and Keaton. That, and minus the good hats.
The candidate made a passionate speech. Guests floated proposals. The host of the event knew certain people had brought thought-out ideas, and called on those persons. Among them, me. In big groups I tend to be a Diane Keaton rather than a Warren Beatty. Just let me stand back here, in the back, way over here. Which brings us to something drilled into people during the est training: What’s the “listening” in the room? Meaning: What’s the mood? Who’s present, and what do they expect? What will those people allow? Whatever your message is, valid or not, you have to tailor it to the room. You have to gauge the listening …
Which I Seem To Have Botched
A few words into my proposal, someone interrupted with a joke. A couple words later, another joker heckled. On a third false start, another heckler interjected. Around the fifth false start, I got flustered, apologized, and left.2 The earnest host followed me to the elevator—“Keep going, you salty old bastard!!”—but the moment was lost. For weeks I’d been testing my proposal on friends, and had even hired a lawyer and a CPA to test the legality of the concept. The idea held water, and people engaged with it—outside of this group. At last week’s get-together, clearly I was a douche commercial. Either people didn’t want to hear the proposal, or they didn’t want to hear me; in either case, you have to cut your losses.
Which Brings Us Back To …
What do people refuse to discuss or even allow to be discussed in a room?
All roads bring us back to Rosemary’s Baby and Thalidomide. Ira Levin’s first proposal, and that of The Midwitch Cuckoos: What if you were pregnant and didn’t know the true nature of your unborn child? How would you eventually manage the outcome? Would you destroy the unusual child—as done in Midwitch—or keep and raise the child, as done in Rosemary? The culture couldn’t discuss the actual outcome of Thalidomide, so it was ripe for a metaphor.
To broaden the idea, years back there was an off-Broadway play—The Twilight of the Golds—that floated the idea of genetic testing for homosexuality. The playwright chose for the parents to abort the gay fetus, and that Midwitch Cuckoos ending gave the play a lot of buzz.
The point is, some topics are beyond the pale, meaning outside the boundaries of good taste. My chief flaw is that I’m really only attracted to those forbidden, tasteless topics. When the New York Times boasts “All the News That’s Fit to Print” I’m forced to read between their lines: What are they NOT telling us? Which, I’d always imagined, was the whole purpose of being a creative person. Thus it was even more vexing to wind up in a room full of “creatives” who needed to shout down a stupid idea.
Which Brings Us To …
As a newspaper reporter, I loved the police blotter. Here were all the stories unfit to print. As my editors would tell me, “Who wants to read that3 over breakfast?” and “That story will lose us retail display advertising linage!” The lurid news. The so-called unsavory. Regardless of how true, these stories would be stopped by the gatekeepers.
It’s why my grandparents kept a police scanner and learned to decipher the codes for different emergency calls. By codes and addresses, they could unpack all of the Peyton Place secrets of our small town. All the news that was unfit.
Which Brings Us Back To …
In the days when Mike’s hair was still blazingly, blindingly red, he came to one of our last big family get-togethers. As per usual, no one talked about anything much. Yes, they talked, a lot, but dialog almost never carries much weight. That’s until one elderly relative downed one drink too many and began to recollect a long-lost friend.
This century-ago friend and my then-young relative had shared a cabin in the Bitterroot Mountains. Two teenagers, snowed in all winter, they’d been running a trap line together. The friend’s name had been Patrick, big Irish Patrick, and he’d had blazingly red hair. And as my elderly relative talked, his eyes misted over to the point of weeping about Patrick. His description of ginger Patrick—his handsomeness, his exuberance—had edged toward worship. All this talk about a long-lost friend. A stranger from a time before marriage and children. All this talk about his freckles. Well, no douche commercial ever drove my family crazier.
Fairly shouting, “You’ve had too much to drink, old man!” several generations heckled this old guy. This weepy, tipsy old man, who’d trembled on the brink of telling us TMI as he recalled Patrick’s red hair and how it had looked against the Montana snow. Big, heroic Patrick. In the end, family members dragged him bodily from the room and forced him to go to bed. But not before I’d noticed what we could not discuss.
In hindsight, all of that event was interesting and sad and absolutely captivating. If you only get to keep a few events in life, that was a keeper.4
And, If You Ask Me
To be a writer is not about depicting what people really want to discuss. Writing is more about noting what people Don’t want to discuss. What will they drive from the room?
But always, gauge the room. What’s the listening? Will they even allow your story? If you’re going to be a radioactive douche commercial, don’t take it personally. Lump it, and take note of how douche commercials panic people. Some people.
Then go be a douche commercial somewhere else.5
For extra credit, read Nora Ephron’s classic essay Dealing with the, Uh, Problem. If you can find it. Better yet, buy a book that includes it. The essay is worth owning.6
This film is always my favorite in the suicide-murder-witness formula. Red Buttons—still in his good-boy sailor suit, a perennial child—kills himself with effort, just as the horse does in Animal Farm. While Fonda becomes our murder victim, and the well-intentioned killer becomes our POV character, the witness, stating the record for the judge (who is us).
This clever maneuver is called “Throwing a hissy fit.”
Meaning anything “marginal.”
That was thirty years ago, this coming December. Mike’s hair no longer blazes.
This is no doubt my most Nora Ephron closing line—evah. Geez she was smart.
And for a really, really Nora Ephron pay-off, I’d tell you my political proposal here. But I’m not. There’s only one Nora Ephron.
Love how you utilized your bold headings. Reading this was fun and intriguing. Hmmm… yes, try a different audience.
I sometimes wonder if dangerous metaphors are going to be more or less effective in this current age where things seem to be taken a lot more literally (regardless of whether in good or bad faith). This neurotic need to place everything into categories and label everything — like books with warning/trigger labels — is the death of nuance.
I also sometimes think that people can be so frustrated due to not being able to talk about a certain topic that when eventually something comes along that does — be it book, movie, etc — it may be more “refreshing” if it does so outrightly. If it “tears the band-aid off” and does so without compromise or concern.