All the World’s a Stage, and We Are Merely Trust Fund Brats

Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and then they grow up to live comfortable, uneventful lives.  Poor them: they’ve got nothing to write about.

Other people are already sitting on a goldmine of tragedy and dysfunction by the time they hit their tortured adolescence, and if they’ve got any talent at all, they’re gonna be able to cash in on all that misery somehow, some day.

Most of us, however, are stuck in the artistic middle class: people with middling talent, managing okay on the four basic food groups, with the occasional insight, coincidence or juicy detail to pretty up our plates -- but we’re always dreaming we’ll luck out with a “cash cow” topic or angle, something we can milk for all it’s worth.

Every once in a while, someone does strike it rich. Tennyson, for example. He wouldn’t have amounted to much, except that his best friend drowned in a shipwreck in his early twenties, giving him a whole lot of valuable material. Lord Tennyson, Pirate, Plunderer, and Poet Laureate: he found a treasure chest at the bottom of the ocean, atop the watery grave of a boy he’d once loved.  There he was, mucking about in the depths of his grief, filling his shoes, his socks, and the pockets of his eyes with pearls and heavy coins, and lo & behold, instead of weighing him down, all that treasure propelled him to the surface, where he was immediately rescued by a luxury yacht, zipped to the harbor, and greeted by the ooompah-oompah fanfare of a big brass band.  It’s a wonder he didn’t get the bends.  Actually, Tennyson did suffer a bit from g(u)ilt.  In one of his poems, for example, he speculates about the emotional bankruptcy of profiting from what should have been pure loss.  However, Tennyson seems to have recovered from this crisis of conscience with his relish for rhyme intact: he went on to have a long and happy life, during which he produced a lot of mediocre drivel.  Ah, happy endings, parting is such sweet sorrow, etc., etc.

But these are the esoteric mumblings of an English Ph.D. dropout.  For another example of the way in which we writers (and would-be writers) like to capitalize on the stuff that happens to us in our lives, and then feel all weird about that, and then write about feeling all weird about it, let’s look at some stuff that’s happening to me, shall we?

I seem to have married into an upper-middle class family.  It’s a family with a little more than its fair share of artistic capital.  The question that’s coming up now is, have we come by our “money” honestly?

Which brings me to the event that sparked this self-indulgent “all that glisters” post. 

Parker’s mother called me the other day.  There’s a distinct possibility of an audit, and Helen is freaking out.

It turns out that her most recent play, the one she and Liz wrote together, will probably end up on stage.  What that means is that MY PARENTS and PEOPLE MY PARENTS KNOW are likely to see the play, read reviews about the play, or at least hear gossip about the play.

Because there will be gossip.  We’re probably talking small town, small potatoes gossip, but that can be plenty uncomfortable for your average small-time farmer, y’know?

You see, the characters in the play are based on real-life characters.  The plot basically centers around Helen’s ex-husband, Parker and Liz’s dad, who was at one time a minor celebrity.  The other members of the cast will basically be playing the parts of Helen, Liz, Parker…and, oh yeah, me. Twiny Viny, thinly disguised as a donut-eating hedonist.  Oh, wait, I am a donut-eating hedonist….

Anyway, this is one play my parents are going to want to see. 

There’s just one problem: even after Parker and I helped Helen revise the script (see my post “Intermission with the Ambassador”), hacking out the polyamory propaganda and replacing it with cleverly staged psycho-drama, the whole dramatic arc still hinges on the revelation of certain family secrets.  A big one is Parker’s and my unconventional marriage, which functions as a plot device and an important thematic element.

So, naturally, people who watch it are going to wonder if, in real life, Parker and I are polyamorous.

My parents already know the answer to this question, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to enjoy being dragged into a public conversation about it.

Ergo, Helen’s dilemma: “What am I going to tell your mother, Viny?  I don’t want her to hate me.  This is what always happens to writers.  They write about the people they know, and then people they know start hating them. They lose all their friends.”

In fact, Helen is so worried about upsetting my mother, she was actually contemplating lying to the press, should the press begin to press the poly issue.  “Maybe we could just say that we made up the polyamory thing, because it fits so perfectly with the theme?”

“Better not,” I said. “If you tell that story, and anyone asks me about it, I’m going to end up contradicting you.”

Yes, it might be just a little uncomfortable for me, being publicly “outed” – on stage, no less! – with no control over who might be in the audience.  However, I’d rather Helen air the family's dirty laundry than launder the family's dirty money.  When it comes to artistic capital, I’m a stickler for clear accounting.