An Author’s Notes
A Hershey bar melting on a black dashboard. Waves breaking in the distance. And a boy, not quite ten, killing time in the back seat, waiting to grow up.
The day had started out with cartoons; Johnny Quest and his best friend Haji. Chased by a plate of Eggo waffles, each bite drenched in Log Cabin syrup. This was, I knew, their attempt at a bribe, dessert before the main course, an hour stuck in the back of St. Vincent’s, fidgeting to the word of God. Once that was over, once we were back home, my parents would then have at it, loving the way they could hate each other. The way they had someone to blame.
What got me through it, what kept me alive, were all things that weren’t really there. Things that other people had imagined, or I’d imagined on my own. Hal Jordan and his emerald ring. Jean val Jean and his one loaf of bread. Or the stories I’d scrawl on the back of my homework, trying to stay awake in class. Through words I could find it, a world that worked. A world that had me in it. Where happy people had happy kids, as inevitable as the sunrise.
Eventually, I stumbled onto the truth. There were two paths that promised survival. Accepting the givens, the insults of life, or else pretending they didn’t exist. And writing? Writing was a happy marriage, unlike the one I’d witnessed, a constant dance between one and the other, between cold facts and make-believe. If I can make you smile once or twice, then I’ve done my job. And if, at the same time, I can get you to flinch, then I bump up to time-and-a-half.
Because this is what we offer each other, author and reader alike. The ultimate alchemy, pain into pleasure, truth with a side of lies.