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Memoir of a Memoir-Writing Class, Part Two:
The Battle of the Sandwiches

By Harris Bloom

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Click here to learn what this column is all about.

As was becoming the norm, I got to the school at 6:30, a half hour before class was scheduled to begin. I was the first student there. Five minutes later, Natalie, the Russian woman joined me. About fifty years old, she had a round face with perpetually half-closed blue eyes and large round eyeglasses. Her short blond hair had a yellowish tint and her small nose curled inward, like a parrot’s. After we exchanged pleasantries she asked me about the story I told last week, which detailed my excruciatingly boring job.

“Vy do you veel zee need to knock Accounting? I am accountant. I haf own computer. I haf own offeece. I haf own title.”

“I was joking,” I responded. Hoping to end the conversation quickly, I continued with a deadpan delivery that would have made Steven Wright proud, “I have only the highest regards for accountants and the accounting profession.” I glanced downward and recorded her admonishment in my notebook, serving the dual purpose of memorializing the brief chat and ending it. I was feeling less intimidated by the second, though more annoyed. Her own computer?

Timmy sauntered in, waved at Natalie and slid into the seat next to me. He was wearing another skintight shirt with red jeans, this time accessorized with purple hued sunglasses.

“Hey Haaaarris, how are youuu? How was your weeeek?” he asked in a mellifluous tone.

“Pretty good. I finished writing the story I’m submitting,” I said while fanning the fourteen copies of “Night of the Living Jews.”

“Oooh, lemmee see.”

“Sure.” I handed him a copy of my manuscript.

“Oh my God! ‘Night of the Living Jews!’ I love it already!” Timmy squealed.

The cute brainy-looking girl about my age, Gail, came in and started walking across the room even though there was an opening on my right. She’s not that cute anyway, I thought. Not that I cared, since I had a girlfriend. Watching her surreptitiously, she stopped in her tracks a couple of feet away from the seat she appeared headed to, made a u-turn and sat next to me. Maybe she figured, Enough game playing. The class is only for ten weeks and therefore, there’s no time for playing hard to get. Too bad, she’s going to be crushed when she finds out about my girlfriend. Then again, maybe she spotted some unidentifiable liquid on the seat she was originally headed to. At any rate, I smiled and she smiled back. She is cute, I thought.

“So how was your week?” I asked Timmy.

“The usual – did some dancing and a lot of drinking.”

“So what did ya think of the first week?”

“I liked it. Seems to be a good bunch of people. Kinda early to tell though. What did you think?”

“I dunno. I came in worried that I was getting myself in over my head, but I don’t think that’ll be the case.”

“Me too! Now, I’m not sure everyone here can even read a book in English, much less write one.”

“Really. I’m also not getting a great vibe from the teacher.”

“Me neither! But she seems to like you.”

“Maybe, but did ya notice her proclivity to bring everything around to her sort of feminist view of the world?”

“Yes! Oh my God, totally! But more important, can you believe that outfit she was wearing? You talk about someone who needs a queer eye looking after her.”

“Yeah, I guess I noticed, but I don’t really care what she wears.”

“Hey, if you can be all offended about her feminism, I can be offended by her wardrobe.”

* * *

Eventually the rest of the class made their way in and the three of us supposed to bring manuscripts in were asked to hand them out to the class. A few people commented on my risqué title. I smiled sheepishly, although I knew this wasn’t my target audience, I hoped they liked the story.

The teacher collected our homework, which was to “free write” for thirty minutes. Free writing is recording anything that comes to mind, the only rule being that you keep pen to paper for the entire time. As Michelle will see when she reviews them, my own free write did not go so well.

The half-hour assignment took me half a day to complete. If I handed in what I wrote after the allotted time, the teacher would have learned that I woke up with a pain in my left shoulder and I really enjoy walking in the city with hot coffee on a brisk day. I find writing difficult enough when I know where I am going with the story. I ended up handing in a page and a half about my hermit crabs and their mass suicide. They were my only childhood pets due to asthma. Mine, not theirs. Anyway, they hated me, and took their own lives. One morning I found them all dead in one corner of their tank.

Much like my life, the story was aimless and ended in death (well, I assume my life will end in death). Although I understood that the point of the assignment was to get our creative juices flowing and bypass self-critical thoughts, it didn’t work for me. I felt worse about my potential. Also, my anal nature would not allow me to write without correcting punctuation or grammatical errors as we we’d been taught in school.  If this was a typical writer’s exercise and I was unable to do it, then maybe I wasn’t cut out for this.

* * *

Our in-class exercise involved writing and then reading to the class about something that happened to us recently that “seemed small but had a larger meaning.” We had ten minutes. Once again, forced to write under pressure, I choked…badly.

I told a miserably inane story about eating a tuna sandwich on whole wheat bread for lunch the previous week. The crux of the story was that the tuna sandwich was sitting in the sandwich case at the corner deli next to a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich on a Kaiser roll. Sure, I would have preferred the ham and cheese sandwich, but since I had recently started to try to eat better, I reached for the healthier tuna. My discipline gave me a good start to my diet, and I continued to eat well all week.

Thanks to my fear of public speaking and hatred for my own story, I read it aloud with the confidence of a thirteen-year-old boy asking a girl out on a date. My voice cracked several times, each time I felt my face flush.

The story wasn’t even true. Well, half the story was. I did make the conscious decision to eat the tuna over the ham sandwich, but ate half a bag of Hershey miniatures throughout the afternoon, thereby ending my “diet.” I didn’t know what that one particular exercise had to do with writing a memoir but then again, I didn’t know why I had to learn trigonometry in seventh grade and now I’m ever so grate-.. .well, I’m sure the meaning will become clear sooner or later.

After my epic Battle of the Sandwiches, the lady who read after me started, “It is August 25, 2002, and my brother is having brain surgery tomorrow.”

* * *

During the fifteen-minute break I asked Timmy why he wanted to be a writer.

“I just think it would be so cool to be invited to great parties and give readings for fans and work whenever I wanted to.”

“You certainly sound dedicated to your craft.”

“I guess it does sound kind of superficial,” he replied without a trace of shame.

“No, not at all. I think Shakespeare is on record with the same reasons.”
I turned to Gail, “So what do you think so far?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I hear ya.”

One of the older women in the class walked up to me. Though her name was Sarah, Timmy, Gail, and I began to refer to her as Skeletor. She was in her early 50’s, 5’5” tall and no more than 90 pounds. Her hair was auburn and straw-like, and she dressed like Britney Spears…everything tight and low cut.

“I just wanted to tell you that I started reading your story and I think it’s really good.”

“Thanks!” I excitedly replied, “Appreciate it.” Cool, I have a fan that isn’t related to or sleeping with me.

“I did notice though a lot of grammatical errors…”

“Uh huh.”

“And I just want you to know that I do some freelance editing...”

“Uh huh.”

“And I would like to offer you my services.”

“Uh huh. Well, thanks…lemmeee think about it.”

When Skeletor walked away, Gail said, “Sorry.”

I nodded my head and looked down.

* * *

After the break, Michelle brought up the concept of "universality," which are aspects of the human condition that everyone can relate too. Examples include love, grief, rejection, hope and donuts. Well, I thought donuts were universal. Michelle disagreed. At any rate, the lesson was that we must incorporate those concepts in our stories to make readers interested. So much for my “The Day I Did Nothing” story idea.

As the teacher relayed, as an example, a short story of hers which detailed her affair with a married man (good Lord), I found myself curious about the manuscripts I’d get to read during the week. Since they were to be reviewed the same week as mine, I could not help but wonder how they stacked up. I took a peek at Gail’s. It was exactly what I feared. Three pages of poetic prose, full of words I would have to look up, and more metaphors than a Dennis Miller stand-up routine. Then I looked at Juanita’s story.

Oh my God.

Click here to read last week's column.
Next Time, Part Three: I think I’m in the wrong writing class.

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Harris Bloom lives and works in New York City. When he's not watching The Shawshank Redemption on the station that knows drama, he's hard at work on a short story collection. He can be reached here.

© 2004 Me Three