The Writing Life Too

Pale, pale blue grey sky and now summer has officially arrived. I went for a long walk last night down the Springwater Trail and the cottonwood blooms were floating on the night breeze and so thick on the ground it looked like a snowfall. No wonder my allergies have been driving me crazy.

Every month one of my favorite days is when my copy of The Sun magazine arrives. In case you’re not familiar with it, it is a literary magazine published from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It has no advertising in it and each month features an in-depth interview, essays, memoir excerpts, short stories, photography and poetry. The writing is first rate, the photography is evocative, and each issue is based around a theme.

However, when I receive the magazine, I always first turn to Readers Write section. In it, readers from all over write about their personal experiences on a single topic. This month is was “in the bedroom” and I read a piece by a man in Alexandria, Virginia about his childhood memory of sharing his bedroom with a younger sister with a heart defect. Because she was so ill, she rarely left the house and was not permitted to exert herself. On weekend mornings she’d crawl into his bed and they’d talk for hours and his sister would ask him about school and the world outside their home.

On a Friday he was sent to spend the weekend with an aunt and when his father drove him home on Monday explained that his sister had died over the weekend. She’d also been buried over the weekend in his absence to spare him the grief. When they returned home all her things had been removed from the bedroom. He writes: “The room I had longed to have to myself now seemed barren and lonely. I sat on my bed for hours, staring at her empty one, not even realizing I was crying until I felt my wet cheek.”

The June issue also contained an essay by Peter Selgin, The Man From ‘Stanbul. The essay is about, of all things, his enlarged prostate and the pain thereof. Selgin takes us through agonizing moments spent over the commode struggling to pee and to various doctor’s appointments as he tries to find a cure. Now, I’ve always been a woman who has been annoyed and fascinated by men’s relationships with their penis. Like many women, I’ve long been weary of the world’s preoccupation with all things penile and have questioned how a few inches of flesh has carried such significance in lives and cultures. And caused so much pain, violence, and craziness. So I wasn’t exactly thrilled when I at first realized I was to be taken on this journey of penis troubles….but oh my, what a trip.

The essay is wicked and hilarious and intimate and silly. I cannot recommend it enough. At one point he writes: “And now we come to that delicate portion of my story wherein I must tell you about my orgasms. Yes, I must. I said I once peed like an angel. Well, I used to come like the devil. I’ve seen enough porno flicks to know the difference between a squirt and a spurt, and I spurted. Back in those innocent days when hand jobs were about all a young lover could reasonably expect, a girlfriend of mine once remarked (on witnessing this spectacle the first time), “Wow, it’s like a fountain!” And it was, my own Old Faithful.”

When we leave Selgin with much reluctance in the final paragraph, he’s about to undergo a procedure that might cure him. Read it and laugh out loud. Also, if you don’t subscribe to The Sun, consider it, it’s well worth the price. Selgin’s also the author of By Cunning and Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers. His website is at www.peterselgin.com.