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Britva
Moderator   Posts: 37 Registered: 1/8/2003 Status: Offline
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posted on 18/4/2004 at 11:55 PM |
Testimony of a Disgraced Mother
By Anya
Dear Raphael,
This is perhaps not the best time to write this testimony to you. I know
that you are working really hard in Basic Training and still recovering
from the loss of your great grandmother. We rarely have the time to write
to each other due to these circumstances and because of my heavy college
and work schedule. Plus, by the time you get this testimony, it will be
Valentine's Day. However, I must write this to you, to relieve the
pressure for both of us.
On the first day we met, we were merely sophomores in the Lutheran
Brothers' Private School. Both of us came from families of businessmen and
doctors and both of us were the intellectuals in our Sociology class. No
one excelled us in the Social Sciences; even our instructor learned a great
deal from us. Whenever we competed each other in the class games, we
always tied. Classmates admired us yet hated us; they envied us for our
intellectual superiority. We were exalted in our serious studies, treated
as gods and devils in the class. By the end of the semester, we knew each
other - in fact, we knew each other too well.
At the peak of the second semester, we became soulmates. Arguments kept at
minimal levels. Intellectual debate and self-reflection were the
fundamentals of our time together. Apart from gender, there were no
differences between us in personality and common interests. We mastered
the Cold Mind; we rationalized situations, letting our feelings for each
other be the only emotions to guide our lives. Not even God himself
could make us react without proper logic...or the means to satisfy our
selves.
The Cold Mind was a powerful foundation in our relationship. The cold
mindset that we both possessed benefited our relationship in many ways.
For one, we never held the heated arguments that most couples in our time
had. Secondly, we found solutions to our problems easier through this
state of mind; emotions cloud logical judgment and therefore, we only
allowed our desire for stability and drive for knowledge to act within our
hearts. Both of us could not get hurt by the parting of friends, for they
were nothing more than acquaintances in our eyes. Knowledge was easier to
obtain and absorb. All problems were solved with our discipline and the
cutting of attachment.
For four straight years, our bond did not budge. In matter of fact, we
went to college together and majored in the same area: Psychology. At the
end of my sophomore year in college, you proposed to me at the Vietnam
Memorial. I said yes. Both of us were satisfied - it was a reasonable
step in our bonding. We were stable, we were rich, we were equally
responsible, and we were overachievers. Of course, our marriage would have
to wait until at least one of us earned a Master's Degree, but apart from
that, we made our one and only oath that night: to never do part.
After our engagement, we did what was considered taboo in our time; we had
our first sexual intercourse. The sexual intercourse was an experience for
us, something for us to learn from - after all, our instructors rarely got
into such anatomic functions due to the stigma of the act. Nights after, I
told you that I was pregnant with your child. You were as proud as any man
could get. Contrary to our cold mindset, you were dancing on the roof and
doing the most unreasonable stunts. You soon became more adventurous,
insisting that it would benefit our quest for knowledge. I reluctantly
agreed to accept your new thrill-seeking nature.
During the junior year of our college education, a military officer paid
you a visit. He wanted to recruit you for the Army. You talked to me
about the officer's proposal that night and I said it was up to you. That
was when you enlisted in the Military. After our junior year, you quickly
went to Basic Training.
In the same year, your great grandmother died. She lived a full one
hundred and twenty two years. You wrote to me in melancholy, expressing
how sad you were for being unable to attend her funeral. According to the
last letter you sent me, you still were recovering. As your fiance, I pass
my condolences to you.
I also give my condolences for what I am about to confess...
It has been a hard road. Logically, for the stability of our relationship,
ignorance for you would be bliss. At the same time, though, it would make
the destabilizing more severe if you found out later. Now that I am seven
months due, I cannot leave you in the dark anymore. The truth is, dear
Raphael, that the baby is not yours.
Five nights after our first intercourse, I had an intellectual debate with
an oddly brilliant man. He bought me a drink at the Crashing Dragon bar.
When I finished the drink, he asked to take me to his house, saying that he
had a beautiful collection of books. To satisfy my quest for knowledge, I
obliged.
However, the man tricked me. He drugged me and had me that night. I tried
to fight him off, but my body felt numb. My perception was altered. I
felt pleasure when he really gave me pain. His power over me was strong.
With the drugs in my body, my will merely caved in.
I wanted to charge him for what he did; I really wanted to charge him.
Unfortunately, I did not know him well enough to give any valuable
information, nor have I seen him again. To add to the situation, I tested
positive on the pregnancy test. I did not want to hurt our relationship,
so I claimed the child as yours. My actions were selfish, I am aware of
that. The secret harmed our relationship more than it stabilized it, I now
realize that.
For over seven months, I have left you in the dark - something that I never
did to anyone before. For seven months, I kept a part of me away from you.
For seven months, I have numbed you while clawing into your back, leaving
you unaware of the deep hole I left there. Now I stop numbing you, so that
you may be hurt with the truth than be further destroyed with the lie.
You have been good to me, dear Raphael. In fact, you have been too good to
me. For all the years we spent together, only you had the will to put up
with me. For all the years we been together, only you remained faithful.
Through good times and bad, only you insisted to not give up. On the night
of our engagement, you were the one to talk me into making an oath. After
all of these years together, I must break that oath: I must leave you.
My sin is the worst of all human sin: deception. Deception has caused
honorable men to fall. Deception contributes to murder and treachery.
Deception to this day still plagues society. I deceived you. I did one of
the worst things that a human can do to someone who has been faithful to
them. I know that you will be in pain after reading this. Even if you had
the heart to forgive my misgiving, it would not make up for what has been
done to you; it would not make up for the wound I have dug into you.
Therefore, I must go my own way. You deserve better than I.
Be well,
Victoria
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Schizo
Extreme Fanatic   Posts: 897 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 19/4/2004 at 02:53 AM |
When I first started reading this, it seemed awkward and forced. The
information seemed too detailed for an actual letter, seemed to have been
put in by the author for the readers' sake, not by Victoria for Raphael's
sake. Then as I read on, I found that the characters intellectual,
unemotional nature might actually result in this sort of letter under these
circumstances. In the pursuance of a logical argument, Victoria included
all the facts pertinent to the case.
What bothers me now about it is not so much a matter of skill in writing,
but in the decision of Victoria. It seems such an impulsive, emotional
thing for her to do under the circumstances.
For one thing, if the two episodes of intercourse were only five days
apart, it would be very difficult for her to say for certain which man was
the father. Also, she was drugged and raped, not unfaithful. If the child
was not Raphael's, it was through no fault of her own.
Why did she feel so guilty? For lying? But was it really a lie? The
child could still be Raphael's. More of wishful thinking than a lie.
But what really irritates me about her, is how she arbitrarily makes the
decision that so deeply affects her fiance. Yes, the "lie" will hurt him,
and things will not be the same. But that's life. If she can't deal with
the fact that she is human, and makes mistakes, then how is she going to
raise a child? Will she be just as hard on the child?
Just because things would be different in their relationship, does not mean
that things cannot be good or healthy. And she should give Raphael the
chance to make the decision for himself, whether it is worth the try or
not. Instead of playing drama queen and running away when he's hardly in
the position to present his side of the debate.
That's the thing - if she were really such an intellectual, unemotional
person, would she not want to allow Raphael his chance of rebuttal?
Or perhaps, she is merely repressing her emotional side, and this is how it
is emerging under pressure. Not being accustomed to the surges of feeling,
she does not know how to handle it, and makes a rash decision that
devastates her life and Raphael's.
If this is so, then the contrast between the raw emotion of her decision
and the habitually logical writing style of the letter is well done. But I
wonder if this is what the author had in mind, or if it was inadvertant.
Anyway, it made for an interesting character analysis.
On a lighter note, I don't like people of Victoria's type. I hate it when
people try to make decisions for me "for my own good." Self-righteous
little bitch!
Oh, I just caught something. Victoria mentions how having sex was
something that was "taboo in our time". However, in the timing of the
story, "our time" was only 7 months ago! Surely in that 7 months, the
taboos have not changed?
____________________
"You can tell by the scars on my arms and the cracks in my hips and the
dents in my car and the blisters on my lips that I'm not the carefullest of
girls." - Dresden Dolls, "Girl Anachronism"
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Domkitten
Fanatic   Posts: 470 Registered: 23/9/2002 Status: Offline
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posted on 19/4/2004 at 04:35 AM |
Firstly, there are several inconsistencies in the language of this piece.
It goes a little back and forth from modern language to language of the
times.
For example the use phrase "really hard" in the first paragraph just seems
out of place immediately, considering the surrounding language. The first
paragraph just has some holes.
Second, there is just way to much information. "At school" or "While at the
academy" seem more appropriate than Lutheran Brother's Private School.
Assuming, of course, that Raphael can remember where he went to school. The
same for the grandmother, can't we assume he knows this already? Why does
she need to explain all the past?
But it goes on. There is just a mind-numbing amount of information. It's
like reading a data sheet. It's not interesting or engaging. My initial
reaction was to skip over it to get to the meat of the story. Just why the
hell is she writing this letter anyway?
Granted, she wants to be a cold and logical person, but perhaps there are
ways you could have done it without putting in so much about the school,
their personal philosophies, etc.
The plot is simple. She had sex with two different men, and two different
times. Once willingly, once unwillingly. She wants to confess. So why
doesn't she just do that. It's just so cold. Even in the Victorian setting
a letter like this would have more pull, more life, more pain. It's
palpably lacking in this piece.
Essentially if your going to have all the information, why fill the piece
with information about the unessential details.
She says very little about: Their intercourse, the child, their oath, their
relationship.
It seems to me if your going to poor over things in a letter like this it
would make more sense to go with the things that are actually more relevant
to the completely illogical decision she's about to make.
We know she's logical, she can establish that in a sentence. Why all the
craziness then?
[Edited on 4/19/2004 by Domkitten] ____________________
It's like kegel exercises for your throat.~Monolycus
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callei
Extreme Fanatic  Posts: 759 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 19/4/2004 at 06:29 AM |
Testimony is used in very formal settings (church or court) to mean
swearing to a fact. It is the right word, but sort of gives it all away and
makes the whole thing more of a chronicle to the police than to a jilted
lover. Confession would have foreshadowed the rest of the story better.
"Cold Mind" is a Thai translation for "calm". The words have a different
connotation in English and distant the reader, I think, from the author. I
don’t think we are supposed to hate them both.
"Not even God himself could make us react without proper logic...or the
means to satisfy our selves" makes no sense. Do you mean that nothing was
more important to you than sex and logic? Finishing school and logic?
Masturbation and logic? I have this image of two people warding off some
god with dildos while quoting Plato. I am sure this is not what you meant.
"…we made our one and only oath that night: to never do part." accepting
someone's offer of marriage is taking an oath, so this would have been a
second oath. Or the only part of the oath of marriage that you meant? This
is one of the places where the purple prose mixes badly with the chronicle
style of the rest.
"You wrote to me in melancholy" the noun is mis-used here. “In melancholia”
or “you were melancholic when you wrote to me”, if you want to say that he
is crying all the time and going mad with grief. If you meant however that
he was somber, you might want a different word.
"Now that I am seven months due,” this would mean that you are have been
pregnant for 16 months, a very strange thing to be. I think you meant (hope
you meant?) that "now that I am in my seventh month" or "with delivery only
2 months away."
"For seven months, I have numbed you while clawing into your back, leaving
you unaware of the deep hole I left there" Does this mean that you were
having lots of sex with him to make up for lying to him about your attack
and suspicions? The "numbed" part doesn’t make sense to me, I don’t know
what it means. I think the image of clawing at his back leaving a gaping
hole means that you stabbed him in the back, but I am not clear on that
either. Also, was she trying to numb herself to her pain by having sex with
him (again the clawing at the back is a sexual phrase) or had sex with him
to keep him in the dark about her non "cold mind" act of going all
emotional and traumatized about getting attacked. She would have had to
have not told him about the attack for what, 10 days before any pregnancy
test would work at all. And she would have had to KNOW she was pregnant, or
at least fear it a lot, to have had a pregnancy test the first day she was
late for her period. Plus the inference is that this is "from the past"
(all the references to “in our time” and all that leave us guessing at time
frame; 1880, when woman started being able to attend college, 1930, when
many colleges became co-ed, 1950, when psych degrees started being open to
women, and 1980 when it became the fad for people to major in the same
thing as their lover) so the reader has to guess how she found out she was
pregnant so fast.
The self-abusive language does fit the model of someone that has been raped
and is blaming it on themselves, even the incoherency can, I suppose, be
blamed on that mental instability and the weight of the lie (the one that
she was "responsible" I mean) on her mind. When you mix that with
pregnancy, some woman do snap and go totally over the edge. Even the
retelling of the most boring bits of their what 5-6 year relationship might
just be her unstable way of trying to normalize her life. But I see some
anger and hatred at him for NOT keeping the "cold mind" over anything. He
seems flighty and led by whim, from what is recounted to us in this letter.
There is almost a sense of her blaming him for her getting raped, for
making her keep this secret, and for her getting pregnant. It almost seems
like she is throwing him over because she doesn’t really like him.
Much of the odd word uses are "writer's voice" and must therefore be
forgiven. When raised Asian (see the lack of "I" to start sentences and the
style and presentation of "me" through out to se why I say this) and
Catholic (I blame much of the purple prose out there on the Catholic
church) and when also not surrounded by native English speakers, a person
does end up with unusual speech patterns that are sometimes hard for others
to decipher.
One of the points of fiction is to write about someone else, not yourself
in different circumstances. I think we have a romanticized, dramatized
version of the writers own life here, more a flight of dark fantasy and an
acting out and rationalization of dumping her boyfriend. It tells us more
about the author than it does about the characters or the plot.
____________________
Real goths wear silver and crosses to keep the werewolves and vampires
away.
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Shade
Fanatic  Posts: 289 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 19/4/2004 at 09:29 AM |
You have the basic stages of a story, ie: introduction, culmination, and
conclusion. For this I applaude you, it is just as difficult to write a
story that begins and ends as it is to write well in other areas. On the
other hand I have to agree with the other opinions that quite a bit of the
information is extraneous. Your narrator prattles on and while this could
very easily be explained as her act of trying to avoid getting to the
point, this kind of realism actually needs to be avoided when dealing with
an audience. If this were a real letter being written to a real lover, I
think it would be fine. The incoherence at the beginning is a perfect
foreshadowing to the conclusion and leaves the recipient of the letter with
the excuse of "she's out of her blooming mind" when he sits down and begins
to pen his response asking her to reconsider.
However, for an audience of larger than one, the grammar needs to be
consolidated, by which I mean that you the writer need to choose a speech
style and stick with it. If flowery and yet strangely logical is what you
want, choose that, and then choose the actual era (decide which year your
actors graduated and stick with the speach patterns of that time frame)
this will make sense as it is the same year in which you are writing, and
it was a very intense year for the actors so it would have been a major
growth period for them.
Next, you are trying to find a razor's edge between logic and complete
emotional break-down, this girl has been beating herself up about an
occurance that was beyond her control for seven months now. It makes sense
that she is wigging out, but as you are writing this correspondance for a
wider audience then just the recipient, you need to tame the savage mood
swings a bit. If this were being wrtten as the start of a longer published
work, the language would be clarified and the actual pages of this letter
in the book would probably be a graphic with clear handwriting and a few
tear stains rather than having to rely on heavy word usage, this is not a
good thing. You need to find the words to represent your Heroine's mood
without resorting to incoherance.
Again I have to agree with the previous comments, there is very little
actually mentioned about Raphael as a person and as such I the reader have
no reason to like or hate him. We have the information that he has a
brialliant mind and enjoyed the passivity of logic until he actually lived
(Had sex for the first time) at which point he went from being very logical
to being very physical. This creates in the readers mind the question of
whether the man was ever actually a brilliant mind, or if he was just cute
enough that Victoria never noticed.
This is a personal bias, but I have seen through these comments and through
being a part of the site for quite a while, that christian paradoxes (I
want to have fun but if I do I will never go to Paris- I mean heaven) do
not work for this audience. In the case of Raphael we see a classic example
of the christian paradox being played out, he saves himself from sex and
general fun until the first time he experiences it and then decides to
revel in his experiences. While this can be a powerful tool when writing
for a larger american audience, the audience you are writing this piece for
(As implied by the fact that you submitted this to the forum on this site
and not an editor at the magazine of your choice); this audience does not
like that paradox. Write for your audience.
All in all it felt like a full narrative, you have the framework for a
story. You just need to work on the language of the story. Remember, using
a letter as your medium does not excuse you from the laws of grammer or
writing style. ____________________
It is only through the lack of sex that humanity derives the need for an
all encompassing blind love. And in that moment of extreme horniness with
no relief in sight, in that moment can be found the birth of religion.
-Me
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Britva
Moderator Posts: 37 Registered: 1/8/2003 Status: Offline
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posted on 26/4/2004 at 12:07 AM |
Well, Anya, I think you're getting some good advice from your fellow
shmengers (although let me say again people, stick to criticizing the
story, not the writer). I don't want to rehash what everyone else has
said, but suffice to say the language needs to be tightened up, and you may
want to think about writing this as a stright narrative instead of as a
letter.
I would like to take this opportunity, though, to say a little bit about
about choosing subject matter and creating drama in general. I think a lot
of young writers think that they have to have some kind of big awful thing
happen to make a story interesting or dramatic. But there's so much drama
in everyday life if you bother to look for it. People are managing
personal crises, meeting new lovers, dissolving friendships, losing faith,
finding hope, changing their hair, and flipping out all the time. It's
real and it's human and people love to read about it. You've got too much
on your plate in this story. A first sexual experience, a pregnancy, a
rape, contested paternity, a Lutheran school... dealing with the
ramifications of any one of these things could completely fill a story this
size.
So in this spirit (and maybe starting a trend here) I'm going to give you a
reading assignment as well. "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest
Hemmingway is a great short story that you can find probably just by doing
a google search for the name. It's mostly a conversation that a couple has
while waiting for a train, but anger, sadness, and desperation are floating
just under the surface. Also, although he takes a lot of crap for it, take
a close look at Hemmingway's writing style. His words and sentences are so
simple that a child could understand them, but their simplicity allows you
to see right through them to the heart of the story. If anyone else would
like to read the story (it's very short) and discuss it here, you are more
than welcome.
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Merry_Widow
Fanatic  Posts: 598 Registered: 24/8/2002 Status: Offline
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posted on 26/4/2004 at 09:07 PM |
I love that story. The dialogue in it is so simple, and well, so Hemingway,
it says everything in just a few words. There is that huge, unsaid thing
hanging over the heads of the two characters that colors everything around
them. The imagery as she looks over to one side of the valley where it is
fertile, and then to the other, where it is dry and barren, and then back
to her companion...it's awesome.
Along those lines, I would also suggest reading A Clean, Well-Lighted
Place. It's more Hemingway, which means more insanely simple, yet insanely
revealing conversation, with no speech tags. Normally, that is a no-no,
but when you are Hemingway, you can do whatever the hell you want. ____________________
Okay, dazzle me.
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Britva
Moderator Posts: 37 Registered: 1/8/2003 Status: Offline
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posted on 28/4/2004 at 02:35 PM |
I love the fact that neither of them ever say the word "abortion." They
talk circles around it, but they never come out and say it. It strikes me
as a very human way of dealing with an awkward situation. You have the
guy, who is desperate for her to have the abortion, but he doesn't want to
feel like he's pressuring her into doing it, even though it's exactly what
he's doing. He doesn't want to be the asshole. Then you have the girl,
who just wants things to be the way they were, but at the same time, she
knows they can never go back. I know both of those people... I think I've
probably been both of those people. And Hemingway does it all with
circumspect bits of dialogue. Really just a well written story.
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Merry_Widow
Fanatic Posts: 598 Registered: 24/8/2002 Status: Offline
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posted on 28/4/2004 at 03:25 PM |
And the use of language is so damned sneaky. All the while the boyfriend
keeps telling her that they will just be letting a little air in. There are
serious things in that relationship that need to be aired out and brought
to the table.
And then there is the whol thing with the white elephants. When you think
about it, a baby can be seen as a white elephant. Only this time, the
elephant is being gotten rid of before it does damage.
The characterization is awesome, in that neither of the charaters can
really seem like villain or victim. For me, that is really what makes them
so damned human. ____________________
Okay, dazzle me.
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