Machinating non-fiction is a medium in which I’m not particularly adept.  I’ve discovered more momentum, and more fecund fulfillment, in the subterranean rip currents of straight-up fiction.  And so when I was invited to participate in an episode of David Surface’s Strange Little Stories, it came with the directive that, as a supplement to our discussion, a “real life” story should correspondingly be produced.  

Surface (as readers may glean from his superb, multi-medium body of work) is a charitable overlord, yet insisted (as it’s the protocol for his SLS series) on sharing an actual experience, an anecdote situated in the realm of “the strange.”

Ostensibly, I sensed this exercise as being more fun than formidable, but the more I dwelled on these factual episodes, I began to discern two things:  First, there existed an archipelago which may not yet have exhausted exploration, but bore a tangible pattern for how my fiction emerged, how it branched, and how it continues to digress.  And second, those experiential exploits contained a seductive, though ominously uncertain, sort of gravity.

I’m certain, owing to that aforementioned mercifulness, that Surface wouldn’t mind me excising sentiments from the story this exercise yielded.  “I have no problem being honest,” I write, “but I have to be careful here.  Because as much as non-fiction is a trust-bound compact with my reader, it’s also a recollective gamble to discover oneself in a confessional antechamber whose entry, sure, seems feasible, but the exit of which is elusive.”

This retrieval-piece is titled “Not Tonight,” and appears in Strange Little Stories #26.  It’s succinct, a shade under 1,500 words.  So there’s the story, sure, but revisiting these mental stomping grounds provoked the tangible retrieval of early journals dedicated to my more nascent days of composition—an era marked by an intrinsic innocence as I pursued what was, and remains, an overwhelming artform.

Over the course of several days, I leafed through pages of some real howlers (I’ll save both of us both the transcribed cringe).  Yet what resonated was the echo of intent.  Prior to encountering, and navigating, the inevitable byproducts of covetousness, discouragement, and rejection, there existed a naïve, though no less potent, purity.  An absence of self-consciousness. 

Often, a sobering dose of “the real” proves fortifying.  Inspiring.  Yet more than anything, the conversation—along with its analogous, factual story—with David Surface was a hell of a lot of fun.  As is the result of our exchanges over the years, simply corresponding with this compassionate scribbler from the Hudson Highlands reminds me, innocently enough, that this artistically tricky material is most poignant when it’s consciously woven into the fabric of our interactions.  And retrieving those old journals reminded me of something else:  The monsters, the creatures, were already (always) there.