The last time I saw Selma Gray the hot noon sun was reflecting in her dreadlocked hair and the bright colors of her dress. The last time I saw Selma Gray she was standing barefoot on the cement in front of the passport building. The last time I saw Selma Gray she was smiling. I had noticed all of these things and I stopped to talk to her, imagining that she would have something interesting to say.
She was going to Panama. “I’m going to Panama,” she told me.
“Oh,” I responded.
Selma bent her leg up and dug her toes into the soil of a potted tree behind her. “Yeah,” she said as though I’d never even spoken. “We’re having a problem getting passports, though. They won’t let you in without shoes.”
She jerked her thumb towards a sign on the building next to her. I nodded. “Real bummer,” she said as she pulled her left foot out of the dirt and placed the right one in its place. “My boyfriend ran across the street to get me some flip-flops. I’m not allowed in there either.”
Selma lifted her chin and shook her head. “Things are going to be different in Panama. We’re going to live off the land be done with all this shoe-wearing commercialism.”
“How long will you be gone?” I asked.
Selma placed both her feet on the ground and brought her chin down so that she could look me directly in the eyes. “Forever, man. Forever.”
Selma’s boyfriend ran up then, toting a pair of seafoam green flip-flops. As Selma put them on her feet I made an excuse and turned to leave. At the street corner I looked back. The last time I saw Selma Gray she was putting her foot into a seafoam green flip-flop with one hand, and balancing herself against her boyfriend with the other.
That was the last time. This time, a mere three months later, Selma is standing so the doorway surrounds her like a box. Sunlight does not reflect in her dreads. They have been chopped off. Sunlight does not reflect off her bright clothing, her clothing is all gray. She is not smiling. “I heard you were sick,” she says. An odd remark coming from someone who I was never particularly close to.
This story is one that I was really focused on for a long time and I actually did finish it, but I don’t think that it came out the way that I wanted it. The final product was taken down by my own perfectionism. It was a long time ago and I’m sure that if I went through my notebooks I would be able to find the whole story, but I don’t have it all typed up and written down somewhere.
One of the main characters in this story, Selma, was based on someone that I knew. She had a different kind of life than I did and I was really jealous of it. I was also bitter about the fact that she could live in a different way than I could. I didn’t understand why she could live her life with so much freedom when I felt so completely trapped by the things around me. I wrote her into this story and made her a rather pathetic character.
I wanted to point out that even though she was free in some ways it was all bullshit. In my mind at the time, she was living in a way that just wasn’t sustainable. I thought that no one could live life in that way forever. I made her character rude and presumptuous. I wanted her to be unlikeable.
I’ve changed a lot since I wrote this story. I still know the girl that Selma was based on. She’s still living the kind of life that I could be jealous of, though she has calmed down quite a bit since the time when she was running off to live in a South American country. The truth is that she was always a really nice person and she still is. I was simply bitter and jealous that I couldn’t live the life that she could live. I didn’t feel as free as she felt.
The point is, when you’re jealous as a writer, you can make horrible things happen to the people that you are jealous of. I made something horrible happen to her in this story. I had all her illusions shattered. I have other stories that I’ve written where I let my jealousy take over and some of them are actually pretty good. All emotions are helpful when it comes to writing.
I don’t really worry about letting jealousy affect me in this way, because it’s not like I’m acting with blatant bitterness towards the people I’m jealous of. It’s more secondary and I find that it is helpful. It lets me work through a lot of different things that I’m trying to work through and it makes me feel better. It’s not just jealousy that comes through in my writing. If I really don’t like someone, I’ll write them into a story and make their life end up horribly or have them lose a limb or have everyone hate them or see them for what they truly are.
When I get my feelings out in my writing, it doesn’t hurt anyone and I end up coming out with some really good stories. That’s using emotions in a positive way.
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