87: Things Best Left in the Cellar
9/22/2014
So, I had this thought that it might be interesting to frame my Batu story within a contemporary context with the Batu story told to the reader from that context. It could open with a man in a city (me) who is so repulsed by his own current life situation that he retreats from reality by creating the Batu – a fantasy world as different from his own as he could imagine.
Sound familiar?
Like Canterbury Tales, it would be a story within a story. A story about the writing of a story. But unlike the other books I’ve seen that have done similar things, my book would contain the entire Batu story rather than just fragments, while the fragmented bits would be the occasional return to the contemporary city reality.
The first obvious question is: how does this help or enhance my Batu story? Or does it? More than anything, I’m just jealous of authors writing fiction set within a contemporary setting with all the cultural and linguistic freedoms that come with modernity. To avoid being anachronistic and remain faithful to the Batu’s historical setting I am severely limited in my language usage, style, and awareness of the details of daily life. Every move my characters make has a cascading effect of creation on my part to invent how things work. Nobody can simply pull into a driveway, stumble drunk up the porch steps, fumbling with their keys in the door lock, flip on a light switch before collapsing on the couch. When you build a world from the bottom up there’s no such thing as simple action. So, as much as I love my Batu world, I often envy the comparable easy format of modern times.
And I know the city.
But a contemporary counterpoint story would inevitably rob the Batu story of its mystery, as I answer and explain the themes of the historical tale as an allegory for my life story. Though perhaps the analysis of the Batu mysteries would only deal with the issues I myself am conscious of, thereby pushing the Batu story to generate even deeper questions, the answers to which I couldn’t provide even if I wanted to.
I can have myself walking the streets with a friend, discussing ideas about the Batu story being written. I can have dramatic vignettes from the city narrative that gets absorbed and reflected by the Batu story. I can have the process of writing the tale also be the unraveling of the mystery of what led me to the writing of the series, my real-life drama being reflected in the Batu story. All my angels and demons are in the tale to be interpreted.
The idea, of course, is insane. Something to think about though.
Present-Day Reflection
8/20/2026
An idea thought about and rejected. It’s an idea that’s not at all original, which turns me off, but it’s also completely self-indulgent. Such narcissistic navel-gazing sickens me. I created the Batu as a way to get out of my head and the world I’m familiar with, not to go rooting around in its cellar.
I suppose elements of biography are inevitable though, scavenging from my own life in desperation for source material. Especially for a first-time writer. I try to avoid it as much as possible, however, and would much prefer it happen subconsciously than as a deliberate creative strategy. The very idea of autobiography grosses me out.
To satisfy the itch, however – the need for immortalizing key facets of my life, and for writing within a modern context with all the ease and freedom that comes with that – I have written a fictional memoir. It’s called Queer Choices, taking place when I’m sixteen years old and back in high school. It’s a self-indulgent exploration of how my life might have been if I were born into a life situation more in keeping with who I really am. I spent years writing it, justifying the time spent by telling myself it’s necessary in order to get the biographical impulse out of my system. Once done, I could return to my real work with a clean head.
In this alternate reality my parents never got divorced, and rather than being the youngest of three, I’m an only child. The background elements are all precisely how I remember them though – the same house I grew up in, same neighborhood, same school, etc. But, as with my parents, all my friends, classmates, and teachers have a vastly different relationship with me because I myself am queerly different. It depicts the version of me I think I’d much rather be – both physically and personally.
It’s a fantasy memoir, but not because I get everything I want. Indeed, after setting the initial conditions to where everything is as I think I’d have wanted, the story unfolds with a life of its own. It quickly becomes apparent how insane and messed up this fictional version of me is, things being much more reckless and dramatic than my life actually was back then. But that’s precisely what makes it so much fun to write. Give myself everything I think I want, only to find out how bad that can be. Albeit, deliciously bad.
356 pages of pure creative fun, exploring the more bizarre corners of my hidden longings. Precisely the kind of thing that’s best kept hidden in the cellar.
