Bourbon and Milk features lessons, observations, and conversations by and with writers living out there in one of the most perplexing outposts of the human condition – parenthood. In this monthly series, Contributing Editor Giuseppe Taurino will dive into the dark spaces where parenting sometimes pushes us, and explore the unexpected ways writers may grow in them.
What is wrong
with peace? I couldn’t say.
But, sweet ruin, I can hear you.
There is always the desire.
Always the cloud, suddenly present
and willing to oblige.
— from Tony Hoagland’s “Sweet Ruin”
My daughter is the bee’s knees. She’s the stars in my eyes. The only person I’m unabashedly head over heels for, regardless of how badly she may behave. But my love for her and the choices I make because of that love haven’t exactly been conducive to my growth as a writer. A fuller version of myself, yes, but not a better or more focused writer. And certainly not a more productive one. If anything, my blind affection and the innate sense of responsibility that was born with her have threatened to make me want to quit scribbling altogether. Why make time to sweat out frustrating hours at my desk, I sometimes ask myself, when the alternative—living solely to parent, which is to say in the moment—is so much more alluring. No one would judge me for going that route. Considering the effort needed to be even a decent writer—without the kid as part of the equation—I can actually make the case for parenthood being the most graceful way to bow out, give up any pretenses I have of being an artist, and redirect those precious ‘free’ hours towards sleep, or exercise, or a healthy dose of drinking on the couch as a football or basketball makes its way from left to right on my television screen, and then back again.
In the end, though, you’re left with who you are and what you’ve got. And what I’ve got is a messy little neurotic itch (an MLNI) that compels me forward and onto the page with varying degrees of success. It also tends to bring the world to me through a hazy lens, like seeing it through a half-empty glass. Even through my most substantial bouts of optimism, I have limited patience for characters or people who lean too heavily on earnestness. Or happiness. Or love. Or, worse still, careful consideration. I’ve always been attracted to people and characters who are heartbreakingly (even foolishly) flawed, prone to “hail disaster like a cab.” Which is precisely how my daughter has helped me grow as a writer.
Whereas before she popped into the world, my MLNI relied mostly on the ability to find ways into characters’ dark spots through observation and imagination, I’m now able to genuinely inhabit the myriad ways someone might screw up, fail someone they love, or simply fall short of the most basic standards of common sense or decency. I’m able, in short, to channel a reductive douchiness that, as far as I’m concerned, parents have special access to.
Inhabiting the guy who sets his house ablaze with everyone, including himself, inside it? That’s an easy one. Close your eyes and imagine your beautiful toddler treating your dinner table, or your living room, or your office like it’s the set of Double Dare, complete with slimy bowls of apple sauce oozing down your face, and a red crayon crammed inside your DVD player.
Continuing to drive right out of town as opposed to making that left turn that leads home after work? A little less impulsive, certainly not as violent, but still a solid nine on the douche-meter. This particular failure might be entered by, say, having to miss watching the final episode of Mad Men because said beautiful baby is teething, and your wife, who has yet to return to work and has been home all week with this miracle you’ve created, needs a break. Which ostensibly means, “You’re watching the kid, big guy, because you at least got to go to work all week, and, you know, what you do is nothing compared to raising a child?”
All this is to say, parenthood’s most tangible contribution to my path as a writer has been its uncanny knack for pushing me right up against just how shitty I have the capability of being, and possibly would be, if I were calibrated just one more tick in this direction or that. And while sharing some of these fleeting urges might get me flagged—perhaps by some surveillance group, and definitely my wife—I know I’m not alone. I know there are tons of parents who are writers who live with the same daily tensions; who find themselves uneasily wedged between the desire to give themselves over to the blind love they have for family—and the idleness it potentially breeds—and embracing the more shadowy, less acceptable emotions it brings forth.
It’s my intent, in this little corner of the ASF Notebook, to talk it out. To plunge into the murky waters of parenthood and connect with other writers who are wading through the same convoluted mess. To share our version of things. To confess and explore and objectify this crazy thing that happens when your life and your time are no longer only yours.
For the writers who come across this blog as new or soon to be parents, I’d encourage you to embrace the entirety of parenthood. Let it bring forth all that is good in you. But, perhaps more importantly, don’t be afraid to let it reveal just how ugly, callous and cowardly you have the potential to be. It might just inspire you.
And for those lucky bastards who are single and living it up, just starting out their MFAs or drinking their way through one, I hope you’ll try to put yourself in my shoes as you’re penning that next great novel touched with just the right tinge of existential angst. All you’ve got to do is channel the exact way I feel about life and the world when my kid wakes up at 3 am wanting a hug, a dry diaper, and a couple of ounces of milk, and all I want is three more hours to sleep off the extra 4 oz of bourbon I poured myself after finally getting her down at the end of a long, whiny night.
Good times.
Giuseppe Taurino earned his BA from New York University and an MFA from the University of Houston. He’s a nonprofit lifer with over fifteen years experience in education, social services and the arts as a social worker, counselor, and executive. Giuseppe has also worked as a writer-in-residence with Writers in the Schools (WITS) Houston, taught undergraduate and postgraduate English and Creative Writing, and served as Fiction Editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. He’s been awarded a Donald Barthelme Fellowship in Fiction and scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His stories have appeared in Epoch, New South, The Potomac Review, Word Riot and elsewhere.