Just like in tennis, cycling, and education, one of my predominant talents in writing is just having Energy to keep going. I have two ideas for stories I will write about teenagers. (I'm more thankful each day to work with teenagers. To see their histrionics, their unedited honesty and misconceptions, their delight in silly word play, their innocence which seems impossible is Tonic to a world that grinds one down.) The stories will be, of course, Energetic, and they will be infused with one my most exact tones: Youthful Whimsy with a sprinkle of Melancholy.
One story is about a teenage boy, a white kid, who falls in love with an undocumented Latina. The story will begin with the boy at her home, picking her up to go to the beach. He will smell the sopes and stumble around the 10 little kids sprinting around the apartment and the Cross will be on three walls and the telenovela will blare. The girl will appear, disarmingly sweetly charming. Because I'm a Seattleite, and to my own detriment, a dedicated regionalist, they will go to Alki beach and it will drip vignetteish with innocent young love. Two kids talking near-philosophically about love, about dreams, and speaking with the Diction of Youth. Ferries out in the Sound, seagulls cawing, dogs fetching sandy sticks. (Do I project my own ideal?! Very well then, I project my own ideal!) But then a few weeks later (no!) I.C.E. nabs her and her family and deports them back to Michoacan, Mexcio and it happens so suddenly the young boy--we'll call him Joe--isn't even able to say good-bye to say, Rosenda. Resourcing the help of his Spanish-speaking friend--Poncho, a chubby, Sancho Panza-esque, Spanish speaking kid--Joe and Poncho make the epic journey first to the border and then, more interestingly, through Mexico. (In the story's one moment of societal critique, the boys will have the inverse adventure of illegally crossing into Mexico.) Mysteriously absent from Facebook, they hear nothing from the girl (though they see the emails and worries from their own families) and on their journey with an uncertain ending they meet Hippie White Artists, Low-tier workers of drug cartels, Mexicans who work in the US Army, and a wise curandera/tortilla-maker. Joe and Poncho will have an argument that nearly separates them, but they'll realize so clearly that this mission isn't just about them, it's about something else, some idea. They'll understand their adventure is a metaphor.
We will see the whales in the Sea of Cortes, the desolation of the Sonora desert, the fluorescent lights of divey restaurants. We'll see child-dominated city squares and we'll see donkeys.
Joe and Poncho, haggard, will arrive to Angangangueo, Michoacan, Mexico--her hometown--and there they will be told she is working at the Butterfly Reserve. They will hike their way up a verdant hill. At the summit, Poncho will tell Joe to take the rest of his journey on his own, and Joe will do so after a their eyes meet knowingly, and Joe will get to a place where the trees are orange with butterflies and the sun will appear and the butterflies will lift and dabble in the light of the sun, all millions of them, and suddenly Joe will see her and, delayed, she will see him, too, and they will kiss with butterflies around them, and their love will be Immortalized in that image.
That's one story.
The next is simply about a boy who tires of School, Family, Technology, and the Future, and he hops on his bicycle to travel across the country into new Territory. He would meet interesting folks along the way. Clearly, the plot is weak--it's never been my strength--and clearly the boy is Me--another weakness of mine--but the story would be another addition to the classic American canon of stories about young men trying to escape their realities which aren't as bad--in fact, they're pretty damn good--as they perceive them to be. When I think of this story, I see the poetry of dirty kid humming along Route 66 in the 21st century, self-reliant, smarmy, and in search of something adults inevitably, tragically give up on.
Oh, sweet freeing imagination.
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