Nelly Furtado = World Peace

The Cubans had been hogging the pool table all night.

“They got some shit to settle,” the guy with the tattoos all over his face told me. I think his name was Jake. “The Cubans, they’re on the right. They’re playing the Mexicans.”

“Why?” I asked. I wasn’t from this town and was suddenly very glad for that.

“Dunno. Territory. Girls. Whatever gangs fight for.”

I wouldn’t have minded so much if either of the gangs were any good at pool. They just kept pushing the balls around awkwardly. When someone actually hit a ball in a way you could hear, everyone snapped back to the game looking very hopeful. As if they too were sick of this stand-off. Like they didn’t care who won, just as long as it ended. There were other people that wanted to play. Other people with scores to settle over bar games.

I had never been to this town which was the point. Some days you just have to get in the car and drive. Sometimes you just want to tie one on in a foreign land. But air travel is expensive. And there’s so much weirdness right were you are.

Jake was either a rock star or a tattoo artist. The only two jobs in the world that allow you to have a tattooed face. Turns out, he was both. He was divorced. Probably because of one or both of his occupations. I didn’t ask.

“So how long is this gonna take?” I asked.

Jake laughed at my naivety. “Well,” he started, “it’s been going since I was old enough to see over the bar, which is when I started drinking. That said, for ever I would imagine.”

I was one of about five women in the bar. One of two people without a Mohawk. I was in over my head.

I should have known really. We hit the strip in this town and found several bars. With their country anthems and blue jeans, they were what I already knew. I was in the mood for something different. We were about ready to hang it up and head back to our anemic hotel room when we heard it. The unmistakable throbbing of techno-metal. We followed that bass down the street and around the corner into Oblivion. No, really. That was the name of the bar.

It’s always weird when having a mainstream appearance (i.e. colors other than black, minimal piercings, a smile) makes you the odd one out. Here we were. I requested Nelly Furtado. A perfectly ironic insult to this anti-everything crowd. The DJ played it though to my amazement.

The Cubans started tapping their toes. The Mexicans began nodding their heads. The perpetual game of pool came to a stand still as the dance floor was flooded by everything imaginable ethnic group. The great equalizer turned out to be Nelly Furtado.

We played pool with our noses in the air.

For the Hell of It

****The following is a draft of a personal statement to be included in graduate school applications. It was written for a specific university and is not a generic fill in the (blank) as it may suggest. I took a slightly different approach to it than the books on “How to Write a Personal Statement” claimed one should be written. They were pretty snooze-tastic if you ask me.

I remember the night it happened. I remember standing in my closet with one sock on, one sock off, being supported by crutches due to a broken foot. I hovered there staring at the hanging clothes my mother had bought me for job interviews. Tonight they would serve a different function. I was going to dinner with a theatre professor, my director, his actress wife and a man representing the Kennedy Center. In other words, with people who had been involved with theatre longer than I had been alive. Somehow we were destined to come together that night and dine on burritos.
I guess I know how it happened. In the spring of my sophomore year of undergraduate study I began work on a play for a course I had taken on a whim. I had no idea I would spend the next two years writing and rewriting the script or that I wouldn’t complete it until the fall after my graduation in 2008. Three playwriting courses and a public reading later, my university theatre decided to produce my play during their regular season. This is how I found myself desperately trying to select the proper attire to mingle with theatre folk. As if the right outfit might trick them into thinking I knew what I was talking about.
The theatre world seemed to embrace me, a reluctant participant. Don’t get me wrong. Having a play produced has been one of the greatest achievements of my life. My theatre professor, who is a playwright himself, graciously took me under his wing and fiercely advocated my success for which I am eternally grateful. The theatre has taught me so many things. It has taught me the meaning of thankless work. It has shown me the importance of economy. It has twisted my words in beautiful and unexpected ways. But most importantly it has shown me where my true passion lies.
I realized this on opening night, the same night of my all important dinner where these intense, vibrant people would talk of their passion, the stage. They would look at me when they talked. They included me in their conversations and I nodded a lot, all the while feeling like an intruder. I knew I possessed the same passion that they did, it just had yet to find a home. In the words of W. Somerset Maugham “after submitting myself for some years to the exigencies of the drama I hankered after the wide liberty of the novel.” I know exactly how he felt. Thoughts of drafting page after page of prose preoccupied my mind while I labored over stage directions. I longed to discuss creative literature and writing philosophies with my own colleagues, to thrive in an environment of like minded people where I felt like an insider rather than an imposter. I am dying to hone my craft to a level of sickening perfection. I believe the MFA program at the University of (Blank) is the perfect place, the home for my passion, my missing sock.
As my grades reflect, my last few semesters as an undergraduate were my best, due to the solidifying of my academic goals. By the time graduation rolled around, instead of feeling relieved I felt a deep desire for more. It was as if someone in the cinema had pulled the fire alarm right before the climax. Continuing on to a graduate program became something I simply needed to do, the logical next step. The University of (Blank) MFA program’s encouragement of students to explore various genres of creative writing is one feature that attracts me because nothing, particularly in literature, is ever isolated. As of late, I have been especially interested in creative nonfiction and the memoir. Writing my play required extensive research that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was a thrill to find intriguing bits of truth and fashion an elaborate story around them. A workshop course I took on writing the memoir led me to appreciate the genre and experiment with it in my own writing. My creative writing sample is a reflection of this new obsession.
The collaborative environment, the climate of a writing community is essential for me to evolve as a writer but it is also one to which I will contribute. My experiences in theatre will allow me to bring a unique voice and point of view to share with my fellow writers. It has so greatly affected my prose and this will be brought as a benefit to enhance the group. I’ve been forced to explore the intricacies of language in a way that even my English courses didn’t demand and I need to share these experiences with others. I love to write. I’m serious about it. Since my graduation I’ve begun submitting to journals, magazines, anywhere I can. Some people have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and they have to line their shoes up a certain way every night. It’s kind of like that for me except I write. While I don’t view getting an MFA as a necessary career move, this will be an opportunity even if for a moment to focus solely on my writing and making it better. I know I will be strengthened as a writer and editor as well as a listener and collaborator. All are qualities which I need to be successful, to find that damn sock, and wear it with pride.