Secrets

Posted on June 29, 2002 in IRC/Chat Sexuality Writing

There’s a crew of people on IRC who think that I like to say that I am a writer just to get them to tell me their innermost secrets. They’re right, partly. One can get very bored living one’s own life, seeing the same people every day. And what do these people really tell you? I think most of my friends living in physical proximity keep their secrets from me and others very neatly, sometimes without making any kind of an effort to do so.

IRC people will tell you nearly any thing in private, so long as you don’t blurt it out on the channel. And I have been told some very astonishing things in private and also many more banal things. Suffice it to say that I know things that I could not in good conscience tell to you here on these pages or even whisper to you in a private message via IRC. Good fiction pops out of such mud and in this spirit people have revealed things to me. I, for my part, find myself overwhelmed by the glut of confidences. Every life fascinates me when people tell the truth. And the fact that the truth gets out there frightens those who tell it. I can understand why because when we give our stories to others in verbal form, we lose control of them. When they hand them to me, what am I going to do with their knowledge? Will the character I assign them to be evil or foolish? Or worse: will I decide not to use it?

I’m working on a big project now; a “fiction project” is all I will describe it as. Several weeks ago, I interviewed several friends about their lives, logged the material, and printed it out. One good friend refused to be interviewed. That’s fine. We’re still friends. Ever since then, some of the people who I interviewed have suspected that there is no book at all, that I asked these questions for my own vulgar enjoyment. I have a secret I’ve been keeping from them. The secret is that the focus of my project changed and much of what they told me is now irrelevant to the main thrust of the book. But would they think it enough thanks for me to say here and now that they have deepened my understanding of the shadow play I’ve been watching all my life?

If I ever publish, if I ever get this thing I am doing presentable, will they appreciate the part they played and the work I had to put into it?