Welcome to week 12 of CU This Tuesday Writing Group! This week, I’m continuing to explore the world of Dr. Binet, the psychiatrist character who lives at an eating disorder clinic on a relatively isolated Gulf Island with her partner, Harry, and, of course, the girls who are living at the clinic. Next week, I’m going to shift my focus to the girls and try to get to know them a little better. For now, we’re sticking with Dr. Binet’s perspective. I randomly selected first-person POV today and Monday’s Wordle answer was WRONG. So, we’re doing WRONG in first person! Here are some ideas for you:
Your character has commited a crime (pick a crime, any crime) and they’re rationalizing it to themselves (i.e., how it was not wrong).
Your character *is* Mr. Wrong. Describe this person and all the many ways he is a dating disaster. He could be wrong in the toxic way or maybe he just has zero game.
Writing prompt: WRONG in first-person POV
But is what I’m doing wrong? Objectively, I mean. What would Dr. Freud think, for instance? I’m certain Dr. Freud was fucking his young patients. I’m a saint compared to Doctor Freud. What would Harry think? I can’t live according to Harry’s morality. Harry’s footing in the world is so fragile he can’t stomach nuance. He is steadfastly, devastatingly loyal, but this loyalty is as stable as he is. Were he to find out about this, he would banish me forever, like all the others. Be wary of an untethered man. I cannot be the one string of twine that ties him to the world.
Is this wrong, then? Do I think this is wrong? I am not thinking, that’s the problem. I am giddy at the thought of a man seeing something I don’t in this ever-creasing face. That perhaps the world outside sees me not as it should—not as an invisible sea hag wrinkling into herself, like a once-glorious velvet pouch whose drawstrings are being yanked at by the merciless hands of time. That perhaps I have something to contribute, something to gain. Not my work. Fuck my work! Fuck the girls! I don’t mean that, of course, I just mean … can I enjoy, maybe one last time, a feeling of lust? Can I have that? Can I feel alive—physically alive? Can I deserve that just as much as a girl his own age would? A girl his age spends just as much of her time fending off lust as she does attracting it. I want it now. Let me have it.
I think I understand it now. The curious looks I thought I’d imagined from young men on my trips off the island—for supplies, always supplies, of course, supplies for the girls, for Harry. And I may have slipped into a bar for a minute or two—not my fault. I am a slave to the ferry schedule.
They’re in their late twenties. They see thirty staring at them like a pair of beady, yellow eyes at the back of the cave of adulthood. The women their age feel the approach of thirty too, but in a different way. They see lines around their eyes that don’t smooth when they wake up. A few, and then a few more, and then a few more wiry grey hairs assert themselves from these women’s scalps like terrifying beanstalks. They panic. They want to lock these men down. They want marriage, they want families.
I can see the appeal of a woman who is beyond that. Not beyond relevance, not beyond beauty, even. Just beyond youth. Beyond questioning the feasibility of her uterus. Beyond worry over life trajectories. A woman who has something, some sort of foothold. Or who has perhaps given up on the idea of a foothold. A woman who’s seen enough of this fucked up world to throw her arms in the air, fuck it all and have some fun. A woman who is still nurturing, though, who maybe has nurtured, and would like to help this young man to feel like a grownup because he’s fucking a grownup. Because maybe this young man just misses his mother but could never tell her so.
It isn’t wrong. How could something that goes against every patriarchal rule be wrong? And I’m so much kinder to Harry when I return. So much more forgiving of him. Of all his grating habits. His entire existence.
Afterthoughts
This one just kind of touched the surface of something I want to explore in this new book. I don’t think this is the best piece of writing, per se … well nothing here is! That’s the whole point! Right. But we’re getting somewhere. I think I’ll need to (a) explore the girls more, figure out how many of them will be there and what they’re all like and then (b) maybe something from Harry’s perspective, of course. Maybe we’ll go there next. Let me know how your writing went, and I’ll CU Next Tuesday!