INAPPROPRIATELY DRESSED FOR THE OCCASION
another assignment if you want one
It was 1968 or 1969. I had left my first husband in Rochester and moved with my three kids into my parents’ house near Washington Square. I went to a party somewhere in the East Village with my friend Morley, and after several hours I noticed people were drifting into a different room. Morley appeared. He was naked. I had seen him naked before when I spent the night in bed with him and his boyfriend Kas. I remember it was sort of like making an angel, over and over, all night long. “Come in the bedroom,” Morley said. “That’s where everyone is.” I went with him to find a mass of naked people on the bed, moving almost imperceptibly, like an enormous underwater organism. It all seemed very good-natured. But I was wearing my new dress, and looked so good in it that I refused to take it off. I forget whether I got on the bed or not.
Years later I was teaching memoir at a Writers’ workshop in Oregon, sponsored by Tin House Magazine. I gave the assignment “Write two pages about a time when you were inappropriately dressed for the occasion.” I probably told them the story about the orgy. What occasion, and how they were inappropriately dressed, was up to them. A woman wrote about a time many years before, when her husband noticed a neighbor he barely knew loading his pickup truck with belongings, and he pitched in to help. He was that kind of man. Something happened, the truck moved unexpectedly and he was hurled to the ground, and by the time the ambulance reached the hospital, he was declared brain dead. The woman remembers walking back and forth on the roof of the hospital trying to decide whether or not to take him off life support. It crossed her mind that she was wearing the wrong clothes for such an enormous decision. She was wearing flip flops, shorts and a t-shirt. It was a very moving story, and she had never written about it before.
So here is that assignment:
Write two pages when you were wearing the wrong clothes for the occasion. The occasion, and what you were wearing is up to you.
What a fantastic prompt and stories. I will get on it.
Something that struck me here was how you remembered your student’s story. I hear so many essays and writings from students, people who come to my retreats, etc. I am so surprised about how many I remember. They are written with such power and bravery - fiction and non fiction alike- that they stick in the brain for years and decades. Writing is so powerful, isn’t it. The two stories in your short piece here will most certainly stay with me.
I love the headline because it is exactly what is missing with all other headlines from professional writers--"if you want one" My email overflows with writing prompts from people who have set up online businesses as writing teachers. My writing folder has more than 200 drafts in various stages of research, write or finish. I don't need one more prompt or poke. I would love the gift of additional time, if they could rustle that up for me. If writers would follow Abigale's lead and just write, I can appreciate and learn more that way than assignments.