Leader of the Pack and All That Jazz......

 

I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity. ----James Ellroy

 

 

Alessandro Gassmann

He stepped in the joint, and like sharks gliding silent in the deep, we smelled fresh new talent.

Every female gaze, including mine, immediately zoomed in on him.

The guys knew immediately—just male instinct, I suppose—that he was going to be a threat, he was going to be trouble with a capital “T”. They knew he was competition because his kind always was.

Louie.

His name was Louie. He wasn’t very tall. Not even particularly handsome. Waves of red hair, freckles. Not the average Joe we dames usually went for. But something about the way Louie wore his jeans and white T-shirt, something in his cocky grin, the savvy glint in his green eyes shouted Bad Boy. Very good bad boy.

For me, it was love at first sight. Red-headed Louie—I don’t even remember his last name—stole our hearts.

Louie, the predecessor to the Fonz, the copper haired Brando of Red Bluff Elementary. The new reigning king of Mrs. Smallwood’s second grade class.

One Friday night at the skating rink on Jackson Street, bad boy Louie asked me to skate with him and—there, with the rink dim except for the romantic multi-colored lights dancing over the walls and floor—I lost my heart to him. And thus, in second grade, wearing my blue rhinestone trimmed glasses and pigtails, I began my love affair with bad boys.

My preference in fiction—films, books, to read AND to write—are dangerous men. In my opinion, Scarlett O’Hara could have saved herself so much grief and time had she only shared my taste in the wicked pleasures of rakes like Rhett Butler instead of boring ol’ Ashley Wilkes.

Hey, let me at the script for Peter Pan! I’ll free Captain Hook and toss little Pan to the giant crocodile. 

In the fiction world, are these bad asses really…well…bad? Or are they just flawed? Are they tormented souls who, as James Ellroy suggests, we want to force to come to grips with their humanity through our writing?

Are we literary co-dependents where our lotharios, mob guys, street-wise punks, highwaymen and pirates are concerned, with an unconscious need to reform them?

Robert Mitchum

In true, everyday life, are these Robert Mitchum/James Dean types really what our hearts desire? Would that kind of guy really make us happy, or have we romanticized them?

James Dean

If we do lust after these menaces-in-men’s-bodies, even in our non-fictional world, what is their allure? Our own unrequited dream of living on the edge, flirting with danger, being the sensuous yet pure beacon on his dark, tortured sea?

Remember the song from the sixties, Leader of the Pack? Part of the lyrics, I think, symbolized a common conception of these misunderstood rascals: They told me he was bad, but I knew he was sad. Get the picture? the crooner asked her friends. Yes, we see, they replied. And, because he was sad, that’s why, she says, she fell for the leader of the pack.

Powerful stuff these scoundrels have, the angst angle. Is there room in our hearts for the guys from the right side of town, the guys who aren't sad and tormented?

As little Louie was an automatic threat to the second grade male population—by simply by being Louie—are naughty boys a threat to the real-life guys in white hats?

In one of my favorite films, Crossing Delancey, the heroine apologetically announces to the hero, You’re such a nice guy. His response? So pitiful, yet so true-to life—he shudders and says, Oh, what a thing to say! Bless his heart. Because she did not mean it as a compliment, and he knew it. In the film, she preferred the womanizing anti-hero, an arrogant ass of an author with an ego the size of New York City. Of course, in the end, our good guy won out, but it was a continuous, painful, uphill battle for him.

Crossing Delancey

Crossing Delancey may have been a fictional story, but it personified a true state of many female psyches. Even mine. I related to the heroine. Because that wicked allure, that I’m going to break your heart and you’re going to beg me for more attraction which is old as time, still alive and well.

Do bad boys really reform for us? Or do we write them because it’s our only way to mold them into the sexy-attentive-obsessively passionate-romantic-good and bad at the same time-always handsome lovers we want them to be?

Russell Crowe said, and I thought this was very interesting: I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated.

Is that what it boils down to? Are we attracted to something as simple as their...drive? The powerful drive in these bad boys, whether it’s evil, just a little mean or just plain tortured?

If you love bad boys, if you write bad boys, I’d love to know why.

 

 

 

 

 

RED ROVER, RED ROVER...LET VASTINE COME RIGHT OVER!

 

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

-- J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

 

 

Red Rover, Red Rover, send that kid—any kid but Vastine—right  over! Oh, the memories. Do you remember that game from school? Even then, as young as we were, we were being conditioned to try to fit in or be counted out, even if it was just a silly sport.

I wasn't athletic. I was emotionally torn—half of me praying that I wouldn't get chosen on a team because I knew I was lousy at games and the other half of me was sad because I didn't—and I mean never—got picked for the teams. Well, I take that back. I did get picked. Eventually. By whichever poor team got stuck with me. My only hope was to be outed before the game was even under way.

Not much has changed since those days of being afraid of not being picked and yet scared of being picked because I knew I was going to suck at any game.

But why did I still pitifully have that deep yearning to be picked me for a team? Why, even when I knew I couldn’t perform, when I knew I'd end up running off the playground feeling all this kid-like failure, did I still long to hear my name? Red Rover, Red Rover, send Vastine right over. 

Same reason any kid did and does. They want to be acknowledged. They want to be accepted. As much as many of us—yes, even me—snort that we don't care if we fit in, we don't care if we're popular, I think many of us really, deep down, do want to fit in. We want validation from any sector of life we've chosen.

And acknowledging this to myself is why I cherish the Salinger quote. Because it takes courage to not want or need to fit in. To not want to be somebody is not in most natures. I reluctantly admit, it's not in mine.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember. I've been seriously writing since 2009. I became a published author in 2011. When I made up my mind to write with a goal of being published, I had big dreams. I had silly, unrealistic dreams. Dreams that my writing would be the ticket. That nothing else would really matter. That my pen would be my strength. That my writing would be so good it would sell itself.

I can hear you laughing from here.

No, no, no. I’m not saying my writing stinks. I do at least have enough confidence in my craft to think I have some talent.

I've had a hard knock comeuppance in this game. And, like those old days, I've found myself on the playing field, realizing that fitting in just might be crucial.

I once heard some writers with my publisher at the time being referred to as 'royalty' for their status as far as being popular. My heart sank clean down to my feet to find myself back on the field where being able—not as in just decent writing, but strong in personality—was going to make a difference in anything.

I've yet to put my finger on how this all works.

The bottom line? I see that to pitch me is a necessary part of this writer success thing. And it’s so terrifying that I'm tempted to rush back to the early days when I just wrote and I didn't give a hoot if I sold a book or not. I simply wrote because I adored writing and because I had something to say and I wanted someone—even if it was one damn person—to read it.

I see something pitiful about myself, something that makes that urge to do a J. D. Salinger and disappear. And that is this: I'm lying if I tell you I do not want to fit in. Come on. Even in the book, Salinger’s character only said he wished he didn't want to fit in. But he did, really, I think, want to belong. He did want to be somebody.

And so do I. I really do.

Let me tell you. It’s hard to admit that I wish I could be part of the “in” crowd. That I do think it would be so cool to be well-known.

No, I’ll never be that author who’s a household name. But I'll keep writing. Because I do love it, I can't live without it. No matter where it takes me.

I will know, with everything in me, that the 'not fitting in' will have nothing to do with my writing. It will not be because my writing wasn't good enough. Sometimes writing reminds me of this piano....

It just sits out in this foggy field, not being played. Because it's alone out there and not seen by many doesn't mean it has no beautiful song inside it to play. And it doesn't mean it doesn't long for someone to hear it. It does.