This One's About Embracing Mediocrity to Write 'Your Mileage May Vary'
This One's About Embracing Mediocrity to Write 'Your Mileage May Vary'
First draft is over, therefore, I am cringe... but I am free.
I (finally) finished the first draft of SPRAWL last month, which was a trial to get through. A year and a half in the making. I wish I could’ve taken time off from writing after how emotionally-draining that piece is, but I had to work on one more full-length before I can skedaddle.
Last week, I finished the first full draft of Your Mileage May Vary, a full-length about, well. Here’s a little summary of what it is right now:
Mayel has been inside all summer. When she's not too busy practicing her fencing skills, she's haunted by the ghost of her favorite Mexican character actor, Lefty González. As she ventures outside her home for the first time, Mayel runs into her former best friend, Alaska. Throughout the day, they try rebuilding their friendship over music, movies, and aguas de melón. Your Mileage May Vary is a slice-of-life about masculinity, duty, Mexicanidad, respectability politics, and learning to bite back.
What the above summary doesn’t mention is that Mayel a young person struggling to accept that they’re not as cisgender as she thought she could get away with pretending to be. Lefty, a gay trans man, is a character actor that Mayel feels drawn to, to the point where she’s literally haunted by him. (Before you ask, yes, I based it on that one actor I like. Don’t make fun of me.) I’ve chosen to leave this key point out of the summary not for the sake of keeping it under wraps, but because of fear of backlash from my family and community. As always. Not much to do about that except write!
The plot in Your Mileage May Vary is an exercise in mediocrity; I see it as a typical small-town day-in-the-life story that just happens to be about people we don’t often see on stage. But I like the mundaneness of YMMV. I like the permission I’ve given myself to not be excellent, to not be tragic, to not be hilarious. The most important moments in my life have been imperceptible shifts where I don’t realize that I’m looking at the world in a whole new way. It’s the build-up to the click, the “oh” moment when your whole world that hadn’t previously made sense all of the sudden falls right into place. That’s arguably the whole reason of the play: to show the moments up to Mayel’s acceptance that maybe she doesn’t know everything in the whole world, including herself.
Of course there’s more to Mayel’s journey. After two years and a quarter of making myself small, of being someone that I know I’m not but I’m too afraid to abandon, and even more years of feeling that even existing is some sort of awful trick I’m playing on the others around me, I’m tired. It was unberable when I was a kid, and it’s even more unberable now. You know the clichés. And I hate to be a cliché, especially one that can’t see where the plot is going, much less where the story will end.
It’s a relief to write Mayel. It’s a relief to write someone just as stubborn, cowardly, and set-in-their-ways. And it’s even more of a relief to remember that we’ve always been here and we’ll always be here, even as we go stealth and only share who we are with those we truly love and trust. I hope this all comes through in the play, but, you know, it’s a work-in-progress, just like Mayel, just like me. As long as we keep going, and as long as we remember that there’s no way out except through. No one saves us except ourselves.
If you’re in Houston on August 20th, I’d love to see you for Your Mileage May Vary’s staged reading at Rec Room Arts. It’s free! Come be loud in the audience! YMMV will be presented along with the incredible Philip Kershaw’s new play, Fellowship, so support that, as well, because it’s a fucking banger!!!! Be there and maybe we can hang out and get pizza afterward as a little early birthday celebration? But it’s okay if not, you won’t be square or anything like that.
Unsure what’s next for me, playwriting-wise. I want to take a nice long break for a nice few months, but y’all know how that goes. There’s a few characters that have been banging around in my head for a couple of years now, maybe it’s high time they get a story to meet you all.
For now, I’ll continue doing the work with the incredible people at BA (not Bon Appétit), doing some stuff with [LEGALLY NOT ALLOWED TO SAY UNTIL WINTER 2023], applying to grad schools and fellowships, and just trying to be somewhat myself. I’ll be in Los Angeles in early September and NYC and Boston in late October. As always, I’m only an email away. Don’t be a stranger.
See you ‘round,
AM
recs:
books / short stories:
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Very gory, very good. Setting aside the huge strides of trans rep in this, Felker-Martin has an incredible way of writing. Worlds within sentences.
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang
TFW you read a book on your phone during your cousin’s communion dinner and realize a lot of things about yourself in a short amount of time
Valleyesque: Stories by Fernando A. Flores
Flores literally has never missed. I really enjoyed this and Tears of the Truflepig, so I’m excited to finally read Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas next.
“Nothing Takes the Place of You” by Fernando A. Flores in Vice
I wanted to make a joke but I don’t want to get called a hater.
“Office Hours” by Ling Ma in The Atlantic
a fucking banger…. i sent this story to like three different people and none of them read it so if you do please text me
movies / tv:
Made For Love (2021-2022)
THIS SHOW WAS THE ONE!!!! AND NOW IT’S GONE!!!!!!!!!!!! hazel green and byron gogol you will ALWAYS be famous.
Supermarket Woman (1996)
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021)
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)
articles:
“Moving Theatre Toward Collective Self-Defense: Virginia Grise’s Your Healing is Killing Me” by Marci R. McMahon in Howlround Theatre Commons
“Is It Time to Do Away With the Dystopian ‘Gendercide’ Story?” by Ana Valens in The Mary Sue
“Love Against the State” by Natasha Lennard in Verso Books Blog
“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s viral essay shows why context will forever be key” by Oluwatayo Adewole in gal-dem