Need to Write an Essay About Yourself Heres How

Need to Write an Essay About Yourself Heres How Somewhere within your academic experience, you are going to be tasked with writing a personal essay. It might be for part of the process of applying for admission to college or part of the requirements of applying for a scholarship, and will be important because admissions committees and scholarship programs use these essays to determine eligibility and to discover what sets you apart from the rest of the applicants.A lot of writers enjoy this type of assignment, while others easily spin their creative wheels and end up not sure where to begin. Depending on who your reader will be and how easily you open up to strangers, a personal essay could be one of the most anxiety-producing types of essays youll ever have to write. After all, its very purpose is to reveal something deeply personal and thats not always easy to do. Or, it could be an easy task, especially if you are able to articulate matters of personal growth and change that have occurred and the catalysts for that change.Depen ding on who your reader will be and how easily you open up to strangers, a personal essay could be one of the most anxiety-producing types of essays youll ever have to write. Photo by Green Chameleon on UnsplashIn either case, a personal essay assignment doesnt have to be difficult, especially if you understand some of the basic techniques to getting a personal essay written. Here are a few steps to follow to help you write it and stand out from the crowd with your writing.Start with a storyPeople are drawn to stories. From the dawn of time, weve been telling stories and painting pictures with words to engage an audience, its just part of human nature. Admissions committees and scholarship panels want to know who you are, what has shaped you, and what series of events has led you to apply to their particular program.It should be a story that does several things at once. First, it should reveal something about you as an individualâ€"something that sets you apart from other people bec ause of your unique experience. Second, it should connect to an overall theme that you wish to relate, whether thats personal growth or a life lesson learned or a goal achieved. This shows the reader that you are able to look at your experiences and analyze the moments when personal growth occurred and when you recognized something about yourself that you might not have known before.If a story about yourself doesnt readily come to mind, ask yourself these questions:What are my life goals?What was an event that happened in my life that prompted me to set those goals?Lets look at an example. As discussed above, for a sample essay that begins with a story, I would respond that my life goals are to do creative work as a profession, because creating is what I most love to do.For the event that happened in my life that prompted meâ€"the first story that comes to mind is my tree fort in the woods where I would go to write. So, I might begin my personal essay like this:In the summer of 1988 , I was 12 years old and I had a secret. Behind our house, on a dusty trail that led into the woods, there was a tree fort hidden on one side. Id sneak in with my journal and a pen, sit in the half-grass half-dirt living room and write thingsâ€"poems, songs, stories, and boys namesâ€"whatever inspiration that happened to swing by in my concealed castle in the trees.I knew even back then that I wanted to be a writer. I knew that chasing and choosing words was my passion and that I could do it all my life and never grow bored of it. Those hours I spent in my tree fort were some of my most memorable moments from childhood and I still have some of the poems I wrote, tucked into a pink folder thats now worn and stained.Know what a personal essay is (and isnt)A personal essay is a short, autobiographical, nonfiction piece that should be written in first person point of view and should be conversational in nature. You can think of it as a kind of confessional, and it should contain insight into something youve learned, something thats changed in you, or something youve realized about yourself through your personal experiences. In the example I gave you, I started with a personal story and then segue into how that personal experience gave me insight about my passion for writing.Its important to keep in mind, however, that although your personal essay is confessional in natureâ€"that doesnt mean its the time and place to pull out skeletons from your closet. Although there are no rules saying you cant use a personal essay to reveal deeply personal facts, its important to remember the purpose of the assignment, which is to allow a group of strangers to learn a little more about you.Chose a great topicSometimes, its difficult to think of a personal story to relate to others, particularly strangers who might be sitting on an admissions board or scholarship committee. Thats why its a good plan to have a list of potential topics to tackle for your personal essay to get you s tarted. Here are a few ideas:A time when you overcame a fearA moment when you made a difficult choice and how that choice has shaped your lifeA unique and special place you know of and why its special to youA moment when you were betrayed by someone you trustedAn event or moment that changed your lifeA disappointment youve experiencedA time when you disappointed someone important to youThe moment you realized you had grown upIf you could switch lives with someone, it would be….Something you would do differently if you could have a do-overA book youve read that changed your worldviewIf you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?A choice youve made that turned out to be the wrong oneA moment in your life that changed everythingThe most beautiful thing youve ever seenA hard lesson you had to learn and how you learned itA person who is your mentor and whyOne good topic to write about in a personal essay is a time when you overcame a fear or challenge. Photo by Tyler N ix on Unsplash.Sample personal essaySometimes, its easier to understand how to do something by looking at an example of how its done. To continue the personal essay example I began earlier, heres a sample of what a well-written personal essay might look like. Notice how I have begun the essay with a story, and then applied that story to a lesson Ive learned about my passion and best choices for a career path.In the summer of 1988, I was 12 years old and I had a secret. Behind our house, on a dusty trail that led into the woods, there was a tree fort hidden on one side. Id sneak in with my journal and a pen, sit in the half-grass half-dirt living room and write thingsâ€"poems, songs, stories, and boys namesâ€"whatever inspiration that happened to swing by in my concealed castle in the trees.I knew even back then that I wanted to be a writer. I knew that chasing and choosing words was my passion and that I could do it all my life and never grow bored of it. Those hours I spent in my t ree fort were some of my most memorable moments from childhood and I still have some of the poems I wrote, tucked into a pink folder thats now worn and stained. Theyre idealistic and full of teenage angst and crushes, and reading them now, I can see some of the early techniques I used that would later develop into a unique voice.I like keeping these old poems, even though Id be far too embarrassed to share them with anyone at this stage in life. I like to see what my 12-year-old mind was processing, what imagery I was experiencing, and what inspired me. I now watch my 12-year-old daughter writing feverishly in her journal and I hope it means the same thing to her that it meant to meâ€"a moment to release whatever is inside through the catharsis of writing.I continue to write and have succeeded in building a business based on what I enjoy most. I have always heard that the secret to a fulfilling career is to find something you love so much that it almost doesnt feel like work most da ys when you do your job. I have done exactly that and enjoy learning more about the craft of writing, while further developing my unique voice as a writer. It is this daily goal of getting consistently better at what I enjoy doing most that gets me out of bed each morning.

The GMAT Tutor Revisiting Past Questions

If Mark Cuban can learn how to rhumba, you can learn to stomp the GMAT Last week, I saw the entrepreneur/Dallas Mavericks owner/Shark Tank co-host Mark Cuban profiled in a TV interview. When asked about the best advice he had ever heard, Cuban cited an adage sometimes attributed to legendary basketball coach John Wooden: â€Å"The will to win is overrated. It’s the will to prepare to win that separates winners from losers.† Right away, I thought about GMAT preparation. Think about it – every test taker wants a 700+. Merely wanting a high test score – no matter how badly – does not differentiate anyone from the masses of other test-takers. The will to prepare to win, though, is a key differentiator. Test-takers who can heed the words of Clayton and Mac (scroll down to check out their excellent entries from the week before New Year’s Day), and can exercise that discipline consistently, will do well on test day. For the GMAT, one critical – but sometimes overlooked – component to successful preparation is the willingness to revisit practice questions. It’s never enough just to work through mountains of material, or even to supplement that work with error analysis. Those two steps are necessary for success, but not sufficient. The surest way to reinforce critical concepts is to use active recall – flashcards, sample problem sets, and full-blown practice tests. Rinse, wash, repeat. Emphasis on repeat. Continue revisiting specific problems until they become automatic. As long as you’re approaching questions in a mindful way (in other words, you’re not just instantly recognizing the set-up and saying ‘Oh yeah, that one’s ‘B’) then you will benefit tremendously from this process. The set-ups, the concepts, and the common traps that the GMAC lays will become more and more familiar each time. Just like a quarterback watching film of an opponent’s defensive schemes, a GMAT student should never just see anything once. Do you think Tom Brady watches a defense's blitz packages just once before each game? Neither do I. As obvious as this advice might seem, however, it is not always heeded. In the course of GMAT tutoring, I never have a hard time convincing a student about the value of going through a given set of material, be it a section from a practice book, a supplementary slide deck of questions that I’ve prepared, or even an entire sample test. However, I sometimes find that it takes a significantly greater level of effort to get a student to revisit that material afterwards. While it’s a natural tendency for most people to prefer to tackle more material rather than review problems they’ve already seen, the payoff from mastering an earlier set of problems would most likely be greater (If time allows, however, do both!) Sometimes, when I first meet with a student who has already begun to prepare for the test, I’ll recommend that he take one of the CATs available on mba.com. If the student’s response is, â€Å"No can do. I’ve already taken both of those tests,† I inquire whether both CAT results were 800s. When I find out that they weren’t, I insist that those CATs be retaken. Until a test-taker has mastered virtually all of the questions on the mba.com CATs, he or she is not â€Å"done† with that material. (In addition to increasing a student’s exposure to familiar questions, test retakes also expose students to new questions, as the computer-adaptive algorithm will suggest new material each time). Don’t just take my word for this – study the greats in any field. Even the best NBA stars go to the gym and shoot hundreds of free throws every day, even though they’ve shot many thousands before. Concert pianists at Carnegie Hall spend hundreds of hours preparing for a major performance, even for pieces that they’ve already performed. GMAT high-fliers do not simply attack as many problems as possible in order to prepare for the test. Instead, they mindfully revisit key problems in order to achieve mastery. As they do this, their familiarity with question types increases, and the neural pathways they use to solve problems are strengthened. By contrast, students who view revisits of specific problems as inefficient or as a waste of time will never achieve their full potential on the test. ;

The Asian African Conference Of 1955 - 1250 Words

The Asian-African Conference of 1955, known as the Bandung Conference, is the oft-eulogized birth place of the Third World. Robert Vitalis has called Bandung â€Å"the imagined birthplace of not one but two global ‘solidarities.’† The first is nonalignment, and the second is â€Å"an emerging ‘global racial consciousness’.† While Vitalis disproves these connections, seeking to portray the reality of the Bandung Conference, this dissertation finds the aura of myth which surrounds Bandung to be a useful device. Prominent figures in the Third World Project as well as academics have seen fit to retroactively grant Bandung a position of importance as the ancestor of a wide-reaching global movement. This dissertation therefore asks, what was Latin†¦show more content†¦The ideological polarity between the United States and the Soviet Union cemented political and military alignments between countries who became the First World (led by the capitalist United States), and the Second World (led by the communist Soviet Union). As divisions formed and deepened between the First and Second Worlds, the other two-thirds of the planet, which came to be known as the Third World were determining their place both inside and outside of this conflict. The North had a history of imperialism in the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Although Latin American countries had been officially decolonized in the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, Asia and Africa continued as colonies until World War II left the colonizers too weak to maintain their colonies. As Asia and Africa were being decolonized, the First and Second Worlds began to perceive the Global South as an empty platform upon which to fight their â€Å"cold war† for global hegemony. As Odd Arne Westad points out, the Cold War was hardly cold in the Global South. In many cases it was bloody and violent. In 1947, all of the nations of Latin America sig ned the Rio Treaty (a military alliance similar to NATO), and were thus formally tied to the United States. Since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the subsequent Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, and the signing of the Charter of theShow MoreRelatedEssay about Martin Luther King: The Peaceful Hero980 Words   |  4 PagesAfrican American people have come a long way from the illiterate slaves, who were once picking cotton in fields, to powerful political leaders. A prime example would be President Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States of America. But first we must ask ourselves, how did this occur? 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Political elites such as Sukarno (Indonesia), Nkrumah (Ghana), Nyerere (Tanzania), and Nehru (India) played a significant role in the overall development of the Third World Project. The Bandung Conference (1955) served as the first large-scale Asia-Africa conference to be held in a Third World country. The Conference was the embodiment of theRead MoreNelson Mandel A Leader And The Effect On South Africa1699 Words   |  7 PagesEuropean countries in 1948 thought that the Africans threatened their position in power, the nationalist formed a government that introduced the policy of apartheid. Apartheid was a term originating from the Dutch which meant separation and it is a system of segregation or discrimination due to race. This was used to keep the white minority in political, economic, and cultural supremacy. Then there were new laws that divided the people i nto white, black, and Asian groups. 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The Flat Tax System Of The United States Essay - 1663 Words

Throughout the entire existence of any form of government, there has always been taxes. Most of the time (if not all), people hate taxes. With this being said, the United States has adopted a progressive tax since its very existence. We believe that if our nation is placed under a flat tax system, our economy will operate more effectively. If we incorporate a flat tax system we will be able to ensure fairness among all citizens, eliminate tax loopholes, and allow opportunities for business expansion. With this being said, we will be examining the strengths and weaknesses about the flat tax system and how it has been used into practice. First off, there are many people who do not even know what a flat tax is. By definition, a flat tax is described as, â€Å"a very precisely defined and coherent tax structure: a combination of a cash-flow tax on business income and a tax on workers’ income, both levied at the same, single rate† (Keen 4). Now, this just means that every person and every business, no matter the income, would be taxed at the same rate. Realistically speaking, when people talk about taxes, it is a matter of who wins and who loses. If we decided to adopt a flat tax system, people of lower income families would be suffering, â€Å"Under the flat tax, low-income households would lose because they now pay no income tax and are eligible for a refundable EITC of up to $3,370† (Gale 155). With this being said, the families of higher income would actually be thriving of a systemShow MoreRelatedThe United States Tax System and Flat Tax Essay1892 Words   |  8 PagesThe United States Tax Sys tem and Flat Tax The United States tax system is in complete disarray. Republicans and Democrats agree that the current tax code is complex, unfair, and costly. The income tax system is so complex; the IRS publishes 480 tax forms and 280 forms to explain the 480 forms (Armey 1). 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The Right Time for Martin Luther King, Jr. Essay - 1342 Words

As a leader in the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had to confront both the oppression of blacks in America as well as dissenters who objected to the timing and methods King advocated. Deeply involved in the civil rights movement, King rarely had time to respond to his critics. However, while confined to the Birmingham jail after being arrested during a civil rights demonstration, King had time to address several of these widely held criticisms that were the subject of a letter written by eight Birmingham clergymen and published in a local newspaper. In his Letter from Birmingham jail King’s eloquent and persuasive response to each of their arguments supported his belief that it was the right time for a full-scale civil†¦show more content†¦King also appeals to logic. He says, â€Å"I am in Birmingham because injustice is here† and as a religious leader, he is compelled to fight for freedom from oppression wherever it occurs. He follows this with an emotional appeal when he states, â€Å"injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.† Through these persuasive devices King successfully defends his presence in Birmingham at the time of the demonstrations. On several occasions the clergymen revisited the topic of the timing of the civil rights activities that were taking place in Birmingham. They questioned why Birmingham’s new city administration was not given time to act. King had a strong line of argument against waiting. By citing the history of oppression as an appeal to logic, King explained that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. King had seen laws change, but not enforced and he recognized that change would not come easily without change in the hearts and minds of the American people. On this topic King also makes a touching emotional appeal describing how it is for a father to have to answer the questions of their children when they ask why they can’t play where white children play or why white people treated them â€Å"so mean.†Show MoreRelatedMartin Luther King Jr Essay1299 Words   |  6 PagesWhy was Martin Luther King Jr. such an inspiration to African Americans in America ? Martin Luther King Jr. was an American minister, Civil Rights leader, and activist who had a strong belief in nonviolent protests (history.com; Martin Luther King Jr.). He was the leader behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington which were eventually effective and a law was passed to end racial discrimination (history.com; Martin Luther King Jr.). On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested forRead MoreMartin Luther King Pathos and Ethos of Speech895 Words   |  4 PagesDr. Martin Luther King Juniors use of Ethos Pathos in his â€Å"I have a dream† speech. On August 28, 1963, people around the nation tuned into hear several civil rights speeches going on in Washington. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of those civil rights speakers, and that day he gave his famous â€Å"I have a dream† speech. In Dr. Martin Luther King Juniors speech, he spoke about unifying the nation, to create a place where Americans â€Å"will not be judged by the color of your skin but by the contentRead MoreEssay on Biography of Martin Luther King522 Words   |  3 PagesBiography of Martin Luther King The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15,1929 (9). Martin Luther King Jr. began nursery school at the very young age of three years old in 1932 (5). After attending elementary school for one year Martin Luther King got expelled from school after his second grade teacher found out that he was only five years old which was a year too young to be in second grade in 1934 (5). The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. beganRead MoreMartin Luther King Jr. What Was The Point Of Segregation711 Words   |  3 PagesHook: In the days of August 1963, Martin Luther king Jr did a march down a Washington D.C street that was very important to the united states to stop most legalized segregation. This was the point of discrimination that Martin Luther King Jr has faced. Background: This is part of the march on washington for jobs and freedom. The march is to help make segregation illegal. Segregation was a law made during jim crow laws times when he thought that blacks didn’t deserve to go to school or work withRead MoreRhetorical Analysis of the I Have a Dream Speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.1219 Words   |  5 Pagesechoed throughout Washington D.C. August 28, 1963 as Martin Luther King Jr. paved the path to freedom for those suffering from racial segregation. It was the day of the March on Washington, which promoted Civil Rights and economic equality for African Americans. In order to share his feelings and dreams with the rest of the nation, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech encouraging all to overcome racial segregation. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech was very effective due to theRead MoreOutliers Essay909 Words   |  4 PagesOutlier Essay: Martin Luther King Jr. An outlier is a person or thing situated away or detached from the main body or system. In other words, an outlier is somebody who goes out of his or her way and does something extraordinary in order to accomplish their goal. Martin Luther King Jr. is a true example of an outlier. In the early 1900s, segregation was strongly recognized in the United States, until Martin Luther King Jr. stood up for what he believed in and made a change. Although he made a differenceRead Moreâ€Å"I Am Happy To Join With You Today In What Will Go Down1420 Words   |  6 Pagesgreatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.† (Lerone Bennett Jr. pg.125) Being a hero means to be a leader. To be a leader you have to have strength, courage, and commitment. In the 1960s, there were many leaders fighting for what they believe is the right of freedom and equality of all people. A major leader, Martin Luther King Jr. was involved in the Civil Rights Movement during the 60s. King was in fluenced by advocates of nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi. He wanted to seekRead MoreEssay on The Life of Martin Luther King Jr.1244 Words   |  5 Pagesone step at a time. He devoted his life to changing the world. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born to Alberta and Martin Luther King. Alberta Williams King was born September 13, 1904 in Atlanta, Georgia. Martin Luther King, Sr. was born December 19, 1899 in Stockbridge, Georgia. Martins dad was a pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. His mother was a school teacher. His siblings were Christine King Farris born September 11, 1927, and Alfred Daniel Williams King born July 30Read MoreRhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King Jr.1046 Words   |  5 PagesCivil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his memorable â€Å"I Have a Dream† speech while standing at the feet of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. His uplifting speech is one of the most admired during the civil rights era and arg uably one of the best in American history. On August 28th, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the true American dream: equality. Although the video of his oral spectacle is powerful, the written document portrays exactly how brilliant Martin Luther KingRead MoreI Have A Dream By Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.1102 Words   |  5 PagesDr. Martin Luther King Jr., he elaborates on the fight African Americans have endured and sets the path for freedom and equality while We Shall Overcome by L.B Johnson speaks on providing equality for all Americans. According to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speech, â€Å"I Have A Dream†, we, as nation and as people must demand freedom based on equality and perseverance. Equality and perseverance are the stepping stones towards true liberty and justice for all African Americans. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

Final Film Critique Essay - 2458 Words

Final Film Critique Richard Hogan ENG 225: Introduction to Film October 25, 2011 Final Film Critique Introduction The movie, The Shawshank Redemption (1994), is based on a character Andy Dufresne. Andy is a young and successful banker who is sent to Shawshank Prison for murdering his wife and her secret lover. His life is changed drastically upon being convicted and being sent to prison. He is sent to prison to serve a life term. Over the 20-years in prison, Andy retains optimism and eventually earns the respect of his fellow inmates. He becomes friends with Red, and they both comfort and empathize with each other while in prison. The story has a strong message of hope, spirit, determination, courage, and desire.†¦show more content†¦In the film’s final scene the two meet up and are free from their life of isolation, law, hate, and racism. The film has some additional storytelling that I would like to discuss. The Shawshank Redemption is done in chronological order, but there are some parts when the characters flash back to earlier times in their live so you can understa nd what is happening in the film. This is done so the viewer still has an easy way to follow the movie. The characters of the film face both internal and external conflict. The internal conflict is should I continue this life when I know I am innocent, and the external conflict is from the prison, the prisoners, and the prison staff. The film does contain symbolism. An example of the symbolism is when the warden learns of his fate and his last judgment by reading the morning newspaper of himself and the prison being corrupt. Additionally, symbolism is used with the holy bible the warden reads; when he finds the hammer that Andy uses to dig out of the prison. There is a passage from Exodus that is used to symbolize the warden’s salvation and Andy’s escape. 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Bag of Bones CHAPTER FOURTEEN Free Essays

The ringing of the phone or, more accurately, the way I received the ringing of the phone was as familiar as the creaks of my chair or the hum of the old IBM Selectric. It seemed to come from far away at first, then to approach like a whistling train coming down on a crossing. There was no extension in my office or Jo’s; the upstairs phone, an old-fashioned rotary-dial, was on a table in the hall between them in what Jo used to call ‘no-man’s-land. We will write a custom essay sample on Bag of Bones CHAPTER FOURTEEN or any similar topic only for you Order Now ’ The temperature out there must have been at least ninety degrees, but the air still felt cool on my skin after the office. I was so oiled with sweat that I looked like a slightly pot-bellied version of the muscle-boys I sometimes saw when I was working out. ‘Hello?’ ‘Mike? Did I wake you? Were you sleeping?’ It was Mattie, but a different one from last night. This one wasn’t afraid or even tentative; this one sounded so happy she was almost bubbling over. It was almost certainly the Mattie who had attracted Lance Devore. ‘Not sleeping,’ I said. ‘Writing a little.’ ‘Get out! I thought you were retired.’ ‘I thought so, too,’ I said, ‘but maybe I was a little hasty. What’s going on? You sound over the moon.’ ‘I just got off the phone with John Storrow ‘ Really? How long had I been on the second floor, anyway? I looked at my wrist and saw nothing but a pale circle. It was half-past freckles and skin o’clock, as we used to say when we were kids; my watch was downstairs in the north bedroom, probably lying in a puddle of water from my overturned night-glass. ‘ his age, and that he can subpoena the other son!’ ‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘You lost me. Go back and slow down.’ She did. Telling the hard news didn’t take long (it rarely does): Storrow was coming up tomorrow. He would land at County Airport and stay at the Lookout Rock Hotel in Castle View. The two of them would spend most of Friday discussing the case. ‘Oh, and he found a lawyer for you,’ she said. ‘To go with you to your deposition. I think he’s from Lewiston.’ It all sounded good, but what mattered a lot more than the bare facts was that Mattie had recovered her will to fight. Until this morning (if it was still morning; the light coming in the window above the broken air conditioner suggested that if it was, it wouldn’t be much longer) I hadn’t realized how gloomy the young woman in the red sundress and tidy white sneakers had been. How far down the road to believing she would lose her child. ‘This is great. I’m so glad, Mattie.’ ‘And you did it. If you were here, I’d give you the biggest kiss you ever had.’ ‘He told you you could win, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you believe him.’ ‘Yes!’ Then her voice dropped a little. ‘He wasn’t exactly thrilled when I told him I’d had you over to dinner last night, though.’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think he would be.’ ‘I told him we ate in the yard and he said we only had to be inside together for sixty seconds to start the gossip.’ ‘I’d say he’s got an insultingly low opinion of Yankee lovin,’ I said, ‘but of course he’s from New York.’ She laughed harder than my little joke warranted, I thought. Out of semi-hysterical relief that she now had a couple of protectors? Because the whole subject of sex was a tender one for her just now? Best not to speculate. ‘He didn’t paddle me too hard about it, but he made it clear that he would if we did it again. When this is over, though, I’m having you for a real meal. We’ll have everything you like, just the way you like it.’ Everything you like, just the way you like it. And she was, by God and Sonny Jesus, completely unaware that what she was saying might have another meaning I would have bet on it. I closed my eyes for a moment, smiling. Why not smile? Everything she was saying sounded absolutely great, especially once you cleared the confines of Michael Noonan’s dirty mind. It sounded like we might have the expected fairy-tale ending, if we could keep our courage and hold our course. And if I could restrain myself from making a pass at a girl young enough to be my daughter . . . outside of my dreams, that was. If I couldn’t, I probably deserved whatever I got. But Kyra wouldn’t. She was the hood ornament in all this, doomed to go wherever the car took her. If I got any of the wrong ideas, I’d do well to remember that. ‘If the judge sends Devore home empty-handed, I’ll take you out to Renoir Nights in Portland and buy you nine courses of French chow,’ I said. ‘Storrow, too. I’ll even spring for the legal beagle I’m dating on Friday. So who’s better than me, huh?’ ‘No one I know,’ she said, sounding serious. ‘I’ll pay you back for this, Mike. I’m down now, but I won’t always be down. If it takes me the rest of my life, I’ll pay you back.’ ‘Mattie, you don’t have to ‘ ‘I do,’ she said with quiet vehemence. ‘I do. And I have to do something else today, too.’ ‘What’s that?’ I loved hearing her sound the way she did this morning so happy and free, like a prisoner who has just been pardoned and let out of jail but already I was looking longingly at the door to my office. I couldn’t do much more today, I’d end up baked like an apple if I tried, but I wanted another page or two, at least. Do what you want, both women had said in my dreams. Do what you want. ‘I have to buy Kyra the big teddybear they have at the Castle Rock Wal-Mart,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell her it’s for being a good girl because I can’t tell her it’s for walking in the middle of the road when you were coming the other way.’ ‘Just not a black one,’ I said. The words were out of my mouth before I knew they were even in my head. ‘Huh?’ Sounding startled and doubtful. ‘I said bring me back one,’ I said, the words once again out and down the wire before I even knew they were there. ‘Maybe I will,’ she said, sounding amused. Then her tone grew serious again. ‘And if I said anything last night that made you unhappy, even for a minute, I’m sorry. I never for the world ‘ ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not unhappy. A little confused, that’s all. In fact I’d pretty much forgotten about Jo’s mystery date.’ A lie, but in what seemed to me to be a good cause. ‘That’s probably for the best. I won’t keep you go on back to work. It’s what you want to do, isn’t it?’ I was startled. ‘What makes you say that?’ ‘I don’t know, I just . . . ‘ She stopped. And I suddenly knew two things: What she had been about to say, and that she wouldn’t say it. I dreamed about you last night. I dreamed about us together. were going to make love and one of us said ‘Do what you want.’ Or maybe, I don’t know, maybe we both said it. Perhaps sometimes ghosts were alive minds and desires divorced from their bodies, unlocked impulses floating unseen. Ghosts from the id, spooks from low places. ‘Mattie? Still there?’ ‘Sure, you bet. Do you want me to stay in touch? Or will you hear all you need from John Storrow?’ ‘If you don’t stay in touch, I’ll be pissed at you. Royally.’ She laughed. ‘I will, then. But not when you’re working. Goodbye, Mike. And thanks again. So much.’ I told her goodbye, then stood there for a moment looking at the old fashioned Bakelite phone handset after she had hung up. She’d call and keep me updated, but not when I was working. How would she know when that was? She just would. As I’d known last night that she was lying when she said Jo and the man with the elbow patches on the sleeves of his sportcoat had walked off toward the parking lot. Mattie had been wearing a pair of white shorts and a halter top when she called me, no dress or skirt required today because it was Wednesday and the library was closed on Wednesday. You don’t know any of that. You’re just making it up. But I wasn’t. If I’d been making it up, I probably would have put her in something a little more suggestive a Merry Widow from Victoria’s Secret, perhaps. That thought called up another. Do what you want, they had said. Both of them. Do what you want. And that was a line I knew. While on Key Largo I’d read an Atlantic Monthly essay on pornography by some feminist. I wasn’t sure which one, only that it hadn’t been Naomi Wolf or Camille Paglia. This woman had been of the conservative stripe, and she had used that phrase. Sally Tisdale, maybe? Or was my mind just hearing echo-distortions of Sara Tidwell? Whoever it had been, she’d claimed that ‘do what I want’ was the basis of erotica which appealed to women and ‘do what you want’ was the basis of pornography which appealed to men. Women imagine speaking the former line in sexual situations; men imagine having the latter line spoken to them. And, the writer went on, when real-world sex goes bad sometimes turning violent, sometimes shaming, sometimes just unsuccessful from the female partner’s point of view porn is often the un indicted co-conspirator. The man is apt to round on the woman angrily and cry, ‘You wanted me to! Quit lying and admit it! You wanted me to!’ The writer claimed it was what every man hoped to hear in the bedroom: Do what you want. Bite me, sodomize me, lick between my toes, drink wine out of my navel, give me a hairbrush and raise your ass for me to paddle, it doesn’t matter. Do what you want. The door is closed and we are here, but really only you are here, I am just a willing extension of your fantasies and only you are here. I have no wants of my own, no needs of my own, no taboos. Do what you want to this shadow, this fantasy, this ghost. I’d thought the essayist at least fifty per cent full of shit; the assumption that a man can find real sexual pleasure only by turning a woman into a kind of jackoff accessory says more about the observer than the participants. This lady had had a lot of jargon and a fair amount of wit, but underneath she was only saying what Somerset Maugham, Jo’s old favorite, had had Sadie Thompson say in ‘Rain,’ a story written eighty years before: men are pigs, filthy, dirty pigs, all of them. But we are not pigs, as a rule, not beasts, or at least not unless we are pushed to the final extremity. And if we are pushed to it, the issue is rarely sex; it’s usually territory. I’ve heard feminists argue that to men sex and territory are interchangeable, and that is very far from the truth. I padded back to the office, opened the door, and behind me the telephone rang again. And here was another familiar sensation, back for a return visit after four years: that anger at the telephone, the urge to simply rip it out of the wall and fire it across the room. Why did the whole world have to call while I was writing? Why couldn’t they just . . . well. . let me do what I wanted? I gave a doubtful laugh and returned to the phone, seeing the wet handprint on it from my last call. ‘Hello?’ ‘I said to stay visible while you were with her.’ ‘Good morning to you, too, Lawyer Storrow.’ ‘You must be in another time-zone up there, chum. I’ve got one-fifteen down here in New York.’ ‘I had dinner with her,’ I said. ‘Outside. It’s true that I read the little kid a story and helped put her to bed, but ‘ ‘I imagine half the town thinks you’re bopping each other’s brains out by now, and the other half will think it if I have to show up for her in court.’ But he didn’t sound really angry; I thought he sounded as though he was having a happy-face day. ‘Can they make you tell who’s paying for your services?’ I asked. ‘At the custody hearing, I mean?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘At my deposition on Friday?’ ‘Christ, no. Durgin would lose all credibility as guardian ad litem if he went in that direction. Also, they have reasons to steer clear of the sex angle. Their focus is on Mattie as neglectful and perhaps abusive. Proving that Mom isn’t a nun quit working around the time Kramer vs. Kramer came out in the movie theaters. Nor is that the only problem they have with the issue.’ He now sounded positively gleeful. ‘Tell me.’ ‘Max Devore is eighty-five and divorced. Twice divorced, in point of fact. Before awarding custody to a single man of his age, secondary custody has to be taken into consideration. It is, in fact, the single most important issue, other than the allegations of abuse and neglect levelled at the mother.’ ‘What are those allegations? Do you know?’ ‘No. Mattie doesn’t either, because they’re fabrications. She’s a sweetie, by the way ‘ ‘Yeah, she is.’ ‘ and I think she’s going to make a great witness. I can’t wait to meet her in person. Meantime, don’t sidetrack me. We’re talking about secondary custody, right?’ ‘Right.’ ‘Devore has a daughter who has been declared mentally incompetent and lives in an institution somewhere in California Modesto, I think. Not a good bet for custody.’ ‘It wouldn’t seem so.’ ‘The son, Roger, is . . . ‘ I heard a faint fluttering of notebook pages. ‘ . . . fifty-four. So he’s not exactly a spring chicken, either. Still, there are lots of guys who become daddies at that age nowadays; it’s a brave new world. But Roger is a homosexual.’ I thought of Bill Dean saying, Rump-wrangler. Understand there’s a lot of that going around out them in California. ‘I thought you said sex doesn’t matter.’ ‘Maybe I should have said hetero sex doesn’t matter. In certain states California is one of them homo sex doesn’t matter, either . . . or not as much. But this case isn’t going to be adjudicated in California. It’s going to be adjudicated in Maine, where folks are less enlightened about how well two married men married to each other, I mean can raise a little girl.’ ‘Roger Devore is married?’ Okay. I admit it. I now felt a certain horrified glee myself. I was ashamed of it Roger Devore was just a guy living his life, and he might not have had much or anything to do with his elderly dad’s current enterprise but I felt it just the same. ‘He and a software designer named Morris Ridding tied the knot in 1996,’ John said. ‘I found that on the first computer sweep. And if this does wind up in court, I intend to make as much of it as I possibly can. I don’t know how much that will be at this point it’s impossible to predict but if I get a chance to paint a picture of that bright-eyed, cheerful little girl growing up with two elderly gays who probably spend most of their lives in computer chat-rooms speculating about what Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock might have done after the lights were out in officers’ country . . . well, if I get that chance, I’ll take it.’ ‘It seems a little mean,’ I said. I heard myself speaking in the tone of a man who wants to be dissuaded, perhaps even laughed at, but that didn’t happen. ‘Of course it’s mean. It feels like swerving up onto the sidewalk to knock over a couple of innocent bystanders. Roger Devore and Morris Ridding don’t deal drugs, traffic in little boys, or rob old ladies. But this is custody, and custody does an even better job than divorce of turning human beings into insects. This one isn’t as bad as it could be, but it’s bad enough because it’s so naked. Max Devore came up there to his old hometown for one reason and one reason only: to buy a kid. That makes me mad.’ I grinned, imagining a lawyer who looked like Elmer Fudd standing outside of a rabbit-hole marked DEVORE with a shotgun. ‘My message to Devore is going to be very simple: the price of the kid just went up. Probably to a figure higher than even he can afford.’ ‘If it goes to court you’ve said that a couple of times now. Do you think there’s a chance Devore might just drop it and go away?’ ‘A pretty good one, yeah. I’d say an excellent one if he wasn’t old and used to getting his own way. There’s also the question of whether or not he’s still sharp enough to know where his best interest lies. I’ll try for a meeting with him and his lawyer while I’m up there, but so far I haven’t managed to get past his secretary.’ ‘Rogette Whitmore?’ ‘No, I think she’s a step further up the ladder. I haven’t talked to her yet, either. But I will.’ ‘Try either Richard Osgood or George Footman,’ I said. ‘Either of them may be able to put you in touch with Devore or Devore’s chief counsel.’ ‘I’ll want to talk to the Whitmore woman in any case. Men like Devore tend to grow more and more dependent on their close advisors as they grow older, and she could be a key to getting him to let this go. She could also be a headache for us. She might urge him to fight, possibly because she really thinks he can win and possibly because she wants to watch the fur fly. Also, she might marry him.’ ‘Marry him?’ ‘Why not? He could have her sign a pre-nup I could no more’ introduce that in court than his lawyers could go fishing for who hired Mattie’s lawyer and it would strengthen his chances.’ ‘John, I’ve seen the woman. She’s got to be seventy herself.’ ‘But she’s a potential female player in a custody case involving a little girl, and she’s a layer between old man Devore and the married gay couple. We just need to keep it in mind.’ ‘Okay.’ I looked at the office door again, but not so longingly. There comes a point when you’re done for the day whether you want to be or not, and I thought I had reached that point. Perhaps in the evening . . . ‘The lawyer I got for you is named Romeo Bissonette.’ He paused. ‘Can that be a real name?’ ‘Is he from Lewiston?’ ‘Yes, how did you know?’ ‘Because in Maine, especially around Lewiston, that can be a real name. Am I supposed to go see him?’ I didn’t want to go see him. It was fifty miles to Lewiston over two-lane roads which would now be crawling with campers and Winnebagos. What I wanted was to go swimming and then take a long nap. A long dreamless nap. ‘You don’t need to. Call him and talk to him a little. He’s only a safety net, really he’ll object if the questioning leaves the incident on the morning of July Fourth. About that incident you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Got it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Talk to him before, then meet him on Friday at . . . wait . . . it’s right here . . . ‘ The notebook pages fluttered again. ‘Meet him at the Route 120 Diner at nine-fifteen. Coffee. Talk a little, get to know each other, maybe flip for the check. I’ll be with Mattie, getting as much as I can. We may want to hire a private dick.’ ‘I love it when you talk dirty.’ ‘Uh-huh. I’m going to see that bills go to your guy Goldacre. He’ll send them to your agent, and your agent can ‘ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Instruct Goldacre to send them directly here. Harold’s a Jewish mother. How much is this going to cost me?’ ‘Seventy-five thousand dollars, minimum,’ he said with no hesitation at all. With no apology in his voice, either. ‘Don’t tell Mattie.’ ‘All right. Are you having any fun yet, Mike?’ ‘You know, I sort of am,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘For seventy-five grand, you should.’ We said our goodbyes and John hung up. As I put my own phone back into its cradle, it occurred to me that I had lived more in the last five days than I had in the last four years. This time the phone didn’t ring and I made it all the way back into the office, but I knew I was definitely done for the day. I sat down at the IBM, hit the RETURN key a couple of times, and was beginning to write myself a next-note at the bottom of the page I’d been working on when the phone interrupted me. What a sour little doodad the telephone is, and what little good news we get from it! Today had been an exception, though, and I thought I could sign off with a grin. I was working, after all working. Part of me still marvelled that I was sitting here at all, breathing easily, my heart beating steadily in my chest, and not even a glimmer of an anxiety attack on my personal event horizon. I wrote: [NEXT: Drake to Raiford. Stops on the way at vegetable stand to talk to the guy who runs it, old source, needs a good colorful name. Straw hat. Disneyworld tee-shirt. They talk about Shackleford.] I turned the roller until the IBM spat this page out, stuck it on top of the manuscript, and jotted a final note to myself: ‘Call Ted Rosencrief about Raiford.’ Rosencrief was a retired Navy man who lived in Derry. I had employed him as a research assistant on several books, using him on one project to find out how paper was made, what the migratory habits of certain common birds were for another, a little bit about the architecture of pyramid burial rooms for a third. And it’s always ‘a little bit’ I want, never ‘the whole damn thing.’ As a writer, my motto has always been don’t confuse me with the facts. The Arthur Hailey type of fiction is beyond me I can’t read it, let alone write it. I want to know just enough so I can lie colorfully. Rosie knew that, and we had always worked well together. This time I needed to know a little bit about Florida’s Raiford Prison, and what the deathhouse down there is really like. I also needed a little bit on the psychology of serial killers. I thought Rosie would probably be glad to hear from me . . . almost as glad as I was to finally have something to call him about. I picked up the eight double-spaced pages I had written and fanned through them, still amazed at their existence. Had an old IBM typewriter and a Courier type-ball been the secret all along? That was certainly how it seemed. What had come out was also amazing. I’d had ideas during my four-year sabbatical; there had been no writer’s block in that regard. One had been really great, the sort of thing which certainly would have become a novel if I’d still been able to write novels. Half a dozen to a dozen were of the sort I’d classify ‘pretty good,’ meaning they’d do in a pinch . . . or if they happened to unexpectedly grow tall and mysterious overnight, like Jack’s beanstalk. Sometimes they do. Most were glimmers, little ‘what-ifs’ that came and went like shooting stars while I was driving or walking or just lying in bed at night and waiting to go to sleep. The Red-Shirt Man was a what-if. One day I saw a man in a bright red shirt washing the show windows of the JC Penney store in Derry this was not long before Penney’s moved out to the mall. A young man and woman walked under his ladder . . . very bad luck, according to the old superstition. These two didn’t know where they were walking, though they were holding hands, drinking deeply of each other’s eyes, as completely in love as any two twenty-year-olds in the history of the world. The man was tall, and as I watched, the top of his head came within an ace of clipping the window-washer’s feet. If that had happened, the whole works might have gone over. The entire incident was history in five seconds. Writing The Red-Shirt Man took five months. Except in truth, the entire book was done in a what-if second. I imagined a collision instead of a near-miss. Everything else followed from there. The writing was just secretarial. The idea I was currently working on wasn’t one of Mike’s Really Great Ideas (Jo’s voice carefully made the capitals), but it wasn’t a what-if, either. Nor was it much like my old gothic suspense yarns; V. C. Andrews with a prick was nowhere in sight this time. But it felt solid, like the real thing, and this morning it had come out as naturally as a breath. Andy Drake was a private investigator in Key Largo. He was forty years old, divorced, the father of a three-year-old girl. At the open he was in the Key West home of a woman named Regina Whiting. Mrs. Whiting also had a little girl, hers five years old. Mrs. Whiting was married to an extremely rich developer who did not know what Andy Drake knew: that until 1992, Regina Taylor Whiting had been Tiffany Taylor, a high-priced Miami call-girl. That much I had written before the phone started ringing. Here is what I knew beyond that point, the secretarial work I’d do over the next several weeks, assuming that my marvellously recovered ability to work held up: One day when Karen Whiting was three, the phone had rung while she and her mother were sitting in the patio hot tub. Regina thought of asking the yard-guy to answer it, then decided to get it herself-their regular man was out with the flu, and she didn’t feel comfortable about asking a stranger for a favor. Cautioning her daughter to sit still, Regina hopped out to answer the phone. When Karen put up a hand to keep from being splashed as her mother left the tub, she dropped the doll she had been bathing. When she bent to pick it up, her hair became caught in one of the hot tub’s powerful intakes. (It was reading of a fatal accident like this that had originally kicked the story off in my mind two or three years before.) The yard-man, some no-name in a khaki shirt sent over by a day-labor outfit, saw what was happening. He raced across the lawn, dove headfirst into the tub, and yanked the child from the bottom, leaving hair and a good chunk of scalp clogging the jet when he did. He’d give her artificial respiration until she began to breathe again. (This would be a wonderful, suspenseful scene, and I couldn’t wait to write it.) He would refuse all of the hysterical, relieved mother’s offers of recompense, although he’d finally give her an address so that her husband could talk to him. Only both the address and his name, John Sanborn, would turn out to be a fake. Two years later the ex-hooker with the respectable second life sees the man who saved her child on the front page of the Miami paper. His name is given as John Shackleford and he has been arrested for the rape-murder of a nine-year-old girl. And, the article goes on, he is suspected in over forty other murders, many of the victims children. ‘Have you caught Baseball Cap?’ one of the reporters would yell at the press conference. ‘Is John Shackleford Baseball Cap?’ ‘Well,’ I said, going downstairs, ‘they sure think he is.’ I could hear too many boats out on the lake this afternoon to make nude bathing an option. I pulled on my suit, slung a towel over my shoulders, and started down the path the one which had been lined with glowing paper lanterns in my dream to wash off the sweat of my nightmares and my unexpected morning’s labors. There are twenty-three railroad-tie steps between Sara and the lake. I had gone down only four or five before the enormity of what had just happened hit me. My mouth began to tremble. The colors of the trees and the sky mixed together as my eyes teared up. A sound began to come out of me a kind of muffled groaning. The strength ran out of my legs and I sat down hard on a railroad tie. For a moment I thought it was over, mostly just a false alarm, and then I began to cry. I stuffed one end of the towel in my mouth during the worst of it, afraid that if the boaters on the lake heard the sounds coming out of me, they’d think someone up here was being murdered. I cried in grief for the empty years I had spent without Jo, without friends, and without my work. I cried in gratitude because those work-less years seemed to be over. It was too early to tell for sure one swallow doesn’t make a summer and eight pages of hard copy don’t make a career resuscitation but I thought it really might be so. And I cried out of fear, as well, as we do when some awful experience is finally over or when some terrible accident has been narrowly averted. I cried because I suddenly realized that I had been walking a white line ever since Jo died, walking straight down the middle of the road. By some miracle, I had been carried out of harm’s way. I had no idea who had done the carrying, but that was all right it was a question that could wait for another day. I cried it all out of me. Then I went on down to the lake and waded in. The cool water felt more than good on my overheated body; it felt like a resurrection. How to cite Bag of Bones CHAPTER FOURTEEN, Essay examples