Ask the Author: Michelle Reale

Michelle Reale’s fiction appears in the May issue. She talks with us about her three stories, Duran Duran, and whose heart she wants in her throat.

1. How much of yourself is in “Three Stories”? How much of others?

There is a bit of me in the stories and a bit of others, too.  I set the stories in a foreign locale because I have always realized that even though I love to travel, we are different people when we are abroad.  We tend to see ourselves and out faults magnified and through the eyes’ of others.  It is a scary feeling.

2. This particular passage really stood out to me:

We all get old, they tell each other, watching the couple, arm in arm, eyes downward, even behind dark glasses. For some, it arrives sooner than others, one says.

Where did this come from?

Well.  I don’t know exactly, except from the observation that attitude has so much sway in how old you feel or how you look.  I have seen old women, whose eyes shine and who’s every wrinkle seems earned somehow. Then I have seen young women, who could be so beautiful, but they want too much, too soon and they grab and claw. And they tend toward jealousy, which is always so unattractive at its very core. They are too impatient to allow things to unfold in their own time. They grow old from wants never fulfilled, someone. In the story, the old, rough women gaze at a couple wh0 are not happy.  The old women intuit (perhaps lasciviously!) that the sex isn’t that great either.   And that, before that young woman knows it, she will be like them.   Of course, some readers may not take that meaning away with them, when they read the story, but I suppose any interpretation is just fine.

3. Would Duran Duran film a video in the location of where “Three Stories” takes place? What would it look like?

Oh, Duran Duran would be weaving their long lithe bodies (if , indeed they still look like they did when they did the Hungry Like the Wolf video, which was . . . oh forget it, they can’t possible still look like that) through the winding medieval streets of an unnamed village in the south of Italy.   Wash would be hung from balconies, random religious processions with an ancient statue of the Madonna hoisted on the shoulders of men with blue/black five o’clock shadows, mothers wiping their children’s faces with the dish towels that are permanently hoisted over their right shoulders.  And the sun.  God, the sun.  The sun would be bright.  And hot.  And it would make the air shimmer. Those Duran Duran fellows would be wearing sunglasses. Aviator frames, perhaps? And I can’t ever imagine them breaking a sweat.

4. Whose heart do you want in your throat?

Someone who refuses to love me for who I am.  I want THAT heart in MY throat.  And I want to feel it beat with fear and respect.  In fact, I want it to skip some beats, like someone holding their breath.

5. What is the most ridiculous footwear you’ve ever worn?

I want to say high-heeled sneakers, because it seems like such a cool thing to say ,but really, I am so un-cool.   Even being ridiculous I am un-cool.  The truth is, I once had a pair of Earth Shoes.  Ridiculous (in retrospect) does not even BEGIN to cover it.  But, really, thanks for asking. My face is now burning with shame and I imagine any meager of respect you may have had for me is now gone.

6. What would you cut in half to eat?

Oh, wow. Women always do this.  We cut things in half and then go back and eat the other half anyway.  Le sigh.  Ah.  I would have to say a pomegranate.  One must always cut a pomegranate in half to eat it.  I will leave it at that!