The Lightning Room With Anne Hays

In our latest queer issue, Anne Hays’ “You’re Like This And I’m Like” gave us clashing narratives on either side of the generational divide. Here, Anne gives us a look at this glorious mashup, this myth of memory:

1. To me, this story operates on two levels: on one, it’s the narrator’s development through time, through memories and moves, the tonal shifts of personhood; on the other, it’s the reflections of the narrator’s parents, reflected back on those same memories. What made you decide to structure the story this way?

In terms of structure, I actually took three old failed pieces and wrangled them into one: an oral history workshop exercise which involved interviewing oneself, a short story (ie fiction) about an abusive lesbian relationship, and a prose fragment piece about aspects of life that make a person feel trapped. I started writing the new hybrid piece at 11pm one night and finished in a frenzied, dizzy state at around 3am. It was a wild experience for me, writing it, because it seemed to come flying out as a coherent story all on its own, despite me. Over the next few days I crunched it, editing, but for the most part my feverish midnight exorcism remained intact. But I’m glad you asked this question because the original title of one of the failed pieces had been ‘I know This Is true,’ and my intention was to interrogate varying versions of memory and truth, and what are those things.

2. In this piece I also felt a clash of remembrance, a struggle to reconcile two sides of the same memory, sometimes one that the speaker herself doesn’t even remember. What do we learn from the so-called “mythic impressions” and “crazed technicolor versions” of the memories we’ve left behind?

Ah, yes. The narrator finds her own memories more satisfying than her parents’ renderings of similar events, but the reader can see that the stories don’t actually directly conflict. Their stories aren’t even all that crazed, but because they’re being told to the narrator over bottles of wine, the storytelling scenes themselves have a crazed quality to them. Maybe they’re more shrill than crazed. ‘The fucking suicide list,’ for instance. I think (in real life) parents often tell stories that stand in for the way we were as children, and in the re-telling, the stories get stronger and sturdier, perhaps more sturdy than those memories really should be. I try to make sense of myself sometimes through my parents’ stories about me, so I wanted to give that to this story. You know, “you were always artistic!” and suddenly, just like that, I always have been. I feel this way about photographs, too; I remember photos better than the scenes they represent- the photo becomes and then replaces the memory. Also, because the first half of the piece emerged out of an oral history-style “self-interview,” the tone of voice sounds as though the narrator is interrogating her own life as a detective, not based on how she feels or remembers feeling, but entirely based on what she tells herself, and then versus what others tell her about herself. It’s a very specific and disorienting way to try and tell a story. Those are the qualities that, I think, give the story a zany, blurry, technicolor feel to it.

3. Alongside this, there seems to be a generational friction to the language, a combativeness between the speaker and her parents, a profound resistance to someone getting the story wrong. What is one thing that we must be absolutely clear about?

I think the most combative element to the speaker/parent exchange is the fact that the parents keep telling the speaker who she is, as opposed to asking. They are vying for the right to be in control of the story. Ultimately, I’m not sure the reader gets to be absolutely clear about much in the story, including what happens next. We know the ex-girlfriend gets to walk away, for instance, but we don’t know if the narrator does. We don’t know if she finds relief.

4. What is your most devastating impulse?

You mean me, personally? Oh, it’s impossible to choose just one.

5. There is a thread of cruelty that runs through this piece, from callousness among children, to the blunt, insistent words of the parents, to the self-hate focused outwards. What can you say about this and how it defines us?

That’s a perceptive comment about the piece! It’s interesting, because I’m not sure that same thread of cruelty does define “us”as a whole, though it does seem to define the terrain of the piece. While I wrote this, I actively had the concept of bitterness, resentment, and admission of personal faults on my mind. That night I had gone for a walk in the park with a friend. It was growing dark and so we lay on our backs in the grass and looked up at the sky. We were talking about dark times in our pasts, things we regretted, past catastrophes- it was an intense conversation. My friend might remember the evening differently; we’ve already established I have a possibly faulty memory. Anyway, when it got dark we got coffee and kept up our intense conversation, and when it was late I went home, still buzzing with caffeine and with regrets on the mind. I think that’s why I was suddenly able to make sense of those three failed pieces and cohere them so rapidly. I wanted to write about violence – that part of the story was already there – but this night the undercurrent of my thinking lingered on personal responsibility.

6. Could you share with our readers one story you’re fond of telling that you know you shouldn’t?

Oh, this will get me in trouble! I’m absolutely constantly saying things I shouldn’t. I actually have the perfect response to this: a story I tell on a regular basis that I have no business telling anyone. But because this will be in print, I can’t tell you! Sorry.