The pain of separation in Taryn Bowe’s “Surrogate Needs,” from our July issue. Scars follow:

1. Many parts of this story deal with transference- of memory, guilt, Gracie; from person to person, from person to memory, etc. Is this a typical means of coping?

I don’t think it is an entirely functional mechanism for coping. That’s for sure. I think it sets folks up for some pretty serious disappointments when they finally come to terms with the fact that the people or objects they’ve invested all this guilt, angst, and love in have very little connection to the strong emotions they inspire.

In terms of whether or not transference is a typical means of coping, I can only really comment on my own experience, which has been to engage in pretty shameless transference in instances when I’m out of sorts and in need of genuine human connection. For example, at times in my life when I’ve moved to a new place or left behind old good friends, when I’ve had to start over from scratch, I’ve tried to find aspects of lost people in new people, and often this leads to the mistaken sensation of knowing a stranger very well when in fact you are just projecting a whole catalogue of longed for connections and characteristics onto them.

Regarding transference in fiction, there’s a fantastic Mary Gaitskill story, “Dentist,” in which a woman becomes obsessed with her middle-aged dentist because he extends a small act of kindness during a time in her life when she is totally down and out.

2. The idea of transformation as a means of escape sneaks into this story, particularly in Mindy’s character. How much can we change before we’re completely removed from where we started?

Often, I wonder if we can really change all that much. Sometimes I think the act of trying to change, at least physically, is really just a way of avoiding difficult truths and trying to train our minds to obsess about something other than the thing we are really obsessing about.

For instance, in “Surrogate Needs”, Mindy focuses much of her time and energy on whittling away her body through diet and exercise. In a lot of ways, this is extremely convenient. All that time when she is thinking about the next five miles she’ll run or studying her weird pokey bones in the mirror or trying not to eat a brownie, she is relieved from the even harder task of thinking about Carter and her shattered future with him.

I don’t think people can escape feelings. At least not while sober. Feelings have to be worked through and waited out. Continue reading →