Heat rash: 2010 edition

Some years ago I wrote a short story called "Heat Rash."  It was "published" in a "Journal" that I helped produce while a graduate student at UCLA.  Lots of quotes in the previous sentence.  An acquaintance/sort-of-friend of mine decided she wanted to create a student journal of LGBT, (um, what's the word?), stuff.  She asked me to help.  She and her gay bff took credit as editors-in-chief.  This other guy, Kirk, and I really did the whole thing.  Kirk did the layout and the design.  I did all the editing.  In exchange we got credit as the "editorial board."  The acquaintance/sort-of-friend didn't really want to publish my short story, but she had the good sense to know she wouldn't get all the free work from me if she didn't.  So, we compromised (there was more give from me, truth told, than her).  I was to write a scholarly introduction to my story.  Um, ok.

I just reread the introduction (I can't bring myself to do more than skim the story).  I cite and discuss Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy.  Go me.  Remembered something from my oral narrative seminar.  Of course, I don't remember the seminar very well now, other than the cute girl who always brought pop tarts to class, but that's another matter. 

Anyway, I will quote (with some chagrin) from the story:

"It is April and it is Thursday and I have a heat rash under my left arm that has been bothering me all day.  It is red and bumpy and will soon cover my entire body....  The best solution I can come up with is to keep my right hand in my armpit at all times.  Left handed only, I am proceeding."

The story is a somewhat autobiographical account of one spring and summer I spent in D.C.  Re-skimming it now, many of the things I recall happening that summer seem to be in there.  I'll spare the plot to all concerned (mostly myself).

I should make a side note about the acquaintance/sort-of-friend:  she moved to D.C. to attend my Alma mater for graduate school.  When she did that, she broke up with her girlfriend and left her behind.  That girlfriend is sitting behind me now at her own desk, some 16 years later.  So something very good came out of the "journal" after all.

Oh, and I do still have the short story on my c.v.  I cited Walter Ong, after all.

The acquaintance/sort-of-friend lives in--of all places--Albania now.  She and her partner are undoubtedly having adventures of a very Balkan nature.  I do not envy her the life she has.  I expect the same is true of her in regards to me.

I have what I think may be a heat rash now.  It's not where the old one was.  Regardless, it hurts and itches.

It does bring to mind the overwrought heartache of young summers.  They seem very long ago indeed.

I ran into a former student of mine last night, who immediately began asking if the things she knew about me from before were still true.  She twice asked if we had gone to any Angel games recently.  I said no both times and refrained from launching into my lament about the unused and guilt-inducing "Angel Bucks" we have sitting in a drawer.  I said that sometimes we have to move on from the things we loved.  I liked baseball a lot once.  Now, less so.

Things change.

The heat rash made me think about the past, but did not make me want to return to it.

One more quote:

"The tendency, according to Ong, of a literate culture is to emphasize the individual, to have linear plot structure in a story, an to view fixed text as the norm."

If heat rashes aren't fixed, then how can plots be linear?

Somebody pass the cortizone.