Ryan Turner

A conversation on the street today. The brother of a friend: “I was looking for your place and the street signs were mocking me. Columbus. Cabot. I was completely lost and walking in circles. Then Doofus Street. Very funny.” I forget how much of my characters grow out of people around me, how many people will read these stories and find forgotten pieces of themselves.

What’s usable is always unexpected. Like most things of value, I guess, if you’re out looking for them, they seldom come. And most of the details, the words, are stolen in private, unannounced. Like photographs of strangers – maybe that one person glancing up, catching me: “You’re going to use this, aren’t you?” It’s intrusive – even ethically dubious. I hold onto private moments that others assume have gone. 

When my grandmother discovered my writing it was something quite different. I saw my printed manuscript on her night table and she said that my father had printed it for her, that he’d told her if she read it three times it would start to make sense. She said, “Ryan, we should sit down sometime and I should tell you some stories” Months went by. When I finally showed up with my tape recorder she seemed anxious. She didn’t know if her stories would be usable, but, of course, to me that didn’t matter. I lay on her bed beside her rocking chair and she muted Judge Judy. She said she’d prepared, that she’d given every person a pseudonym. She said, “I’ll be Alice.” [Her name is Bernadette] She went through some other names she’d decided on. Irene and Muriel for two of her thirteen sisters. And I told her, “That’s the story.” “What?” “If you say nothing else, I already have it. The fact that you changed those names.”