I guess that it’s pretty obvious that I’ve got no problem talkin’ about myself as every week I seem to be somewhat effortlessly divulging the most intimate of details thereby exposing my inane obsessions and letting you, the reader, into the exceedingly convoluted environment that is my brain. So it’s kinda weird that when I got an email last month, from the school that I’ll be attending in June, askin’ for some background information that they could use it in their newsletter that’s distributed amongst the faculty and student body as a way of introducing this year’s new students – I sorta balked.
After all, all they were really asking for was some sorta mini biography depicting a slightly condensed version of my life and a list of my literary accomplishments written in the third person format and like I already said I apparently got no problem in the divulging secrets department. So why’d I pick this time in my life to get all self-conscious, stuttering all over my words, like talkin’ about me, my favorite subject, was a hard thing to do or something?
Of course me bein’ a little on the long winded side may also have been one of the mitigating factors in this somewhat daunting prospect of havin’ to compress those really significant facts that make up my oh so important and poignant life into mere paragraphs instead of volumes upon volumes of the written word. That, and the sheer certainty of the matter that someone out there was bein’ sincere about yours truly and for once I was gonna hafta start takin’ things a little more seriously as I was dealing with a whole different animal than all of us havin’ a good time chattin’ on the internet.
Yet I gotta admit that when faced with the dilemma of writing my biography, especially one that took care to makin’ myself look good, I certainly felt up to the challenge and after a few false starts and copious rewrites this is what I finally wrote:
Fromage de Merde, having been born into a highly dysfunctional Nordic/nomadic family was forced to live in various frozen tundra locales throughout his entire childhood and adolescence, thus insuring a life rife with introverted social ineptness – primarily from always being the “new kid” on the playground.
Subsequently suffering from a severe case of alienation that he readily parleyed into an easy admittance to Art School, where he majored in Film, he relentlessly labored on to destroy a short lived art career followed by an overextended stint in the music industry.
Fromage currently resides in San Francisco, California where he works as a drug and alcohol counselor to many of the same people that he formerly worked for and with.
Hmmm, not bad, huh? Even if I do say so myself. Sorta short, sweet and to the point, touchin’ on my sensitive side while not completely ignoring my strengths – piece a cake this biography deal is turnin’ out to be.
Now let’s take a look at my accomplishments, shall we? Though until today I’d never really given much thought about what I’d be listing as my literary accomplishments as there’s not much to really list. Nevertheless let me try, alright?
Fromage de Merde has written many bad checks, forged numerous credit card receipts and diligently scrawled cryptic and often illegible bits of information on those lil’ yellow post-um notes thereby sticking them to the sides of buses for the next time he passes through. His seemingly favorite pastime however is scribbling murky recollections on scraps of paper and cocktail napkins and then never remembering to re-read them. He consequently is often lost for words. He’s also been known to write condescending emails to his boss, friends and coworkers and anybody else whose address is of public record or easily bought on the internet’s black market. His mother says, much to her sorrow, that ever since he was a young man he never bothered to write thank you notes. Both his grandmothers, who are supposedly residing in heaven, agree.
On the first Monday of every month Fromage sends off unsolicited bits of prose in the hopes of getting published – thus honing his skills at accepting rejection, harboring resentments and monetarily supporting the work that all those fine folks down at the United States Post Office do so well.
Enshrined in a cardboard box that he keeps hidden away under his bed is everything that he’s ever written, sober or not, which he is hoping that after he becomes famous, or after his death, whichever comes first of course, his biographer will find highly useful, sharing them all with the rest of the world.
Fromage does however post once a week on his blog: Full Blue Moon Dementia, faithfully read by three people: one being his ex-girlfriend, and the other two? They’re just lost.
So I already know what you’re thinking. Why so many words just to say that I’ve not published shit? Well, that’s kinda the point. It’s overkill to make you forget that very fact, flooding the readers mind with so much information that after all is said and done no one remembers that I’ve never been published and just sits there stunned marveling at my incredible writing skills. Well, that’s my theory anyway.
Maybe I should leave out the bad checks and credit card forgeries? After all I did just pay my tuition with a personal check and it could possibly cast me in a somewhat unfavorable light. Besides who knows what kinda sense of humor these folks have? Actually, I do gotta edit it down just a tad as the parameters sent to me did indicate keepin’ it to a minimum, like a paragraph or two. But how could you possibly depict me “The Fromage” and his literary prowess in a hundred words or less? It just doesn’t seem possible, now does it?
Although seriously if I’m to be totally honest, after all the jokes have been said and I’m left alone with myself, deep down inside surrounded by my fears, I just don’t know what to think about this grad school thing. And when I do stop kidding around, get serious and suspect that someone truly wants nothing more than to see me succeed at becoming a better writer, for some unknown reason I tend to get nervous and a bit introverted. But that’s just something that I need to acknowledge, change and work through as these days that’s what I do, because I only need to be concerned when I fall prey to my fears, not when I face them.
“Poised on the edge of greatness, looking straight into the beady eyes of destiny, Fromage returns to his laptop in an effort to record all that he has said and done in the hopes that his university of choice might continue to nurture whatever talents they saw that he possessed when they chose him for their MFA program.”
To tell you the truth I’m not gonna have any problems going to school, as a matter of fact I think this is gonna be totally cool!
Oh, sorry, third person right?
Fromage thinks that this is gonna be totally cool!
