The Story is About   +  novel

Guest Post: Jeannine Garsee

Authors often inject a part of themselves into their stories; much of what they write holds a grain of truth, revealing a personal experience, thinly veiled. Although SAY THE WORD was a story I’d wanted to write for a long time, it didn’t turn out to be the story I’d planned

Kelly and I were best friends from the age of nine or so. Quintessential tomboys, we dressed like boys, played like boys, fought like boys, and sneered at anything we considered remotely feminine. We spent our summer playing baseball, hiking and climbing trees, and riding our bikes for miles. We’d sneak into movie theaters, often getting kicked out for rowdiness, and slip outside to meet up in the dead of night just to prove we could do it. We’d often sleep over at each others’ homes, dreaming of a future in which we’d share an apartment, maybe in New York City, or London, or some other “exotic” locale. To two girls from Ohio, any other place was exotic.

Then, things changed.

My parents began to hint that Kelly might be gay. I refused believed it and I resented the inference. After all, to look at the two of us, with our boots and jeans, our close-cropped hair and boyish mannerisms, and our singular lack of interest in boys, we could’ve been twins. I wondered, did my parents think I was gay? Did anyone else? Back in the early seventies, in a Midwestern junior high, calling someone “gay” or (worse) was the ultimate insult. Actually being perceived as gay guaranteed ridicule and social ostracism. Because there were no gay characters on TV in the early seventies, no kids’ books featuring GLBT protagonists, and as far as I knew I’d never met a gay person, I viewed gays as a race as alien as Star Trek’s Klingons.

Throughout our teens, I never asked Kelly about her sexuality. Like Shawna in SAY THE WORD, I didn’t want a friend who happened to be gay, let alone have others suspect that I, by association, was gay myself—a fear, fueled by my conservative upbringing, that I projected onto Shawna. My grain of truth.

While I grew out of my lengthy tomboy stage, Kelly didn’t. In our late teens it came as little surprise when she matter-of-factly announced that she was a lesbian. Older now, and less influenced by my family, I decided I didn’t care. After all, why should Kelly’s sexuality, or mine for that matter, adversely affect our lifelong friendship?

Sadly, it did.

After graduation, with our childhood dreams of running off together forgotten, we still kept in touch, often meeting up for drinks and dancing. During one of these encounters, things changed yet again when Kelly, out of the blue, kissed me in the nightclub.

No, not a casual peck of affection between girlfriends. I mean a real kiss.

Because it’d never occurred to me that Kelly might be interested in me as more than a good friend, I was flabbergasted. Though I had no idea what the statistics were for lesbians “hitting on” someone they know is straight—and yes, Kelly knew I liked guys—I’d have guessed the odds to be extremely low. What, after all, would be the point? So, did Kelly somehow misread me? By dancing with her, had I unconsciously led her on? Or did she think/hope/wonder if she could “change” me?

When the shock wore off, I tried to make light of her advances, but quickly realized that she meant to take this kiss a step farther. My shock turned to anger; I felt that Kelly, uninhibited by alcohol, had effectively tainted our friendship in that one careless moment. After mustering up the grace to finish out the evening, I avoided her from then on. I wouldn’t return her calls, and eventually she stopped calling.

Several years later, shortly before my wedding, Kelly, recently discharged from the military, called to ask if I’d like to meet up with her. I agreed; with our last encounter well in the past, and no contact since, I realized how much I’d missed my old friend. But our reunion—over coffee, not drinks—proved to be awkward and unpleasant. Devastated to learn I was engaged to be married, Kelly abruptly excused herself. Her last, mournful comment before we parted a second time was, “I always thought you’d wait for me.”

For a long time after, whenever I thought of Kelly, I found myself plagued by both resentment and confusion. Resentment because I’d lost a dear friend, a girl who’d been closer to me than my own sister at the time; how could we have continued in any kind of relationship? And confusion because Kelly couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand that I had no ability to change my sexual preference any more than she could change her own—something I’ve always believed in spite of all the rhetoric to the contrary. Although I loved her, and had for most of my life, I knew I could never love her back the way she wanted me to.

Over the years, having grown wiser and more perceptive thanks to my own life experiences, I realized a truth, one that I used in SAY THE WORD when Shawna asks Julie, her stepmother-to-be, why on earth she’d want to marry someone as old as her father, Julie’s reply: “You can’t always choose who you fall in love with.”

This is so true. How else can you explain how so many women fall in love, and stay with, men who do nothing but make their lives miserable? Men, too, fall in love with women who treat them horribly. Every day, couples of different and often conflicting religions, not to mention race and social status, abandon their families and friends, giving up everything dear to them to be with the person they love. Where is it written that a gay person can’t fall in love with, and be sexually attracted to, someone who is straight—or vice versa?

Love is love. Sometimes it grows on you gradually, sometimes it hits you like a sledgehammer, but one thing is certain: it has no scruples, no rationality, and honors no boundaries. While it can bring you the greatest joy of your life, it can just as easily be the source of immeasurable pain.

So, originally, I’d wanted SAY THE WORD to be this kind of story: two girls, one straight, one gay, and how they deal with an unexpected crush. Unsure if I was prepared to write about an experience that affected me so profoundly—I’d never really discussed it, let alone put it into words that others might read—I began the story, but soon felt drawn into the same-sex marriage controversy coming to light at that time. Although the novel evolved into something else entirely, it still involves various characters, both gay and straight, who fall in love with people deemed “unsuitable” by others. The novel also follows the theme that’s touched and fascinated me since my experience with Kelly: that love is a extraordinary power all of its own, totally without logic, and void of any empathy toward those it consumes. As much as we’d like love to “make sense,” it doesn’t—and doesn’t have to.

It just is.


Jeannine Garsee has been telling stories since before she could write. "I was addicted to the Sunday funnies," she says, "and my dad worked in a book-binding factory. He'd bring home a slew of paper every week, and I'd draw scenes on every page. Later, when I learned to write, I'd add the captions--and then the captions just grew longer and longer till I didn't have any room left for the pictures."

Jeannine, known as "Jen" to her friends, works as a psych nurse in a busy inner-city hospital. Born and raised in Ohio, she lives with her family in a southwest suburb of Cleveland.

Learn more about Jeannine and her novels at her website.