Michael Hemery on the ethics of disclosure: That Essay
Two days before my new book No Permanent Scars, a collection of nonfiction essays, was scheduled to go to print, I freaked. I’d read the entire manuscript a half-dozen times, and spent years writing and editing individual essays. I never gave a second thought to sending any of the stories out to literary magazines; I flooded the market with submissions. Yet forty-eight hours before my publisher was scheduled to send the fourth and final proof off to the printer I realized people, real people, would read that essay—and I began to panic.
A bit about that essay. It had little to do with me. I have no problem throwing myself out there. Self-deprecation worked for me in high school (kept me from being stuffed into many a locker), and it works in my writing. I’m often the punch line to my own joke. No, that essay focused on someone else. A failed relationship from my very distant past. The essay was brutally honest, revealing the flaws not only of the relationship proper, but the other person. The raw, private conversations. The disclosures. The addictions. The shortcomings. The many shortcomings. Those, after all, are more interesting. Grit is good.
During the first semester of my MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts one of my advisors read the essay and asked about the redeeming qualities of the person. Even though she liked the essay, she was curious how we ever worked at all. So, I revised and revised until I believed I’d accurately sketched this person—retaining the flaws, but folding them into the sincere, kind moments. The experiences that helped to shape me. The story was still imbalanced (as was the relationship), heavy on the darkness, but the edits allowed in more light.
The essay then felt complete—it transcended the personal to reveal a lot about the struggles of relationships, how sometimes they just fall short, despite both parties’ best intentions. How you can gain much from a person, yet there are times when you must retract, walk away, because it’s no longer healthy to mend the fraying bonds.
When I originally wrote the essay, I figured time offered enough distance to make the ethics of disclosure acceptable. Plus, I dissolved this person’s identity like I do many characters in my nonfiction stories. My students are never really my students. They are amalgamations of true experiences—events, characteristics and moments. But the real people are well protected beneath the layers. But despite my best efforts to conceal, the cloaks were still translucent in that essay. The nuance of the face, the details of the hair were necessary. This person would know, as would anyone else who had loose connections to our lives. Of course it could be argued that these were my experiences, too. I owned them as much as this person did. But, they were being told from my tongue, and I had much less to lose.
My meltdown about that essay really began to manifest itself those two days prior to publication as I was putting together a gift, a plastic workbench for my toddler. I began to think about him. What it would be like if he messed up in a relationship later in life and someone publicly aired his mistakes. My child didn’t deserve that. And neither did this person. I called my publisher that night and begged him to remove the essay from the collection. Luckily for me, my publisher is a kind, patient soul. He assured me the essay was quality—that it spoke to an important truth. But he said he understood. We’d have to delay the book’s release, work out another draft, but he said I ultimately needed to be comfortable with the final pages.
A week (and full revision) later I drove by an establishment where this person used to work. I’d entirely forgotten about the years this person spent altruistically helping others. Somewhere in the grime and true pain of the recollection, I’d omitted this detail. I thought for a moment about revising again, digging into my subconscious for more positive details. Finding balance. But ultimately I decided the essay wasn’t worth it. The arc of the book was surprisingly strengthened without the ugly essay, and my wife no longer had to endure my paranoid ramblings, as I felt entirely at ease with the stories in my book.
There are times in nonfiction when it’s worth it to attack the jugular. No Permanent Scars is in no way timid. Throughout much of the book I’m screaming at full throat about class discrimination and abuse. Sometimes finger pointing and anger is the only way to invoke change. And that bold, aggressive approach continues in the book I’m currently writing about my father’s two-year struggle with ALS. This experience opened my eyes to the lack of formal patient care for orphan diseases. Many will feel the wrath of my pen—because they deserve it. I will never censor myself. I will never shy away from attacking those that must be called out. But not those who just made some mistakes. That essay will never go to print. There’s no reason for it—no reader will benefit enough to justify the fallout.
Nonfiction is a tricky genre. There’s nowhere to hide. Some might say I backed down, chickened out. But as a writer you make your decisions and run with them. And when my son—who is still innocent, but will inevitably make mistakes in his life—stands outside my office, banging his plastic drill against my door, saying, “Daddy. Hey, Daddy. Come play,” I never doubt my decision for a moment.
No Permanent Scars, by Michael Hemery
Michael Hemery’s nonfiction book No Permanent Scars, which includes work first published in LAR 8, is now available from all major book retailers (including Amazon and Barnes & Noble) or directly from Silenced Press. The book offers both the sober realities of class discrimination and the humor and love of family. Intertwined with serious issues such as suicide, alcoholism, abuse, religion, and immigration, Hemery also endures a painfully slow and often naive coming of age (for instance, in college, he once mistook an obvious prostitute for an office supply store employee). Hemery, who earned his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, teaches English near Cleveland, and served as the nonfiction editor for Hunger Mountain. His stories have been published in numerous literary magazines, including the Los Angeles Review, Passages North, The Portland Review and Redivider, to name only a few.
For more information, please visit www.NoPermanentScars.com.