Why I Don't Write Children's Literature

by Gary Soto

  When you consider a friend’s personal space, or man cave in this instance, you can see yourself there . . . I reel in my thoughts and consider my error. I should not hanker for what another man possesses. Why so? Because men, formerly cavemen, can recognize human smells. One man will bristle at another man’s smell as a warning that something’s not right. What is that caveman doing in my territory? My space? Hey, do I smell my cavewoman on your breath?

  While I’m no anthropologist or psychologist, I will risk a caveman’s analysis: thousands of years ago, just after the demise of the tail-swaggering dinosaurs and the discovery of fire, my brother cavemen employed their noses for reconnaissance. They sniffed wild strawberries — good, they thought via their limited gray matter — and ate them. They sniffed rivers and thought more good — and drank until their bellies were full. They sniffed each other (and here I explore the limits of my undergraduate education) like dogs. Not dogs like Peaches, but thick-necked, fanged beasts with claws like the sharpest cutlery.

  In short, cavemen (and cavewomen) lived by their senses — most actively their sense of smell. When, for instance, a nosy caveman entered another caveman’s abode, he would do so cautiously and on fat, earth-hardened tiptoes. The unannounced caveman would sniff immediately, inhale, and conclude in his ancient language, funky — well, funky might not be the right word, but perhaps some primordial utterance like, “Kafuchicrapit!”

  The owner caveman, awakened in a far corner of his cave, would become angry upon the appearance of another caveman dude. In the dark, he would grind his teeth and clench his fists until veins popped to the surface of his hairy arms. Once the visitor caveman turned his back for another sniff, the owner caveman would step out from the dark and, in brisk defense of his smelly territory, shout “Gafukkada!” Or something likewise harsh and choppy which, in his day, meant What the fuck! Uttering screams loud enough to wake the dinosaurs, the rightful caveman would bong the curious caveman with a large and mighty club.

  But perhaps I have not evolved far enough to think beyond this hypothetical situation. Again, I’m no anthropologist or psychologist, just a man like any other, a little hairy, a little bad-tempered when my space is invaded, and frightfully loud when a tattooed asshole cuts me off in traffic. Like the caveman, I need my space. When I sense something bad in the air — the Republican Party, for instance — I grind my teeth and clench my fists. I put my nostrils to work, trying to sniff out precisely what is wrong.

  THE THINGS WE SAY

  Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty begins on the home front, with a live-in girlfriend of four years asking repeatedly, “What did you say? Huh, what did you say?” She hurls expletives so harsh that the boyfriend fends them off with his hands, instinctively raising his palms to cover his face. Like a robotic vacuum cleaner, the girlfriend hurries after him, ready to suck a laughing comment from him like dirt. She corners him by the bed, but he jumps onto it and bounces to the other side. She races around a chair but, with a matador’s move, he eludes her. She grabs his sleeve. When he yanks away, her anger builds. What had he said to that loutish Kent, his stupid buddy at the warehouse? She knows but she wants him to say it. The boyfriend is frightened; no, he is ashamed; no, he doesn’t know what he meant. He screams for her to Please drop it!

  This furious quest for an answer goes on longer than dramatically necessary. The girlfriend continues to yank the boy around and demand an answer. What did he say? She brings up his dead-end job and her dead-end job and the friends that have grown moldy. She belittles him and cusses like a sailor. Still, these hotly spewed words seem mild compared to her reaction when he finally confesses: “I said, I said . . . ‘You are regular.’ ” Silence like the seconds after a door is slammed. Is this how he sees me? she broods, lowering her head and walking around the stage, arms wrapped around her chest. The hurt is like a paper cut, small but painful.

  The boyfriend is ashamed. Head down, he bites his lower lips. He looks up with his own regular face at his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.

  I squirm in my chair and whisper through the hand covering my own face, “Buddy, you just messed up.” The boyfriend could’ve cheated on her; he could’ve had an offshore bank account; he could’ve been voting in favor of Republican issues after all their years together. Realistically, he even could’ve said that their sex was dry.

  But notregular.

  The girlfriend’s fury dies, not unlike a tornado doing one last spin, releasing the load of debris it has hauled for miles. What baggage had this couple carried in their relationship? Neither is accomplished and neither expects much, or so I assume from their sloppy dress, their blue-collar bleakness, the underwhelming décor of their apartment. This is what the play is about: that tipping point when one incident (or word) ends it all.

  A dark cloud stalls behind the girlfriend’s eyes before she casts her gaze to the floor. Admittedly, she fronts no face to launch a thousand ships. She isn’t even pretty. She has the face of a grinning female Waldo. And the boyfriend is a Waldo himself. He mumbles a clumsy apology, then puffs himself up, insisting that he meant “regular” as a compliment. This only maddens her further, and once again he is berated with expletives.

  The play ends in a drearier fashion than Romeo and Juliet, without the bitter taste of poison and a knife in the heart. Their relationship ends over a three-syllable word associated with the lowest grade of gasoline: regular. So why couldn’t she at least be cute?

  The audience leaves the theater, some paired off. As in husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, boyfriend and boyfriend, girlfriend and girlfriend. A bachelor for the evening, I take my loneliness to a lively bar, where the faces are lit with laughter and purpose. The bartender is cute, and the two lassies with drinks, dainty as high heels, are also cute. The paper doily where I rest my beer is cute. Cute is OK, but beautiful is far better. Cute gets you a good job, and beautiful an even better job. If you’re regular, then you get an apartment like the one onstage where the bed remains unmade after once-a-week lovemaking.

  Oh, I’m getting drunk.

  To keep my mind busy, I mull over my options for a new car — import or domestic? a sedan or a two-seater? I try to remember if there is ice cream in the fridge — and what flavor. I read the playbill again and promise myself to buy something from one of the sponsors. I examine my shoes and wonder how long the luster will last in a city scuttling with litter. I grow melancholy at the start of my second pint and my mind swims toward another shore. Poor is OK, but rich is better. Bravery, insight, and a spiritual path are all OK, but charisma opens doors. I’m not up on social media or current on how young people conduct themselves privately. Still, I understand how to make people stop liking you. When we assess that our partner in life is no more than regular . . . I lift a beer and shudder to think about it.

  Buddy boy, you messed up.

  I squint at myself in the mirror behind the bar, which reflects a whole room of mostly young people. They say that I once turned heads and that others wished that I were single — was this true? These days, I’m not certain where I fall on the spectrum of handsomeness. In the mirror, I survey patrons jollily lifting and putting down drinks, some slapping their thighs from laughter, others with heads pressed conspiratorially together. We’re all here: some for a good time, others to weep a little. Not everything works in life, particularly work itself. When the din of conversation dies, I hear recipes for Italian casseroles being exchanged.

  I have a face meant for my age. By this I mean a corrugated brow, a hairline that displays more scalp each year, and eyes that redden immediately after sleep — during which not much happens except for the occasional dream about a leaky faucet. What kind of symbol is that — the leaky faucet? No tiger chasing in my dreams, no rhino of a husband pounding at my door. And sharks? Sharks stay away. Just tame little dreams and one nightly trip to the toilet.

  I sip my beer from a glass as tall and slender as a runway model. I’ve been affected by these pints, and by LaBute’s play
as well. I see a whole row of men and women at the bar, each of us a Waldo, with our little happy smiles, each of us thinking that cute is good but beautiful is better.

  I drain my pint and watch the suds slowly descend inside the glass. I scoot off my stool, feeling a mild buzz. Standing in front of the mirror, I play with my hair for a few seconds. Cute is the bartender and the doily where my pint rested, and cute are the women who left shouldering their purses, no men at their sides. I’m happy at least to be regular.

  WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE?

  Playing on an adjacent tennis court, I heard an old weekend jock holler to his opponent, “I would give my left testicle for a serve like yours.” On my own court, I was busily shoving a dink shot over the net. My opponent, speedy as a hightailing squirrel, raced to scoop up the ball with a desperate stroke. Since he was inches from the net, I did what all evil players do: I lobbed him. He hurried after the arching ball but couldn’t catch up with it on his gimpy knees. The ball rolled against the fence; my opponent walked slowly toward it, picked it up, then whacked it back to me — not speedily or accurately but still on my side of the court. Then we remembered that we had to change sides.

  During the changeover I reflected, though not deeply, on what I had heard in the next court. Who wants an old man’s testicle, and why the left one? Did he mean it? With one nut gone, he would be halfway to eunuch. What if he were forced to barter the other one? He could end up calling out scores as a castrato.

  We know the story of Faust selling his soul to the devil. But the soul is ethereal, invisible as air, and routinely sold: in politics, Hollywood, and business — nothing new there. Those familiar with the blues may recall that Robert Johnson sold his soul at the crossroads in order to pick a mighty guitar. And that he did, briefly, before Death called in his chips and Mr. Johnson was no more.

  But that tennis player in the next court had offered a piece of his own person, a jest meant to honor the player he was up against. Later, sitting on a plastic chair outside the courts, I chugged on blue Gatorade and got to pondering just what would I part with, and for what. My private parts are not up for barter, and neither is my hair, once thick and black but now in rapid retreat. I’ll keep my legs, those getaway sticks, and my hands, trusty pliers for hard-to-open jars. My feet? They stay put. My teeth? They are the grille of happiness. My eyes? They are the seers that get me home when I’ve drunk too much.

  So what would I give up? For an Audi 6, I would give my cuticles. For a boat with a four-stroke engine in the back, I would gladly part with the belt of fat around my middle. For a five-by-seven Joan Miró, I would lose the tartar behind my lower front teeth. For a farm with three acres of heirloom tomatoes, I’d say adios to the hair camping in my ears. In short, I’m prepared to give away body parts that diminish my poetic image — and for which I find no use. Of what value are the skin tags on my chest? Or the fan of wrinkles around my eyes? Those can go for a case of pretentious wine.

  Regarding talent and intelligence, what would I part with? I’m no good at math, but am gifted at finding a parking space. I’m not logical, but I’m wise enough to raise my hands in an Oakland stickup. I’m no miracle worker, but I improve the world in small ways — hey, who threw that litter there? I’m aware of my limitations and admit that I can’t dink-shot the same opponent every time. We work with what we have, and yet we want more.

  I capped my Gatorade and plunged my hand into the ice chest for a beer. I thought of my wife. She is a hobbyist dress designer. She is responsible for my clothes, both bought and sewn, and is envied, I believe, because the girl can make anything. If faced with the offer, “I would give anything to sew like you,” I wondered what she might ask for. I took a long swig and provided my own answer: a handyman husband.

  As for the guy in the next court, I was disappointed that his left testicle was all he had to offer. Was he that stingy? Couldn’t he have come up with more? Even if he’d said, “I would give a thousand dollars to serve like you,” I would still have considered him a cheapskate. All tennis players know the value of a strong serve — it’s priceless.

  Perhaps he believed himself so great that his left testicle, wrapped in sweaty pubic hair, really was priceless? That wasn’t his tone, though. He was just a regular guy, admiring his opponent’s serve, and the offer was the first thing out of his mouth. He couldn’t really have meant it. Scrubbed and prone on a surgeon’s gurney, he would’ve panicked and said, “Uh, actually, I don’t think that serve is all that great.” He would’ve giggled and made excuses until the anesthesia overwhelmed him. And what would his opponent do with that severed testicle? Carry it at arm’s length then bury it in the yard, I’m sure. Dogs would visit the little grave and howl at the sickle-shaped moon.

  I like to play tennis without much banter — and with just enough determination to make my opponent feel that he’s in a war. I might say “good shot,” but I never offer body parts with my compliments.

  MY TIME AT THE MARSH

  In the summer of 2012, I was asked by The Marsh Theater to write a play about undocumented youth — no, I was commissioned, a word that sounded like an order I couldn’t refuse. Emily Klion, the producer, had mounted my comic one-act Novio Boy a year earlier; now she urged me to get political. I agreed and told myself to get serious. However, after a brief debate (also with myself), I opted not for a dramatic play but a musical, an outright spectacle of dance and song. Let’s have our say and get freaky too!

  I charged ahead with the pen of conviction, for the subject was — and is — both timely and life-changing for many people. I worked from the transcripts of undocumented youth born in the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, and El Salvador, stories that were true and, because they were true, told from the heart. These young people spoke as they felt. They had no one to fool.

  To further understand the issue, I met with students of the AB540 Club at a high school in Richmond, a school with 65 percent undocumented youth. In a mobile classroom, we beamed at each other in trustful ways. I brought a box of See’s candy and broke the ice by asking if they could provide me with the names of musicians and rock groups, names that I could use in the play. I learned of Bruno Mars, P!nk, Luis Fonsi, Jenni Rivera, Alejandra Guzmán, The Fray, Usher, One Direction, Maná — unfamiliar names all. One jokester mentioned Justin Bieber — LOL from the students. Then we began to speak to each other. Students told me their stories, mostly familiar. A few cried when deported parents were mentioned. One student was pregnant; although she herself was undocumented, a part of her — the baby she was carrying — was lawfully here.

  I confess that I am not a playwright, but a poet, essayist, and — in a previous life — author of works for children and young adults. But I have written two other plays for young people and knew enough about structure to pull this one off. I was nervous, yet not nervous. I wrote twelve drafts over a five-month period, without complaint. Twice a week, I talked by telephone with the producer.

  “How’s it going?” Emily might ask.

  “Not bad,” I’d answer and, since I had an educated person on the line, might continue with my own questions, asking things like, “How do you spell ‘Cezhslovacika’?”

  As I wrote the script of In and Out of Shadows, I left spaces where I would fit the lyrics of the songs — or most of the songs. (Some of the lyrics were written by Emily Klion, who also created the music with her saxophonist husband, George Brooks.) Of the seven songs, two stand out: “Clouds” and “Just Fourteen”; Emily described the latter as a showstopper. I savored the implication of that word: showstopper, a song that would leave the audience gawking in silence. (My greatest compliment would come from the theatergoers searching with their iPods, looking to buy and download that song.)

  The scene involves fourteen-year-old Vanessa, stopped by U.S. Customs at the San Francisco International Airport. Separated from an adult companion and questioned by immigration authorities, she breaks down. The immigration officer circles her in silence, then remarks that he has a d
aughter Vanessa’s age. Upon hearing that, the emotional Vanessa scolds the officer, “I bet you treat her nice!” She steps forward and begins singing, “I’m just fourteen. I haven’t even had my quinceañera . . .”

  I first heard the song performed at Emily’s house. Hearing the first tinkle of the piano keys, coupled with my lyrics, I nearly wept. I was surprised that four quatrains, followed by a refrain, could call up a sadness so deep.

  In and Out of Shadows, ninety minutes in length, played to sold-out crowds in February 2013. Lines formed early. The theatergoers were led to chairs — some cushioned, some non-cushioned — or, if you were a child, to the floor. The program consisted of a single page, folded in half, listing the twenty-plus cast members, along with the producer/director, set designer, choreographer, costume designers, band, and lighting technician. On the back, we acknowledged our San Francisco-based sponsor, The Creative Arts Fund. (The good people from their office got dibs on the cushy seats.)

  When I heard the beginning of “Just Fourteen” on opening night, big baby me wept in the dark. The audience wept too, dabbing at their eyes. I knuckled away my own tears and stared at the floor, so moved by Vanessa and the chorus of undocumented youth.

  After the show I met a youngish middle-grade teacher and her jock boyfriend. When he left to buy her a cookie, she told me that he had been reluctant to attend, had even clucked his tongue at the prospect of a musical — hell, the Warriors were on television. Nevertheless, he’d come along to sit in the dark and, when Vanessa sang “Just Fourteen,” he’d covered his brow to hide that he was crying.

  During its three-weekend run, over nine hundred people saw my musical. I got calls for interviews. I became the headline topic of one weekly newspaper, with a photo of me grinning and wearing a T-shirt that read “In and Out of Shadows.” In my honor, Laura Malagón, parent-leader of Los Falcones de Modesto, arrived with her troupe of ten folklórico dancers. They traveled eighty miles by car, BART, and their dancing feet to a Saturday matinee. The girls, ages ten to sixteen, danced for me on the sidewalk, daughters of parents who themselves were — or remain — undocumented.