Exercise: Shar’s Back Story
Some people have asked about Ray.
I don’t have that good a grasp on him, so when a writing group I’m involved in did a writing exercise–five hundred words beginning with “Where were you last night?”–I did it in Shar’s voice, talking about the night before with Ray. This will never see the light of day again because it’s just an exercise, it has no place in the book. Oh, and Shar used to Char. I gave her a character-lift (much like a face lift) and she became Shar:
Last night? I was with Ray. Our usual Friday night meet-after-class-and-discuss-why-he-doesn’t-have-tenure-yet dinner except I wasn’t feeling usual. The last couple of weeks have been . . . unsettling. I don’t know what’s gotten into me, but all of a sudden, I want to see things done, no more open ends in my life. I’ve put five years into Ray, well, five years of Fridays anyway, so it seemed like time. And what I wanted to say was, “Ray, we’ve been seeing each other for five years and I think we either move forward or end it, so I think you should move in with me.†That’s what I wanted to say.
But instead I said, “You know, that house is really too big for one person . Sometimes I feel as though I’m just rattling around in there.â€
And he said, “It’s not that big a place. So I’m thinking this last article in the Journal of Antiquities should do it. That’s a big journal.â€
“Right,†I said and tried again. “Sometimes it’s a little . . . unsettling there.â€
He frowned at me. “Where?â€
“My house,†I said, and I might have gotten a little sharp there. “The house. Sometimes it echoes, you know?â€
And then the waitress came and he told her that he’d wanted lime for his ice water and that he’d told her that, which was true, but Jesus, Ray, she gave you a lemon, it’s citrus in tap water, let it go.
Then he walked me home and he stopped by his car to get something that he put in his pocket and we went upstairs and had Friday sex which is fine, I mean it’s, you know, relaxing. Sort of. It’s not his fault I never come. I can’t even do that with a vibrator so blaming it on Ray is just transference. And he said, “I do listen, you know.â€
I said, “What?â€
He said, “I heard what you were saying in the restaurant,†reached over to the chair by the bed and got his jacket and put his hand in the pocket, and I thought, My god, he bought me a ring, and then he pulled out this black thing that looked like a remote control and said, “I want you to have this.â€
I said, “What?â€
He said, “It’s a taser. I don’t want you feeling afraid in your own house, keep it by the bed and it’ll make you feel better.â€
I said, “A taser,†feeling that calm you do right before you rip somebody’s head off.
He said, “Well, I’d hardly give you a gun, Char, you’d probably shoot somebody.â€
And I thought, I’m gonna taser somebody right now.
But all I did was take the taser and put it on the bedside table and say, “Thank you, Ray. That’s really thoughtful.â€
I don’t want to rush into anything here, but I think Ray and I are through.
16 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Thanks for posting this. During the confrontation with Sam, Ray told Shar that he thought she said she was afraid. I went back through the scene a couple of times and couldn’t find where she said she was afraid, so this clears things up. It also helps explain more why she doesn’t like the taser.
So when did the flatscreen tv show up? ; )
Oh Ray sooooo needs smiteing!!!
Love the new header BTW.
Are you sure she can’t taser him - jut a little?
Ray’s an idiot. But, said she who doesn’t have Shar living in her head, would she be with him because he doesn’t require too much commitment? It sounds as if at the beginning of the book, Shar doesn’t have much of a relationship with herself so it makes sense to me that she would date someone who doesn’t require much interaction and emotional commitment.
Ray is so clear to me, I spent a lot of years in university so I met a lot of Rays. They are self absorbed, see themselves as Gods Among Men (unlike Bob, who is a GAM) because they are fair-to-middling-smart and …, well, and nothing because that’s usually all they have.
Women like Shar date them because they have had their head stuck in a book their entire lives until one day they think “Hey, I should have a boyfriend.” Then along comes Ray who doesn’t get in the way of her work, understands her world - or at least academia - and doesn’t demand anything of her. It’s a match made in heaven until she wakes up and realizes what a loser he is.
Oh he definitely deserves smiting!
Love the header - stoned dogs…
Office Wench, that’s how I saw it, too, but it’s not going on the page for some reason. Maybe you have to have spent some years in grad school to know Ray (g). Because he was EVERYWHERE. But yes, he had the office next to hers, he was attractive, he understood Mesopotamia, he got the insular insanity that was academe, there were a lot of reasons she was with him. Until she drank the Kool-aid.
We once had it set up that the priestesses all started to change once Kami came to town, which is a couple of weeks before she holds the first class. But it’s just too hard to convey up front. So much of this early stuff in a book is figuring this out without putting it in, but still making sure the reader understand it. Ray is going to be difficult.
I haven’t really had issues with Ray, myself, other than to be glad Shar is through with him, but I think I understand her viewpoint. I’ve had friends that have stayed with someone in the past because it was easier to stay with them than to break up. They’d ignore the voice in thir head whining that there weren’t fireworks, by telling themselves fireworks fade over time anyway, …right?
Just a random thought - does Shar have to be certain Ray is having an affair with the new woman in the department? Maybe the attraction Ray feels for the new girl is a surprise to them both. Maybe when he calls her machine she hears giddyness in his voice for the first time, and with the help of the Kool-Aid, she realizes they’ve both been bored for a long time and it’s time to end it. That might help Ray be a smidge more sympathetic to the reader.
Of course, there’s the problem then with the tv. Hrm.
Maybe that’s it.
Heather’s Ray was Ross. He was so convinced of his own superiority that he thought one of the (tenured, well liked and respected, well thought of in his field) professors gave him a bad grade on a paper because the prof was jealous of his academic brilliance. Right. He also thought said prof gave Heather better grades because he wanted to sleep with her. It couldn’t possibly be because she was a better writer and critical thinker.
Maybe Shar could try to explain why she dated Ray to Wolfie - who clearly has always wondered about that little lapse in judgement.
I love Wolfie.
Oh, Office Wench, I love Wolfie too, but there are times when a male of your own species comes in handy
Examples:
- Walking into a restaurant with a dachsund on a Friday night is generally frowned upon. Almost as bad as walking into a restaurant on your own on a Friday night.
- Dachsunds simply refuse to reach up and get something from that top shelf.
- Ever ask a Dachsund to unscrew a recalcitrant pickle jar for you?
(Note: These example also apply to most German Shepherds I know. Didn’t mean to diss the doxies in particular.)
I love the idea of Shar trying to explain Ray to Wolfie! I can just picture the Look that Wolfie would give her
I don’t think that kind of guy is restricted to academia at all.
A fairy-tale romance is hard to find, and hard to maintain! So, people wind up settling.
He thinks: she knows what I do, she doesn’t get in the way of my regular life, and there’s sex every Friday. OK, I’d marry her if I absolutely had to, and there was no other option (although that assistant is looking like an option), but hey (segue into a slightly more sophisticated version of “Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free”).
She thinks: he understands my job, and he’s not too much in the way. I’ve got a regular man, and that’s the first step to a husband and a picket fence that society thinks I should have. I don’t want to push too hard and have to start over again — and there are some real jerks out there who beat women or make them into Stepford Wives, so I really have a good thing here. Yes, I really do. Uh-huh, he’s really great. And he’s gone a lot at work, so I don’t really have to deal with him all that much.
And this could be two professors, or it could be a truck-driver and a waitress.
And really, is that totally wrong? There aren’t that many perfect mates out there.
The problem with Ray and Shar, though, is that there seems to be *no* connection — their relationship is all about satisfying their own needs. If they could get that satisfaction without dealing with the other person, I think they would. But their problem is your good luck, because it makes it much easier to accept a Mesopotamian God showing up in the bedroom (-:.
I would certainly like to live in a world where talking dogs are more believable than women dating men who are not good enough. Of course, in my inner world, dogs talk all the time. I guess that’s why I am loving this book.
I like the Taser back story. It seemed a little like a convenient plot device before. Now it seems utterly believable that she would have a taser on her night stand. It’s remarkable how a few lines of dialogue can do that. Thanks Jenny!
Hi, I’m new here. I found d&g from a link my sister sent me to argh ink. (I am in love with the talking dogs).
Shar and Ray make sense to me. She’s in a small town with slim pickings, she’s lonely and he’s already in her world. She can make a lot of excuses for him, explain away why they only see each other on Fridays, why he’s mediocre in the sack, why he bores her to tears (I can just hear her whining, “but he’s so kind to his grandmother!”). And of course she’d be with a man who can’t commit. She can’t finish anything, either. (Though I am curious how she managed to avoid ABD [All But Dissertation] syndrome if she can’t finish anything).
To flesh it out, though, I’d like Ray to have some feature redeeming enough that would explain why she chose this not-quite-right guy in a sea of not-quite-right guys. Maybe he has really nice eyes? Like chocolate brown, or sea green, or that crystal blue (maybe the same color as her kool-aid)? And one day in the department he just took off his glasses to wipe something off, and she fell. Not really fell– she tripped. The feature should be something just good enough to allow her to keep making excuses for him for five years, but not enough to keep her stuck with him when she realizes that it’s not that he treats her badly– he just treats her carelessly. And that she deserves someone who’ll treat her like the priestess she is.
I don’t see a problem with Ray and Shar as long as they end it. She has a problem finishing things - so she would neither marry him nor actually commit to breaking up with him either. He’s a “good enough for now” kind of date that requires little effort on her part to maintain. There’s a lot to be said for convenience of geography. After a while, you can forget why or how you first started hanging out with someone and just rely on mutual memories to hold the relationship of sorts together. Sometimes this develops, sometimes it withers. Shar just makes it wither faster.
I kind of like that Ray so saw them as separate people even as a couple that he would enter her house pretty much at will (indicating relationship), and then take the TV back (indicating thoughts of self only). Still deserves smiting.
Five years! Five years. Come on, after five years of anything you’d be so bored you’d want to put needles in your eyes, just for the excitement. Five years. That’s just–stifling, like being buried alive. Gosh, I feel so bad for her.
ok, i gotta confess, jon’s first gifts to me were road flairs and a hand cuff key…he’s a cop… but the big difference was we were engaged 5months after we met, not 5 years…and got married 6 weeks after that.
we hit comfy rut fast, but we both were or actually still are. we just had our 30th anniv on the 2nd of july. there have been exciting, like when i was working a missing kid case, or one of the anti war demo’s hit sf (he was a fed) so we had the capability to have a life that certainally hit extreams. andn often has
but we are both happy with going with the flow. now if it had been up to him, it might have gone on for 5 years, but he would say when we get married. or after we are married..but not WILL YOU part. so i finally said, ok, are we engaged, will we be engaged, are you blowing smoke? he looked at me and said;LET ME GET BACK TO YOU
took a week. i let him live. it was an official ’so you wanna make it legal?’ i said sure. he was almost 30 i was turning 28.
Pat–
Five years with the right guy is fine. But five years with Ray? Oh, I hope she had something else going on in her life. Something good. What is it? Roses for ashes of the vanished years. I think that’s an old song from the sixties.