Next year marks thirty years since I got my first computer and my first screechy modem and entered online life. I was thirty-one when I logged onto AOL using the handle HenMom. Google wasn’t a thing yet, nor was social media or YouTube.
One of my first email pen pals was my Uncle Jack, my mother’s eldest sibling, thirty-four years my senior. Uncle Jack was the family character, the guy with the most interesting life and also, likely because of this, the one we kids were cautioned about. I don’t recall the specifics of the warnings, only impressionistic memories of being admonished—Whatever you do, don’t be like him.
I wish I had printed and kept hard copies of our exchanges. Instead there are only distant shards and snippets floating through my mind. Of these, a single sentence stands out in bold, crisp and clear amidst so many other fuzzy recollections.
What’s your story?
I will swear he told me that back in his youth this question was codespeak to establish if someone was gay. I will also swear he told me that he helped to start one of the first lesbian bars in Philly, and that asking that question gained a patron entrance. Cursory research on my end lends no credence to either the codespeak or his participation in creating a queer establishment. This isn’t to suggest he wasn’t telling the truth. I think it points more toward life in the closet, a shrouded existence, and perhaps a dearth of historical records on mid-20th century queer life.
How I wish my uncle were still alive so I could hear his stories again, record them, remember them with accuracy. Instead there are just the kaleidoscopic bits, shifting around, slipping further away as my own memory dulls. I can no longer say which parts come from our lively email exchange and which from family lore.
His story, as I best recall, involved an Air Force stint during the Korean War followed by time spent studying for the priesthood in Arkansas. There was rumored to be some “friend” he met there who died. He never completed his seminary work. He was said to have had a “nervous breakdown.” I always suspected but will never definitively know if, perhaps, this friend was the love of his life, his sudden death a crushing blow from which my uncle never recovered, that the breakdown was an early manifestation of his grief.
I also know my uncle learned several languages. And that at some point, surely after the death of my violent grandfather, he moved back in with his mother, my beloved grandmother, who had some fascinating stories of her own. The pair of them remained roommates until my grandmother died, he running a tax business out of their Philly row home and she taking his calls well into her 90s. They were both addicted to gambling, him more than her, and they made many, many trips to Atlantic City, I’m talking hundreds of trips each year.
When Uncle Jack was dying, I could not afford (financially or emotionally) to travel to see him, though we spoke on the phone. The last story he told me was a confession that—based on some vague thing his mother told him upon my birth—he believed I had been born with a penis.
I’ll let y’all stew on that without further comment, except to say that I was not, to the best of my knowledge, born with a penis.
I’m more interested in examining that line—What’s your story?—and how this question has fundamentally informed my life. There are two components to my affinity for this query. The first is in answering it, the second in asking it.
I’ve spent a very, very long time telling my story publicly, a verbal journey pre-dating the internet. There have been drawbacks to all this sharing—judgements, criticisms, cruel commentary I wasted entirely too much time responding to, me forever on my back foot courtesy of having grown up defensive. The rewards have been far greater—validation, resonance, connection.
I’m not done telling my story yet, though the call to do so is fading. My most immediate proof of this has been a sudden but steep disinterest in social media. I was an early adopter and during lockdown in particular I posted with great frequency, a habit that continued even as our freedom to move about the cabin of life resumed. Perhaps it is the utter glut of content that is slowing me down. I’m tired of the one-minute updates—my own, and others’.
This is not the same as being tired of stories. Which brings us to component number two of my love of the question: What’s your story? The older I get the more I become invested in listening. To be clear, I have always been interested in hearing others share their personal tales, though I did not necessarily let this interest show because I had it drilled into me as a child that one must mind one’s own business.
Becoming a journalist provided a nice solution to the conflict of wanting to know about people but not wanting to be rudely inquisitive. Eliciting stories as a job description often granted me access I might not have otherwise had. Interview subjects might start a conversation with reticence but before long they’d launch into detailed accounts of their lives, deeply intimate anecdotes punctuated with the introduction, I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I have interviewed the famous and infamous and everyone in between, from celebrities to social workers, from heroes to murderers.
Everybody loves a story. Stories drive humanity. Some of us are more skilled than others at imposing narrative arcs upon the mundane and the profound experiences of our lives. But all of us are forever searching for a beginning, middle and end—some to sort through the messiness, some to make order from chaos, some to score a thousand likes, a million views, ten million listens.
Last summer I started leading bimonthly memoir writing workshops at a branch of the Austin Public Library. I’ve been leading gatherings like these for decades, among various populations ranging from high risk, low income public school kids to uber rich attendees at a fancy spa and all comers in between. And while there’s plenty of overlap between my pre-lockdown workshops and my current workshops, these days that latter feel more important.
I keep reading about an epidemic of loneliness, of how lots of us still feel disconnected after all that isolation. I recognize this awkwardness and it resonates as I continue to battle with the residual agoraphobic fallout of so much time alone. No matter where I am, no matter how much fun I am having, there is always a voice in the back of my head that wants to know how soon I will be back at home, in bed with the dogs, knitting and watching TV, falsely convinced but convinced nonetheless this is the best, safest place for me to be.
The workshops silence that nagging voice for two-hour intervals. As we go around the room and people share their stories, I am spellbound by the details. There is the fascination that comes with hearing tales of unique adventures, bizarre accounts of once-in-a-lifetime happenings. Better still are the astonishing commonalities that reveal themselves as we—strangers to one another— are reminded that, no matter how very different our upbringings and our current stations in life, there will always be some overlap. My favorite stories are the ones in which I am both exposed to an entirely unfamiliar experience and find a way to relate to it.
This always comes down to emotions. I might not have tasted a particular flavor of terror or joy as it is revealed to me in the form of the tale being shared. But nor am I a stranger to the feelings expressed by the sharer, having experienced in my own fashion variations of the same.
An absolute workshop highlight is when a newcomer takes the leap and shares for the first time. When this happens, it is not at all uncommon for the sharer to preface with some self-deprecating apology about how “this isn’t very good,” before launching into the share which is, nearly always, quite good. Hands sometimes tremble. Tears often fall. And then there is the alchemy that comes courtesy of not being laughed at, mocked, criticized or, perhaps worst of all, ignored. Instead the others listen with rapt attention, any interruption courtesy of utterances of recognition: gasps, grunts, laughter, weeping. When the reader finishes you can feel their relief—not at having gotten through reading but at realizing they have been heard and understood and appreciated.
In the end, then, it is the telling and being acknowledged that matters far more than the size of the audience. I might even argue that the smaller the audience the deeper the satisfaction derived from sharing. I know, firsthand, the thrill of going viral (if on a small scale) and the undeniable delight of feeling popular (if only momentarily). But the deeper nourishment has always come from the more personal exchanges, the sort that three decades of online living has chipped away at, as we have ironically amassed more “friends” while, aided and abetted by lockdown, many of us moved away from the truly interpersonal exchanges that are the bedrock of genuine connection.
I’m now about the same age my uncle was when he first started writing to me. I’m amused reflecting on how very old he seemed then, and how not so old I feel now that I’ve reached my sixties. And I’m delighted, too, at a years-long correspondence I’ve had with one of my nieces—our age difference approximately that of mine and Uncle Jack’s. I love hearing her stories—her life as an engineer, a young homeowner, a talented knitter, an avid traveler. And I’m pleased she seems to enjoy hearing mine, a pleasure enhanced by knowing that, like my uncle was to my generation, I am the kooky relative, the one held up as cautionary tale: Whatever you do, don’t be like Uncle Spike. Advice she thankfully ignored.
And now, once again, it’s question time. I’ve got just one for you today: What’s your story? Seriously, I hope you’ll take the time to share in the comments some extraordinary story from your life. I’d love to hear it.
NOTES:
Thanks for subscribing y’all. I’m not going to do an all-out Spring Fundraising Drive like your local NPR station BUT I am setting a little goal for myself. I’m getting close to 100 paid subscriptions and I’d love to cross that threshold soon. If you’re a regular reader and can afford $5 per month or $50 per year, please consider subscribing. Your awesome support allows me to carve out writing time and helps me keep the ranch running. If you’re not in a position to do a paid subscription, that’s cool. Another way you can help is to share this substack with folks you think will dig it. One-time tips also gratefully accepted via Venmo: @spike-gillespie.
I’ve also got another substack, WriteWithSpike.substack.com, a sort of online writing workshop. It’s a wonderful place to share your stories and to enjoy the stories of others.
My next FREE in-person writing workshop at Hampton Branch Library in Austin is tomorrow, Tuesday, 3/19, from 5:30-7:30 pm. It helps us if you REGISTER.
Thanks for reading, y’all. I really appreciate it.
Love,
Uncle Spike
I love this! I had a great uncle who was some kind of reporter in Daytona Beach -- he also wrote erotica but no one will tell me his pen name.
He was in the Navy in the Korean War. I remember him as a Shel Silverstein character. He looked like a Gay Man from Florida, long shorts, beard, tank. Later we found pictures of him and a man picnicking in Korea, their arms around each other. My mother said, "That's how good friends acted back then."
Spike, thank you for sharing and inspiring others to do the same. My favorite icebreaker when meeting a new person is to ask them 'what's your story'?