The Sunday Stories

Lately people keep asking what made the ’90s feel so cool. For starters, there was something like trust. Plans were made in person, confirmed, and kept. There was no way to cancel at the last minute, no soft exit, if you made a plan you had to show up, in person. And in showing up, you built something—reliability, intimacy, trust.

We also had privacy. I wrote about it last week—we did plenty of stupid things, but they belonged to us. Not content. Not evidence. Just ours. Like trust, we didn’t quite recognize it until it disappeared.

Now everyone feels a little exposed. We’re all reachable, all the time. Privacy, like anything scarce, is expensive. I think about my own role in all of it—how much I contributed to the erosion of my own privacy. The writing career, then reality television. One door opens; another quietly disappears.

But from my first job in journalism, storytelling became my escape. Even as a child, I’d lock myself in my parents’ room, studying old family photos and imagining the lives behind them. I spent an extraordinary amount if time daydreaming—still do. Those inner worlds feel as real to me as the life I physically move through. I’m not sure who I inherited this trait from, but my chaotic childhood was filled with storytellers.

For those who have been reading my stories from the beginning you know that I write stories about my life. They are all first person and recall events and people I know, well. My life has taken me from a tiny upstate town to the hustle of the big city. It has been a path marked by immense joy and unspeakable sadness. Writing is one way I’ve tried to make sense of point A to point Q – that’s where I figure I am right now – 2/3rds done.

A few weeks ago I wrote that I would not be watching the McMurphy’s TV series. And I didn’t.

Everyone’s American Love Story was my American Horror Story.

None of John and Carolyn’s friends I’m still in touch with watched it. We’re all a little shell-shocked, not by the existence of the show (there have been plenty), but by the spectacle orbiting it. We underestimated the velocity of the social media circus.