“We were young and impressionable. Our adolescence does shape us for life, whether we know it or not. There’s something so uniquely complicated, fungible and ambiguous about the selves that we are when we are young.” – Susan Choi, on Trust Exercise
I don’t often plug books on my blog, because as you know the blog is about whatever I pull from my butt that day and feel like talking about. Today I need to talk about Trust Exercise, Winner of the 2019 National Book Award for fiction. It’s been described as “auto-fiction,” as in, autobiographical fiction. Many fictional works are real-life thinly disguised as fiction, but this is a work of fiction letting you know it’s all based in truth. Confusing? Yes, in a way. I’m still working it out. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is that auto-fiction, gonzo reporting, or? I’m not sure. There’s a lot for me to learn in the writing world, and now more categories than I ever knew possible. Like dino-erotica. Did you know that’s a thing? People, you know… with dinosaurs? I know, mind blown. Anyway.
I read Trust Exercise like it was a familiar but terrifying trip through the confusing rapid-fire gear shifts of adolescence. The power dynamics between friends and teachers left me unable to put it down. I’m not going to give anything away, but the book takes an abrupt sharp turn, about mid-way through, as if I’d been given a cake to slowly eat all by myself, only to turn away for a moment and return to just the crust. I still loved the book, I just had to get used to the carpet being yanked out from underneath me. I tried to understand why I couldn’t stop thinking about the characters and the premise afterward, and I think I get it. For me, Choi has hit on the head the intimate awkwardness of adolescent un-knowing, the time before one is sure of who they are, when a person is impressionable and mutable and changeable, often completely dependent on who they meet. Like all of us. We all had a person, or maybe two, that changed our lives forever. For some people, that’s a teacher, for better or worse, a mentor who lays down some guide rules for how to find yourself. And perhaps that mentor is wrong.
I found myself nodding along to the power plays and moves of one such teacher, as we had a known predator in our high school who was sleeping with his students. Why none of the adults knew this, I don’t know, as it seemed to be common knowledge amongst the kids. Did we think we were protecting him? We all liked him, he was a good teacher, fun, caring. And perhaps we knew, the only people who really had any proof were those girls. Did we really know what we knew? Had anyone seen it firsthand? No. So maybe it was all a rumor. Personally I don’t think so, rumors like this don’t tend to extend over many years’ time, but I have to think if it were true, this mentor changed their lives forever, how those girls saw themselves, what types of relationships they might have or not have ever again.
My person was a girl I met in the locker room in seventh grade. I rounded the corner and interrupted a potentially embarrassing moment. I’d tell you but I can’t, I swore some thirty-three years ago not to. Her first words to me? “Don’t tell anyone.”
I nodded, and we were bound to each other. I was a mega-nerd, she was cool with an older sister who was super cool. She took to me, probably as one keeping an enemy close, but we became fast friends. She showed me a way into myself that I might not have found for years otherwise, turned my radio to the college stations where the indie-rock and alternative music played, showed me bands and took me to the best thrift stores. We went to see the jazz band at the university, sitting in the back, our youthful faces hidden by the dark lighting, loving everything about this world filled with adult intrigue.
What followed: the types of boys I liked. The types of experiences I sought out. The type of person I became.
Many years after that initial pairing I saw her on the street with her sister. We talked for a while, chit-chat, nothing more, as we’d slowly drifted apart. Her parting words to me were “I made you.” As in, don’t forget who you are. You are you, because of me. I thought at the time it was a pretty shit thing to say, as she was laying claim to some sort of status she thought I had achieved, but I see now that she was right. She did make me. Because if it had been someone else, some other person to come along just as I was swaying into whatever undertow that swelled through the junior high, I may have well been a completely different person.
Sound scary? It is. You know, you had one too. One or two people that shunted you into a completely different experience, that opened a door somewhere in your mind. I look at my kids and think, it’s not long now before their person comes. What will they find out?
That’s why this book stuck with me, and perhaps why it won such a prestigious award. It’s not comfortable, as a trust exercise is not comfortable. You just have to fall and hope you get caught before the end.