ABOUT
"Overnight Book" is a fiction short based loosely on a life changing experience I had as a teenager. It was spring break and I was visiting my older brother in NYC.
Two things were crushing me: a closeted lesbian relationship that just crashed and burned with much drama and secrecy and a 40 minute presentation on James Joyce that was due upon my return to Missouri. Cracking open "Finnegans Wake" and realizing I couldn't read it in two days as planned, I was surely doomed.
Enter Bobby Bresloe: a fiercely sharp, charismatic, unapologetically gay man and converted New Yorker. Bobby was a lifetime friend staying at my brother's pad between apartments. Bobby's idea of a good time was smoking cigarettes, drinking whisky and reading (sometimes out loud with a passion) from the above mentioned author's work.
Score.
Like hearing a new song that is mysterious in its initial encounter but instantly a part of your soul's understanding, so was Bobby as a mentor to me. Not only was he an instant teacher, Bobby was an out gay man living in, what appeared to my young mind, the mecca of freakdom. And although I was still too afraid to tell Bobby of my own lesbian experience, I felt a certain admission in just sitting next to him.
When with Bobby I felt understood, on the verge of becoming a real woman and extremely safe.
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Bobby succumbed to AIDS while I was an undergrad at NYU. He has left an indelible impression on me still.
I now work in the big bad city of New York and Brooklyn is my home. I am a producer, editor and director who has become addicted to teaching. I feel the political/community building value in doing so.
So while fulfilling an MFA requirement in writing and directing a thesis short, adapting my experience with Bobby came to mind.
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 (Incidentally, I got an A) Me and Bobby NYC 1992
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In "Overnight Book", the encounter takes place in a small town within the span of a night. Bobby's character and "Mary" (not me, really!) slay the dragon of the book report and coming out together.
I grew up always connecting to the buddy/coming of age movies but wishing and wondering "What if there was a girl in the place of ____? How different would it be?"
Probably not so different. - Erin Greenwell Brooklyn 2007 |
