a remembrance
Manila, 16 June—Browsing through Facebook one night, I came across a run-of-the-mill profile photo update from my favorite creative writing professor from college. She was pretty open about sharing her journey through illness on Facebook, and I've often wondered about how she was faring. When I clicked through, my heart dropped; turns out, the update was to announce that she had already passed away. She was only 45.
I took a couple of creative writing classes under Charlene Fernandez, including the most epic and memorable elective I've ever taken, which was an erotica writing class. Which I signed up for with only about half a brain, because I happened to wander into the registration classroom, and I was missing one elective and there was no line. Still the best Let's Just Wing This!-decisions of my life, to be honest.
I remember how she said, on Day 1, that on our transcripts, the subject would simply appear as a "Special Topics" elective and not the one that was presented to us upon enlistment: Creative Writing 198, Sex and Writing. I took a total of five Creative Writing electives, and this was perhaps the hardest, because, well, it was writing about sex, and our pieces were workshopped by an entire class.
It was terrifying.
But under her watch, that class to me was one of the safest spaces I've ever found myself in. She was encouraging, but not patronizing; she told you when something worked, and when something didn't. She also gave us a shit-ton of readings that spanned everything, without judgment—as if saying, Sift through this as you wish, and like what you like.
I've always said: I may not be able to write sex to save my life, but I do know how to read good sex, thanks to this class. She was one of my earliest introductions to Jeanette Winterson—her work, The Poetics of Sex, was included in the pile. Also a lot of poetry, like this one from Sharon Olds, along with excerpts from Erica Jong's zipless fuck in Fear of Flying, and from books tackling BDSM by Anne Rice writing as Anne Rampling.
The whole reading list is now somewhere in my apartment—it's always somewhere in my apartment, and I've always taken it with me wherever I moved—housed in a thick pink clearbook binder. It makes me smile to think there's a part of Ms C tucked away safely in a corner of my apartment today: One that she worked on 14 years ago, a collection to give her students a feel of what is already here, and what could still be.
(The other class I took under her was Creative Non-Fiction, through which she gave me my first Joan Didion essay, which was Goodbye to All That. I still have that photocopy in my readings, too.)
Needless to say, Ms C is perhaps one of the major reasons why I kept writing non-news things after college. I feel so heartbroken that I had not been able to send her a copy of Mnemonics while she was still alive, if only to let her know how her work as a teacher still resonates with me until now, a decade and a half later.
I hope you can do me a favor by including her in your prayers tonight. She will be missed.
Rec alert update: Sense8 on Netflix
We have finished the entire Sense8 series on Netflix and OH MY GOD why did this series get cancelled!!! It's so good!!! Anyway, since we're marking Pride Month, it's a good time as any to binge it so don't WALK—RUN! :)
And since we're on a Sense8 high—this version of Feeling Good as featured on Sense8 is AMAZING.
PRIDE SALE
Metro Manila Pride organizers are currently raising funds for this year's Pride Parade, which is set on June 30th. To help them make the parade a reality, I am donating proceeds from sales of Mnemonics and Other Stories, so if you've already bought one, I'm donating in your behalf, thank you!
If you're interested to donate to the Pride Fund via Mnemonics, or directly to the Pride Fund, check out the links below. Every peso counts. Thank you :)