Chapter 2
Kendra's Tale
There are battles to be fought ... but we have come so far, with so many heroines along the way. From Sojourner Truth to Harriet Tubman to Rosa Parks. We owe them; all of us, black and white and brown and yellow. My generation owes so very much, though each of us must choose whether or not we want to repay that debt ... and how. As for me, I will go as far as I can. It's hard. There are obstacles every step of the way, but I will keep on. I owe them that.
It's easy to take things for granted ... when you have them. I've always had them. Daddy went into public service once he had his law degree. He met my mother overseas, brought her back to the States, and joined a fancy law firm. I've been in private schools my whole life. It was in college, at Cornell, that I added several new heroines to my list. Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison. And I decided I would try to honor my predecessors the way they had honored there's ... by being unique. I would write ... in my own words, in my own style.
And yet, for all my talk, there are a couple obstacles that I simply can't seem to get over. The first is the hardest to swallow. I do what I love, and I love to write. Unfortunately, I'm either not that creative, or more probably, just not that good. Not yet. Not by myself. Fortunately for me, I'm not alone. I'll come back to that in a minute.
And secondly, it's very, very hard to BE a strong personality, when you don't HAVE one. It's not that I haven't tried. It's just not who I am. I like to judge a person on how he or she relates to Dracula. No, not the monster ... the book. It's something most people have read, sometime in their lives; and in it are four wonderful characters. Men will imagine themselves as either Jonathan Harker or Van Helsing, depending who they most admire ... the patient observer or the self-described expert who's not afraid to take drastic action. Most women imagine themselves to be Mina: strong, gentle, reverent and chaste. But me ... I lie in bed and imagine myself as Lucy; the girl who, when confronted by evil desire, eventually surrendered her body and her soul.
The first time I had sex, I was drunk. It was all a cliché, really. It happened after the senior prom. He had brought a bottle along, and he had "car problems" after parking in a lovers' lane; then he goaded me with the booze and coaxed me into the back seat. I didn't like it. It hurt like the dickens, and eventually, I think I just wound up noticing things that annoyed me: his clumsiness, his breath, the mess ... that sort of thing. I swore off sex. Never again. That little resolution lasted about ten months. Our sorority (my freshman year) was invited to a frat party. It was almost the same scenario ... drunk, enticed, disappointed. And ... never again, I told myself. I held out for almost a year that time. It was another party. But this guy (a football player) got rough. There were bruises. And ... there were pictures. An assistant coach took them when I started squawking. I'll give you gals out there a little tip: you can't fight a college athletic organization, so don't even GO there. Before I had a chance to make a case, they were already lining up a case against ME, threatening to expel me for prostitution. The very erotic pictures all seemed to prove them right. I quickly saw the writing on the wall and the whole thing was dropped. Never again, I said. And this time, I made it stick. Of course, I had a little help.
The help was Janie. I don't know how we hooked up ... or really, at first, why. We met in a Foreign Authors class the second semester of our sophomore year. I'd seen her around campus, but of course, she's just the type of person you notice. Guys would follow her around like a line of ducklings, and she'd toss them little smiles instead of bread crumbs. The thing that caught my attention was the fourth straight A+ paper that was handed back to her. The first words I ever spoke to her were after class while she was holding that paper. "Are you sleeping with the prof?" I asked. (Have I mentioned my uncanny predilection for tact?) Instead of getting angry, she threw back her head and laughed out loud. Then, amazingly, she folded her arm in mine and turned me toward the door. "Let's get some coffee," she suggested.
And we've been together ever since. She is, without any mental reservation or purpose for evasion, the most intelligent woman I have ever met. But, oh my, she hides it well. The first thing we did was start studying together, and my grades all improved ... even in the classes she wasn't taking. We moved in together that summer, and I found that I was no longer simply running MY life ... WE were running OURS. I had never even considered sticking around for grad school, but for her, it was a given ... not just for her, but for US.
As different as we were physically, we were alike inside. Janie's problem was sex. With me, she was like a female Einstein: logical, calculating, witty and sharp. With men, she was the typical dumb blonde. She literally never said "no" to a guy. Like me, she never seemed to be satisfied by the sex; I think she just got off on the submission ... and maybe on the humiliation. She was constantly being left emotionally drained and physically abused. Midway through our junior year, I'd had enough, and I told her so. The solution was simple, actually; like everything, it became a problem to figure out for "us," and not just her. We formed a mutual protection society. When we wanted to go out, we went out together, either on a double date, or more and more frequently, the two of us alone; and eventually, men ceased to be a part of our lives altogether.
Now, we were two healthy young women. We had certain needs ... and no, we didn't turn to each other for sex. We each had BOB (Battery Operated Boyfriend) for that. We were very pragmatic about it ... very realistic. If I heard a buzzing sound in the night, I didn't think anything about it ... and I most certainly never mentioned it. Sometimes, that was difficult ... Janie is a "moaner," and is often quite ... well ... vociferous. But overall, it was just a necessity, like hygiene. A fact of life. Another aspect of our day-to-day existence. It was basic knowledge between us that someday ... well ... someday Mr. Right would come along for each of us, and we could dream about him when we were in bed alone with BOB. When that day finally did come, we'd face it. We'd be alright. But for now, we needed to get on with life.
After graduation, we joined the staff of the school paper together doing editorials. Then we published an article in a magazine together ... and then another, and another. At Janie's insistence, we started taking screenwriting classes, beginning with an undergrad course and then moving to some advanced classes. Finally, we started sending "spec scripts" to various TV shows, producers and studios. After a year of this, we attracted the attention of an agent; and finally, finally, we sold a feature script to the Sci Fi Channel. Then, of course, came the first re-write, and then the second re-write: delete this character, add that scene, change the location, turn the leading lady into a young girl ... and on and on. By the fifth re-write (the final, by contract), the thing bore little resemblance to the masterpiece it had once been ... but they shot it! They actually shot it! We were in IMDb! We had done it!
"Writing teams" are becoming more and more popular. As far as publishers are concerned (and producers, studios ... everybody), a team is treated like a single person. If a team is hired for a TV staff writer's position (for example), they get one individual salary that they have to split ... the same salary that is paid to each of the other "individuals." In other words, a "team" might be in it for the money, but they're not in it to get rich. Still, there is no source of satisfaction quite like the rush you get when you see your stuff in print or on the screen.
We had never really considered video games before we got the call from our agent telling us that Rankin Toddworth himself had requested to see us. We were absolutely stunned, but we shifted immediately into high gear and tried to figure the thing out. First, we researched Toddworth, who, most people seemed to agree, could be classified somewhere between wildly eccentric and downright cruel. We had told our agent (who was in Los Angeles) that we'd meet with the old man right away, but after another hour, we were both balking at the whole idea. And then, a lawyer showed up and asked us to sign for a thick envelope. It contained instructions for travel, a cell phone, and fifteen thousand dollars in cash (for "expense money," the letter said -- whether we decided to sign a contract or not). See you tomorrow, the letter said. Pack for a few days, because if we did sign, we'd go right to work.
Janie still didn't want to do it. I did. We flipped a coin. Isn't it amazing how dramatically your life can change just because a coin comes up tails?
After the "decision" had been made, Janie jumped in with both feet. She visited the campus library and the bookstores in search of information about writing video game content. Then we went out together and bought new suitcases, new clothes and travel necessities. The limo would pick us up at ten o'clock the next morning, since it was a four or five hour drive from Ithaca to Danbury. All the way there, we studied ... and we got more and more uneasy. Just about everything nowadays was a "shooter" game, and apart from the background "universe," which was mostly a graphics function, there wasn't anything even resembling the type of writing we had been doing. I announced that if it was a "D&D" themed game, we were sunk, since our required reading list would number in the dozens ... if not hundreds of gaming books, and neither of us would even know where to start.
