Book Description:
In this collection of five short stories Theresa Griffin Kennedy's assortment of unusual characters are sharply insightful and as damaged as they are intriguingly complex. Jolting the reader into regular double takes, "Burnside Field Lizard and Selected Stories," gives an authentic, place-based portrayal of some of Portland's less privileged inhabitants. Gender, class and sexual based consciousness seep into the grain of each story but most importantly Kennedy examines a universal question from the perspective of the Portland neighborhoods she knows intimately: What are people willing to take from others in order to survive and what does it mean to be human in such a landscape?
Excerpt - The Convalescent Home in the Doug Fir Wood:
“I looked out the hall window across from me as I stood leaning against the wall, and saw the bars on the outside of the windows. The rain trickled down the reinforced misted milk-glass in a constant deluge of melancholy rivulets. It was getting cold - the shadows, the rising turbulent winds, the drifting red and orange leaves were returning once more. I tuned out the sounds of the doctors voices. Soon, I couldn't make out the words they were saying as definite signals meant to convey something. Their words became a dim humming, a song drifting along the periphery of my awareness. And it was then, I knew I would be able to leave. I would go back to my room and take out the violet silk dress, the monstrous talisman I had created, and I would look at it. I might give it away after all. I need to let her go for all the ghosts she carried within her every measured stitch.”
Buy here…Burnside Field Lizard and Selected Stories
Book Description:
Talionic Night in Portland: A Love Story is a dark, sexually riveting and sometimes comical account of how people come to grips with long repressed rage that can present itself later in life. Daisy Rose Butterfield has a name, a job and a life she seems to hate, and a trove of long-held secrets. Then one typical overcast Portland day a Prince Charming arrives to fix the toilet. Tab Hunter Blaine is everything Daisy has avoided all her life — he’s older, he never attended college, and he works as a grade school custodian, a job he hates. He’s also gorgeous and accommodating and acts as dynamite to Daisy’s slow burning sexuality. But Tab brings his own baggage in the form of an estranged wife, Ruby and his girlfriend “on the side,” Verona. This doesn’t cause Daisy much concern, until Ruby and Verona get wind that Tab might be cheating on them. That’s when the fun starts. Can sex heal you, even when it’s all wrong? Can sexual obsession morph into love? Can you survive the sexual abuse you experienced as a child and go on to create a content and productive life? And can you survive when your past, present and future collide one chilly, Talionic night in Portland?
Excerpt - Talionic Night in Portland: A Love Story
“Your knuckles hurt from knocking, so now you’re slamming the side of your balled up fist on the wood door which rattles dangerously in its frame. You hope the neighbors can’t hear as you beat on the door. It’s late, after midnight again, and recently, (you can’t recall when) one of the neighbors complained about the noise. She stood outside the door as you lay on the living room floor and joined at the hip. She began yelling profanities through the thin wood. She was sick of listening to you two going at it all the time. You were a couple of “disgusting animals” in her estimation and she was going to call the police if you didn’t keep it down from now on. You smile vaguely at the memory while your fist continues to pound the door. You recall how you both started coming simultaneously within seconds of her banging on the door, how the startling intrusion made the pleasure even more thrilling, forbidden and intense.”
Buy here…Talionic Night in Portland: A Love Story
Book Description:
We are all a product of what has shaped us—the traumas, the positive and negative forces that impact us, the keenly felt betrayals, and the shadows and delights we witness and survive knit together to form a fabric. That fabric becomes a colorful tapestry, which represents our history.
The essays in this collection are from my life and lived experiences. Some are ugly, violent, and despairing, and some infused with the dimmest shimmer of hope, and the challenges, humor and joys of simply being alive. The essays in this book offer my recollections of dysfunctional childhood family dynamics, the lonely process of letting go of our children as they enter adulthood and depart from us, and the process of surviving the death of loved ones, including the death of two older sisters who died of preventable uterine cancer.
One essay introduces the reader to my melancholy war hero father, writer and author Dorsey Edwin Griffin. His silent and stoic suffering created the bottomless sadness which defined his entire life, and which he attempted, unsuccessfully, to hide from the world. Another essay reveals the horrible tragedy and irreparable loss that impacts a family when a baby dies under tragic and entirely preventable circumstances. That essay details how I found myself on the chill periphery of more than one horrific homicide involving a small child and wondering why.
Another essay explores the social isolation that comes from being one of society's social and economic outcasts. My challenge was in protecting my teenage daughter as a single mother in a community fraught with danger, indifference, and an unforgiving class system.
At a time when memoir and personal narrative writing are experiencing a renewed resurgence in popularity, usefulness and poignancy, I have attempted to offer my life as fodder for the sometimes voyeuristic endeavor of reading about the lives of others. With the fulfillment and intense curiosity that accompanies the solitary act of dissecting the personal essays of others, I hope you enjoy reading the stories in this book—stories only I can tell.
Except - We Learned to Live in the Castle: Stories, coming in 2025
“I’m gonna light some incense, make it special. You like Patchouli? It’s new, I just got it.”
“I guess. I’m thirsty, though. I need some water,” I murmured.
“I’ll get ya some ice water. Hold on.” Lew hustled into the kitchen, and brought me back a tall glass of ice water. I drank it all, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
The sun warmed my skin as I positioned myself on my back. Lew lowered himself over me and murmured something about how he was going to “take” my “tight pussy” because he deserved to have what he wanted. “Why shouldn’t I have what I want?” he asked petulantly to no one in particular for the umpteenth time.
“I love how you give it to me whenever I want. Janese used to dole out sex every three weeks, but you give it to me whenever I want. That’s rare.”
“Just fuck me,” I whispered, closing my eyes.
“Yeah. Yeah,” Lew whispered.
After several months of being lovers, meeting regularly, there was no avoiding the inescapable conclusion that Lew was not a deep person. He was clever in some ways, intensely masculine, incredibly sexy, observant and perceptive and very good at his job as a vehicle detailer, but he wasn’t well educated, didn’t seriously read and wasn’t particularly bright.
Ours was nothing more than a sexual connection. We met and spent our time together having sex. That was it and despite the long conversations we had, discussing the details of his life, it was a connection with virtually no future. Even I understood that, in that secret part of my mind that I often refused to connect with.”
IMPORTANT LINKS:
2.) Graphic designer Chris Miller
3.) Beyond Where the Buses Run: Stories
4.) My UnHollywood Family by Robert Crane
~Theresa Griffin Kennedy
Some of the best of my writing - with links.