The Cut Bucket: We Went to Princeton
words otherwise left behind
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What is the Cut Bucket?
Part of the writing process is the cutting process. For me, it is often a lot of cutting because I am so long-winded on the first draft (and sometimes in the last draft). As a project develops, it’s not uncommon for entire themes, plots, chapters, or scenes to hit the cutting-room floor, and that’s just the way that it is. But it can be sad. Those bits that need to be disposed of don’t always lack quality or value; they’re just not the right fit for the story at hand.
“Kill your darlings,” they say. Whoever the hell ‘they’ are.
During the edit, I like to create a “cut bucket” to house these darlings. If there is something that must be cut but which seems like it might be salvage-able someday, I’ll drop it into the cut bucket and hope that eventually it finds a more permanent home. Sometimes those cuts are lifted and put into a new piece, play, or tweet for which they weren’t originally intended. Most of the time, though, the cut bucket is where they remain. So, here in gangletown, we’re going to give the ‘darlings’ a visit. We’re going to provide them with a purpose!
Today I’ve included mostly unedited excerpts from two different pieces. I won’t try to explain how or where they were meant to fit in, but I hope you enjoy this peek behind the curtain.
The following excerpt was cut from ‘We Went to Princeton’. If you haven’t read that piece, please do. You can find it here.
…
When I was a senior in college, I was sleeping with this guy for a few months, and when things got a little less than casual, I pushed him away. That was my MO for much of my dating life. If it wasn’t hard to get, I didn’t want it. Then, once it was available, I didn’t want it. I’m sure none of you have any idea what I’m talking about…
Not too long after I distanced myself, I learned that he had started moving on. My blood boiled at the thought of him with someone else. When someone likes you more than you like them and ends it, aren’t they supposed to be sad? He was supposed to be sad. Aren’t they supposed to join a nunnery and pine after you in abstinence for the rest of their life? He was supposed to pine. But he wasn’t doing that. He wasn’t doing what I wanted him to at all, which was to be around when I wanted and not around when I didn’t. It made me jealous as all hell. The gross kind of jealous. I was the kind of jealous where I couldn’t handle my own feelings.
I had a Jealousy Demon, and the Jealousy Demon demanded that I get him back…I opened my flip phone and started texting him again. Long story short, it worked and we got back together.
I should note that when this happened, I was twenty-two years old and had no self-awareness. At the time, I really thought that I loved him. The feelings were real, even if they were coming from a gnarly place.
We got lucky too. Eventually, I really did love him and I think he loved me. We built a relationship and he was my first real “boyfriend”. We were long-distance for most of our time together, though, and it was hard. We talked often about whether we could make it work in earnest. We saw each other as much as possible and spent an unreasonable amount of time on Megabuses between New York and DC, or New York and Boston (he moved). We discussed living together. We met some of each other’s family, and we did the best we could to make the whole thing work at the time. We were also young and, despite my best efforts to kill it, my Jealousy Demon was a permanent third in our relationship. I was also experiencing strong flare-ups of undiagnosed anxiety and that effectively ruined most of our visits together. Eventually, we were stuck in a pattern of objective disfunction, and we both knew it. It wasn’t the relationship.
When we broke up, I sat on the stoop of his house and sobbed in a way that I hadn’t ever before and haven’t ever since. For all its issues, it was a good relationship. He was a good guy, and it was a good learning experience for both of us. There was real love for a little while, and I know that I couldn’t be in my relationship with Blaine if I hadn’t gone through what I experienced with him. I have no actual regrets.
And yet.
What if I hadn’t succumbed to the Jealousy Demon? What if I worked through those control-based feelings instead? What if I’d let him move on, as he certainly had the right to do? What if I’d graduated from college and moved to New York, but not spent the first two years of my “adult” life in a long-distance relationship?
That moment and the choices I made influenced a thousand things in my life. The jealousy made me anxious. The anxiety got worse because of the jealousy. Being in a relationship during those first few years allowed me to hold onto certain prudish mentalities about sex, leading me to a lot of judgment (of myself and others) that I am still working through. I was not always the person in that relationship that I would have liked to be…
What if? What if? What if?
In these hypotheticals, the part of me that wonders “what if” also tends to be a pessimist, I guess. It assumes that things would definitely be better if a different choice had been made. It also seems to disregard the positive things that came from how things really happened and focuses on the negative. While vilifying the jealousy, anxiety, and control, he doesn’t celebrate the compassion, communication, and growth.
…
This next excerpt was cut from the stage play version of ‘Sink, Florida, Sink.’ I’d be happy to share the script with anyone interested in reading it; just reply to this email.
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VIOLET: Have you ever felt that what has happened in your life could have easily been a dream?
SEB: Of course. Though, I’d hardly call Greg a dream. More like a ghost. I figure he probably died a gruesome death swimming himself to the mainland. Or maybe I hoped. Not sure.
VIOLET: It happens to me a lot. I have really vivid dreams, but I also have really vivid experiences, and, at some point, they blend. But both cases are so vivid and so real that I’m kind of starting to believe they are equally important.
SEB: Yeah, I guess I get it.
VIOLET: Once there was this space ship- like a huge ship- and it came to dock at the port. All the cruise ships came back to life to make room for the space ship. The Disney boat was like a person, and she was the Captain of the cruise ships. She coordinated all the other cruises to make space for this enormous new addition. And the space ship was this great huge thing that really shouldn’t have been able to fit, but they made it fit. Oh my god, it looked like a huge naval-type spaceship. And, out of nowhere, all of these little creepy aliens explode from the space ship and start to take over. They looked like little spiders or ants just flooding out of the ship and covering the port. In the water, on the ground, tearing at the docks. All of it. The tourists on the boats, who had been watching and welcoming this alien monstrosity with freakystrange joy, were being like tossed into the creepy port water and eaten alive by these alien creatures. And sharks. Huge sharks.
SEB: Ew. Cool. What the fuck?
VIOLET: Do you think that was a dream?
SEB: Well yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna go ahead and say that it was.
VIOLET: Right. I’d say so too, but- The experience stayed with me like a fact. Until last night, I’d been avoiding the port for weeks because I was too scared to see it all again. And I can still feel that real terror and like whatthefuck-ness of seeing those creepy things crawling all over everything—flooding over the island. You know? So who is to say that the space ship didn’t crash into the port?
SEB: Science? Your obvious case of PTSD?
…
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