Write Wild Blog

Beginning May 2022: A memoir-related blog in US English with a Hertfordshire, UK accent.

Dear writing-inclined readers,

If you’re thinking of using a derogatory term in your memoir, make sure you’re sure you’re sure before including it.

Here’s the gist of this post: The point is to encourage you to read the exquisite and life-affirming Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons by Jeremy Denk. It’s an extraordinarily well-crafted memoir and could inspire you to structure your story differently. And to consider well your slurs.

Denk and the Use of Douchebag

I probably don’t need to tell you about Denk’s dazzlingly inventive presence at the piano; his engaging and virtuosic performances; his brilliance as a thinker and writer (see Denk’s articles in the New Yorker, the Guardian, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times); his official genius status (2013 MacArthur Fellow); and his ability to draw listeners into the music he plays, making him a gate-opener in the highbrow music world of gatekeepers he inhabits. Or that I’ve been looking forward to this book for a while, and it has still exceeded my expectations.

If you haven’t read it yet, do. I basked in its afterglow for a few days and it’s still with me, nudging awake memories of past teachers, myself as a young learner, the darknesses of my family life, my own incremental awakenings, and the nascent awakenings I see in my two teenage children. Yet there’s another way in which this book is sticking—it’s Denk’s casual use of the slur “douchebag” about two-thirds of the way through the book. So, here I am, trying to figure out why it’s bothering me so much. 

Denk uses “douchebag” (and yes, I’m aware of the musical alliteration and assonance in those three words) in an aside to describe a person, presumably male, whom he sublets his Bloomington apartment to one summer. The individual plays no role in the memoir, his presence is neither foreshadowed nor referred to ever again, and if he never appeared at all the reader would be none the poorer. But Denk can’t let this nameless character slip by, and his single sentence is at once glib, scathing, remorseless, and loaded with drama. Here it is: “Sasha and I sublet our apartment to a tall douchebag who taught golf at the local country club, who we (nonfatally and accidentally) poisoned for reasons I won’t go into here” (EGBDF 230). This enigma raises several questions.

First, what on earth did this person do? Denk is not indiscriminately callous toward the individuals who populate his memoir. Surely there’s a reason, besides the conspicuous possible sin of teaching golf, why Denk is unrepentant, as well as flippant, about this intriguing, unintended poisoning. Second, why does he want the reader to feel disgust about this figure even though he won’t divulge the original offense? And third, why employ this peculiar insult? Douchebag isn’t really in my language repertoire—I’m a UK transplant and douchebag is US slang. That said, I understand it as inherently misogynist, as taking for granted that the vagina is the dirtiest of places, and as a gay, and maybe trans, slur.

Let’s tackle the misogyny first. In her new book, Vagina Obscura, science writer Rachel E. Gross explains this about douching: “In the 1920s, the home-cleaning brand Lysol followed suit, marketing itself as a ‘safe and gentle’ feminine cleanser. Just as it disinfects surfaces and kills germs in the home, Lysol promised to remove unwanted bacteria from the vagina. [. . .] In reality, it often led to inflammation, burning, and even death” (108). Gross’s book also points out that the vagina, like much of female anatomy, is mysterious because it hasn’t been studied enough. I would argue it’s also mystical, which is an even more fear-inducing prospect. Full disclosure: I birthed two babies through mine, and yes, they came out bloody, but both good boys cleaned up just fine. In the musical scheme of Denk’s narrative, an idea he is wonderfully fond of referring to, douchebag has stuck with me not like a dissonance, or an accidental, but like a wrong note. This is because Denk is habitually so careful with language, diction, cadence. So solicitous around his awareness of his own privilege. So responsive to the zeitgeist as to have made a point of performing music by neglected Black composers (Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins) and contemporary women composers (Missy Mazzoli, Tania Leon).  Every Good Boy Does Fine, like Denk’s recital programs and performance persona, is meticulously crafted and curated. So, it’s hard to imagine his use of douchebag is somehow off the cuff.

Denk is, true to form, hyper-reflexive about his makeup. Earlier in the book, he includes a letter his father wrote to him suggesting his lack of writing home was due to a “broad” in his life called Broad. Denk says of this letter: “It is amazing to see all Dad’s rampant sexism (a brew I grew up drinking, without knowing), but he was trying to be charming, I think, or he was desperate for proof that I wasn’t gay” (145). Which brings us to the gay or trans slur part of douchebag. Douchebag is not a slur aimed at women, but rather an emasculating slight aimed at some men. In this 2012 “Explainer” article in Slate by Brian Palmer, douchebag’s main thrust is described as a “failure to conform to gender stereotypes.” All we know about the target of the slur is that he is tall. Douchebag implies that he is effeminate. It’s an incongruous association to make in a memoir that is also a coming out story. In a chapter called “Moments of Truth,” Denk revisits the homophobic derision his fourteen-year-old self was exposed to from one of his chemistry teachers: “One day Bardwell did a little prancing maneuver, and a gesture with his wrist. An effeminate guidance counsellor had just left the room. ‘I’m from San Francisco, I have AIDS,’ he said in a falsetto to the whole class. Then he chuckled and turned away, back to his office” (91).  Like his father’s sexism, homophobia was in the water and therefore internalized.

It’s hard to believe this reader is just being overly sensitive when the book is all about sensitivity—in life, in music, in literature and language. Perhaps ultimately the book is offering me, on a meta level, one of its central lessons: we put our teachers, including our piano gurus, on pedestals, and they fall short because they are human after all. I’m reminded of my beloved thesis advisor, Shelley Reece, repeating to me Iris Murdoch’s insistence on “no gurus.” They were both right. And now I have only to extend proactive forgiveness to myself for my next lapse in attention, inevitable as it is, when I slight someone with a tidbit of flagrant, habitual, unexamined language use; perhaps when you, dear reader, point it out to me below.

This is not to say that any of my quibbles here should deter you from buying this book. Neither am I advocating self-censorship in your own writing. As you work with your editor to establish your voice and polish your memoir, simply keep in mind that a misguided word choice can lead to unwanted, haunting distractions. You want to be certain you can stand behind every single word you write.