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People of Color Inspirational Romance

Sarah Lee is fuming. Not only does she share a name with a multinational dessert company whose motto is "Always in Season," but she is having another spat with her boyfriend - these arguments seem to be perennial in nature. "I can’t believe we’re arguing over this again, Foley," Sarah says to a man she has known for close to ten years.   


Sarah Lee has not had an easy life. As children, her parents escaped China with their families after the Communist revolution of 1949. After having an arranged marriage, Danny and Amy Lee struggled to make ends meet in the United States, a country that had accepted them into its prejudiced and opportunity-laden fabric. They commenced their conjugal adventure together in San Francisco’s Chinatown where Danny initially worked as a cook in restaurants. Amy spent twelve-hour days working as a seamstress. Sarah, her brother and two sisters were looked after by their maternal grandparents.  


At the age of six, Sarah was diagnosed with dyslexia. Initially, her teachers thought Sarah’s difficulties with speech, reading and writing were caused by the child’s bilingualism. To remedy the child’s seeming confusion, the teachers suggested that Cantonese stop being spoken at home. 


Sarah’s grandparents lamented the proposed solution to their grandchild’s learning problems and cursed the blue-eyed devils who wanted to deprive Sarah of her cultural heritage by silencing her original language. For the sake of the child’s success in America, Danny and Amy concocted a plausible story that they presented to the social services agency, who promptly took Sarah into their custody and began looking for an adoptive family to care for the child.


She was adopted by a white family. Years of remedial efforts to correct Sarah’s dyslexia were only partially successful, and after a decade of working low-wage jobs, she earned her high-school equivalency certificate and decided to undergo training to become a psychiatric prison guard for the California Recovery Institute, a rehabilitative program for mentally ill persons convicted of crimes ranging from heinous felonies to non-violent misdemeanors.      

*

"How many times do I have to tell you not to leave stuff lying around the house, Foley? You know it annoys me to no end. Your irresponsibility reminds me of the crap I had to deal with at work. Tactless guards and disrespectful patients, both who thought that just because I was Asian and I didn’t have a penis, I shouldn’t have been doing my job."  


Sarah met Foley Gaspers while the latter was an inmate at Chowchilla Psychiatric Correctional Facility. The last thing Sarah ever thought when she took the job at Chowchilla was that she’d end up falling in love with one of the forensic patients, but that’s exactly what happened after her and Foley developed a mutual liking based on a shared appreciation of National Geographic, poetry and tasteful eating.


During the interactions permitted them by the circumstances at Chowchilla and later, when Sarah had surreptitiously provided Foley with a P.O. box address, they wrote to each other about both the historical and Shakespearian Cleopatra, about the dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt, who counted amongst them an astronomer of Alexandria who maintained the sun, moon and other known planets revolved around the Earth.


Foley would commence his letters to Sarah with the greeting "Dear Cleo," or "My Dear World," and conclude them with "Your Star, Foley." These epistolary habits indicated that as a result of the peculiarity of their amorous relationship, or perhaps, if one is inclined to believe in such things, as a result of fate, Sarah had become the imperial center of Foley's universe.


Sarah and Foley compared the relative merits of T.S. Elliot’s "Prufrock" and Sylvia Plath’s "Daddy." Both enjoyed the former, but seemed to agree that Plath’s poem was a Freudian insult to proper daughter-father relationships. In long letters they wrote to each other, taking pains to conceal Sarah ‘s identity from Chowchilla mail security, they each salivated when discussing the textures and tastes of Foley’s spicy eggplant parmesan and Sarah’s chocolate chip banana bread.    


The event that sealed the romantic deal between Sarah and Foley was when Foley agreed to stop getting into altercations with other patients. Following one incident in which a hapless Chowchilla detainee had exposed himself to Sarah, Foley waited until after the patient was released from a three-day solitary cell hold and ambushed him in the restroom. "Get him!" shouted Sebastian, one of Foley’s fellow patients and friends who was a keen observer, if not an understanding listener. Sebastian’s outcry and the commotion of the ensuing scuffle attracted the attention of the guards, who promptly put an end to the half-hearted melee.   


After Foley himself had been released from a 72-hour solitary hold for fighting, Sarah made him promise never to risk having another battery charge leveled against him, since doing so would only prolong his stay at Chowchilla and prevent them from ever forming a relationship outside the concrete walls and razor-wired fences of the forensic hospital.

*

Sarah knew Foley was legally regarded as a mentally ill person, but she steadfastly thought neither he nor any of the other forensic patients she was in charge of were inhumane or evil. Although she believed they deserved penal rehabilitative treatment, she was undecided as to whether or not psychiatric incarceration was the answer to their troubles. 


Some had been made detainees of Chowchilla for trifles: repeated counts of delusion-motivated petty theft or hallucination-induced loitering. Others had done horribly stigmatized or savage things: child molestation, matricide. Both low and high-profile offenders at Chowchilla would have had a difficult time surviving within a more conventional carceral environment. “Jay cats,” as many of them were called by general inmate populations in prisons, did not have the discipline or predatory attitude required to make it on a mainline prison yard. 


Although Sarah felt a kind of ambivalent admiration for hard core prisoners, and despite knowing some Chowchilla detainees had committed crimes abhorrent to her own moral code, Sarah couldn’t deny the "jay cats" their humanity. She knew captives of Chowchilla weren’t incapable of being kind or considerate, of offering other detainees who had no internal friends a helping hand when it was needed, or of providing those that lacked external means of support a small fortune's worth of treats from weekly canteen.  

*

Sarah’s relationship to Foley was eventually investigated and she lost her job due to what was termed “unprofessional conduct.” Sarah was given the option of working at another of the California Recovery Institute’s facilities, or of severing all contact with Foley Gaspers.  


Soon after she had been given the ultimatum, Foley sent her a poetry publication that featured a poem he had written entitled “Ptolemy’s Carousel.”


A seeker of poetry in everything

can find comfort amidst difficulties—in a psychiatric prison,

in an overworked girlfriend’s conundrum,

or during a fight in which both contestants are losers.


A schizophrenic is disturbed

by so many everyday occurrences—

hearing ambient conversation in a chow hall,

sensing erogeneity in everyday interaction,

seeing colors and taking them for commands.


My mind has ambulated the slender line

between civilization and madness.

I’ve discovered their twin

destinies are inseparable,

and their dissociation equivocal.


Your allure is rapturous,

a stirring of the soul,

a wistfully spun web.

A Ptolemaic circumnavigation

In which I am Sun and you are Earth.


Dedicated to Sarah, for her patience.


*

Sarah opted to no longer work for the California Recovery Institute. After reading the poem, and being reminded that her lover's world revolved around the glow of tolerance that emanated from her innermost being, she could be sure that Foley Gaspers was her missing half. 

July 07, 2022 20:15

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22 comments

Kanika G
07:28 Jul 11, 2022

Mike, this was a sweet love story. On reading the other comments here, I realize you've written other stories with these characters and this is probably part of a series. The characters are well developed. An unusual setting for a love story, which brings a lot of freshness to this story. I'm glad it has a happy ending. Well done!

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Mike Panasitti
16:05 Jul 11, 2022

Thanks for your comments on my first attempt at the romance genre. Yes, this autobiographically-informed story is part of a series that I am hoping to work into a novel. Take care, Kanika, and I look forward to your next story.

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04:51 Jul 11, 2022

Great podcast and nice to hear of the method behind the madness of the Foley character, i thought this was a very insightful thing you said. "I'm trying to show neurodivergent thought processes in a way that makes sense that doesn't sound like Joycian free association. That's one of the challenges I'm trying to confront..." https://www.readlotswritelots.com/podcast/episode-44-mike-panasitti/

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Mike Panasitti
15:58 Jul 11, 2022

Scott, I should have said "Joycean stream of consciousness," but I'm glad you got the gist of what I meant. I thank you for listening and look forward to reading the ways you surmount the obstacle posed by attempting to authentically depict neurodivergence in your stories.

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16:27 Jul 11, 2022

Hi Ive struggled at exactly that point and I thought that was such an intelligent thing you said. Its hard to point out neurodivergance in writing without being cliche or blunt, ive never seen autism spectrum individuals mentioned without it being ridiculously exaggerated and one note. Ill try to put more thought into depicting neurodivergance empathetically in the future.

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Mike Panasitti
22:13 Jul 11, 2022

"Curious Incident" by Mark Haddon is the only recommendation I can make about a novel portraying an autistic young man, but I did a Google search and there seem to be many works of fiction that portray autism. I'm not sure if "Curious Incident" can serve as an example of narration in the first person by an autistic character, but I liked it enough to have read it twice. Hope that assists you in your literary efforts.

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00:21 Jul 12, 2022

Thx, for the recommendation, I've read the Curious Incident of a Dog.. and remember I liked it. I think you are right, 1st person is a much better way to show the humanity of neurodivergent characters. I know a lot about the spectrum topic having a few toes in the that pool myself.. but I feel its sort of been overcovered on tv and in journalism lately if perhaps not in fiction. I don't know what people would like to learn more about? I do know I can be a little overdirect or distant IRL and writing def helps me smooth out the rough edges a...

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Mike Panasitti
02:26 Jul 12, 2022

I guess if we really think about it, neurodivergence comes in close to 8 billion forms. However, it's reassuring to know that the writing helps. I believe writing helped me suspend a questionably effective psychotherapy habit. A creative writing course is within reach of many people within driving distance of a community college - I'll keep you posted as to whether my studies enhance my writing.

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Sharon Hancock
02:07 Jul 10, 2022

Awe this is a really sweet love story. So complicated but also very real. I do have a question…it says Foley was legally retarded as a mentally ill patient. I guess that’s possible according to legal definition etc but he seems so intelligent with his writing and reading. So I’m thinking his patient classification must have more to do with being socially dangerous? I have read that mental illness and higher intelligence levels go hand in hand, though. Anyway, I enjoyed this a lot. I’m not a fan of gushy love stories, but this is awesome. I ...

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Mike Panasitti
11:41 Jul 10, 2022

Sharon! Legally "regarded," not legally "retarded!" However, I must admit, Foley does outlandish things some observers might regard as retarded. I'm overjoyed our resident queen of tongue-in-cheek horror found this gushy story to her liking, but I think many of your stories that gush blood also, at least implicitly, gush love.

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Sharon Hancock
17:47 Jul 10, 2022

Omg I read that 3 times as a T and not a g what is wrong with me 🫣🥴it makes much more sense now, thank you.😂😂😂

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Michał Przywara
20:51 Jul 08, 2022

An enjoyable continuation of Foley's saga. I think having a Sarah POV was a great idea. So far we've (I've) heard a lot about her, so it was good to get her perspective directly. We can also learn a lot about Foley through others' observations of him. Her own background is interesting too, as is the story of how they met. What they were doing was wrong, and they well knew it. They took pains to hide their relationship and no doubt it was crushing when she was finally found out. And yet, because it's love, we can't really hold it against ...

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Mike Panasitti
22:15 Jul 08, 2022

Michal, I always appreciate your comments. Yes, Sarah's background is laden with adversity as well as self-sufficiency. I dashed the story off, and because I don't have much skill in fiction writing yet, it does seem disjointed. It appears I did much telling and not much showing, but that may be many novices' shortcoming. The suggestion you make to tie the present to the past in the story via the poem is brilliant. I'll see if I can make the necessary changes before this submission gets approved. Thank you very much!

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Jim Firth
13:21 Jul 08, 2022

Mike, You're back--the king of long sentences! You do those one sentence paragraphs so well and they don't feel overblown at all. There's no fluff or indulgence, I think it's just dang effective narration that illuminates Sarah and Foley! 'Her allure is rapturous, a stirring of the soul, a wistfully spun web.' Woah! Who wouldn't give up their job to be with someone wrote them a poem like that?

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Mike Panasitti
15:28 Jul 08, 2022

Jim, heartfelt commendations such as yours keep me coming back to respond to weekly prompts. Thank you for reading.

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Graham Kinross
01:56 Nov 22, 2022

Schools really suck at dealing with kids with dyslexia. The English language making words like dyslexia so ridiculous doesn’t help. The frustration of getting caught in a loop when lines seemed to repeat themselves infinitely lasted a long time for me. There’s been a lot of research recently to disprove the bilingual delay ideas that were prevalent before. It might take a little longer to intake twice as much information but it has big benefits later. I’m hoping my daughter will take to English and Japanese fairly easily. “Sarah met Foley ...

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Mike Panasitti
02:54 Nov 22, 2022

As always, thanks for your comments. The final poem, however, requires clarification. According to Ptolemaic astronomy, the Sun orbits the Earth, so Foley is saying the exact opposite of what you understood...he revolves around her; Sarah is the center of his universe : )

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Graham Kinross
03:25 Nov 22, 2022

Ah. I was thinking about that afterwards. Thanks Copernicus.

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Aoi Yamato
03:20 Jun 05, 2023

beautiful.

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Mike Panasitti
18:54 Jun 05, 2023

Thank you.

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Aoi Yamato
00:55 Jun 06, 2023

welcome.

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