Sarah Garrity
English 112
Other Words Rough Drafts
In his article, “One Sentence”, John Mierdos claims that his life is a sentence. He writes
that his life is “a sentence, a line of words strung together, sometimes with meaning sometimes
without meaning” (79). But can a sentence be “a line of words strung together…without
meaning” (79)? Babies string words together, “ball, ma, juice”. Parrots string words togethertypically the words they hear from the owners the most- like “shit, goddamnit”, or (my mom’s
personal favorite- Jesus Christ). Yet these strings of words can hardly be called sentences. So,
then, what makes a sentence? A sentence with meaning? “Your skin looks airbrushed”. I like
that sentence’s meaning. “Your hair blows in the wind like a supermodel’s does in front of the
photographer’s fan”. I like that sentence’s meaning too. But just because these sentences have
meaning (in this case, meaning that contributes to my already inflated ego), does not make them
any more of a sentence than the words strung together by babies or parrots. What makes them
sentences are the parts of speech that are within them. Sentences have a subject, a verb, and any
necessary modifiers, such as adjectives, adverbs, direct objects etc., to make the sentence
grammatically correct. So while the sentence, “It is time to re-apply denture cream” carries no
meaning to me, it nevertheless has the proper sentence structure and grammar. And while the
sentence, “I don’t have dentures but I have retainers that are just as unappealing” does carry
meaning to me, it too is a sentence. So then, if Mierdos definition of a sentence is “a line of
words strung together, sometimes with meaning sometimes without” (79) I would have to call
bullshit. After Googling the definition of a sentence, and coming up with phrases and words such
as “syntactic unit” and “orthographic”, which required more Googling, I decided to settle with
what Wikipedia said. According to Wikipedia, a sentence is “grammatical unit consisting of one
or more words that bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it. A
Sarah Garrity
English 112
Other Words Rough Drafts
sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question, exclamation,
request, command or suggestion….(blah, blah, blah)…. Sentences are generally characterized in
most languages by the presence of a finite verb”. (Wikipedia) Three things are immediately draw
to my attention. First, Wikipedia says (and what Wikipedia says, goes, …at least to your ignorant
web-searching college student such as myself ) that sentences consist of a word or words that
“bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it”, which basically means
that they have to have some type of logical connection or meaning to another word or words.
Secondly, I noticed that I could edit this definition to fit the purpose of this essay. And thirdly I
noted, that perhaps someone had already done it for me. Wikipedia writes, “Sentences are
generally characterized in most languages by the presence of a finite verb”. Clicking the
hyperlink under finite verb, Wikipedia then informed me that a finite verb, “is inflected for
person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs”.
Which finally brings me to my point (which is only going to get further circularly dissected to
bring me to another point, and so on and so forth as in your typical academic-professional
bullshit -paper) a sentence is a grammatical unit that generally is characterized by a verb. So, if
Mierdos life is a sentence, then it is going to contain a verb.
Mierdos writes that his life “always contains those things a sentence seems to contain”,
and then unravels for his audience what a sentence contains, while simultaneously correlating
these parts of speech with parts of his identity. Yet the way Mierods reveals himself is through
the ways others see him. He first reveals himself as a noun, by giving the example “God hates a
faggot” (179). To be clear, Mierdos is identifying as “faggot” not God, which is revealed to the
reader when he continues with, “…not as in God hates your faggot ways because then I am no
longer a noun, but an adjective…” (179). What is most revealing in both of these sentences is not
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that he is gay, but that he introduces this part of his identity through the opinions of others
surrounding it. He writes that is not yet an adjective, which gay would be considered. So for
now, he is a faggot. And He does not openly come out saying I am a faggot, but says “God hates
a faggot” (179), which is an unusual but nevertheless a good insight into his identity.
Throughtout each parts of speech, Mierdos reveals parts of his life, but it is nearly impossible to
identity where his opinion and interpretation of himself and where society’s opinion of him
begins and ends. What would make sense for Mierdos to write would be , My name is John. I am
a writer. I never learned the definition of a run-on sentence. But instead, we have his identity
revealed through “God hates a faggot”. Nevertheless, Mierdos continues on, writing that he
“wants to give the nouns in [his] meaning” (179). He writes, as examples of being a verb in
various tenses, “I have AIDs…I am trying to tell you I have AIDS….I tried to tell you I have
AIDS….I will die with this diease” (179). Yet not one of these verbs- am trying, tried, will die,
reveal anything about Mierdos. They certainly give the nouns in his life meaning; now he is a
“faggot” with AIDS. Yet readers must fill in the blank as to what exactly a faggot is, what it
does, how it functionsWe never learn what Mierdos wants to be, or who he really is. We learn
only that he has aids, which is a sentence that reveals only what he has and not what he is or
what he does. If, as Wikipedia suggests, that a sentence is characterized by having a finite verb,
the Mierdos cannot say his life is a sentence. He has failed to portray himself through a verb. His
verb- variations of to have- does indeed inflect the subject and is grammatically correct, yet
theoretically, none of the verbs do inflect the subject. The verbs don’t reflect Mierdos as a
person, they merely give insight into his medical health. . Mierdos writes that “something inside
[him] yearns to be” (179) but the question remains, to be what?
Mierdos’ failure to paint a picture of himself through the parts of a sentence spirals
Sarah Garrity
English 112
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downward affecting the adjectives he uses as well. He Mierdos writes, “…once I see myself as a
noun and verb, I will slowly grow into adjective to describe myself and make myself more
interesting to you” (179). Yet as already revealed, the nouns, verbs, and adjectives he becomes
are focused on what others think of him and his sexual orientation. He does not successfully
become an adjective because he has yet to become a noun and a verb. As a noun he is a faggot,
and as a verb, he has aids, so his perceptions of himself, the way he then describes himself is
more focused on what people think he is, or who he is- “God hates a faggot”(179), “I have
Aids”(179). Therefore, as the reader awaits for Mierdos description of himself, they only get
“gay HIV positive twin”, and “sick son” (179). Mierdos also notes that the “adjective [he]
become[s] is multiple in meaning”, yet it seems the one adjective he is focusing on is his sexual
identity, which “can be confusing to a person” (180). Looking back to all of his descriptions of
himself, he is a “faggot”, not only twin, but “gay, HIV positive”, not only son, but “sick son”.
How sick? Mierdos writes, “sick with too much
Sarah Garrity
English 112
Other Words Rough Drafts
When analyzing all the parts of speech, Mierdos conclusion is echoed within them. He
writes, that his life is “a prison sentence, as in…a judgment, a lack of freedom, or a loss of
freedom once owned, a life once held in the palm of my hand and then taken away, forever,
leaving me with only series of words never without a verb to follow…”(180). From this quote it
is clear that Mierdos feels he has no control, that even he is revealing to the audience that he has
only words with no verbs to give them action. In his description of being a verb, Mierdos echoes
what he reveals through his other parts of speech. He tells the reader that he is gay, yet that isn’t
what he is. He wants to give the words in his life meaning, and once again we see his inability to
identify as his own person. As examples of him as a verb, Mierdos writes, “I have AIDS…I am
trying to tell you I have AIDS, I tried to tell you I have AIDS” (179). Yet what the reader gets
out of that is nothing of who he is, just what he has. He is the verb “to be”, which connects him
to an adjective or a direct object, but constantly reflects off of who he is. As a reader we never
get to see who he is, only descriptions of him. He lacks verbs, and words such as these are
meaningless.
Mierdos tries to portray to the audience that his “life becomes word on paper” (179). Yet
as Mierdos tries to explain how his life is a sentence of these parts of speech, he is unable to
portray his identity through being a verb. His inability to identify as a verb becomes the
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underlying statement he is trying to make. He does not have any control, any verb, any ability to
act on his identity. In his conclusion, Mierdos writes that his life “too, is another sentence, a
prison sentence” (80) Yet what he reveals through his analyzation of the individual parts of
speech, what confines him is not a sentence, but “words all by themselves…words never without
a verb to follow”. His failure to be his own verb, to write his own identity and take control of it
reiterates, though in a different way, what his idea is. According to Free.Dictionary.com (a step
up from Wikipedia, though the white-middle class student equivalent to Urban Dictionary) a
sentence is a “judgment”. And a sentence, or a judgment, is what is imprisoning Mierdos. If he
could, Mierdos would be “an individual or asexual or undetectable”, but instead, he is
imprisoned by the initial judgment people make of him. He is gay. To the world, that is where
his identity ends. To Mierdos, this snap judgment is what imprisons him. Again, Mierdos is left
with only words that “leave no verb to follow” (180) He cannot write his own future, he cannot
alter or add to his identity. He is gay, and what he does beyond that- write, read, live, love,
breathe- is irrelevant to society. In prison, your entire life is scheduled for you. You go outside at
this time, you eat at this time, you do designated nothing at this time. For Mierdos, his sentence,
his judgment as being gay, rules his life and his actions, as people see his sexual orientation first
and the other aspects of his identity last or not at all. Mierdos sentence is not unique. People who
are socially marginalized are seen as one thing, are seen as no more than the identifier that makes
them marginalized. Labels accompany stereotypes, so whereas Mierdos is one word- gay- he is
simultaneously given multiple other nouns, adjectives, verbs. If he is gay he is also nicely
dressed, perverted, damned, feminine. He has sex with other men, talks with a squeaky voice,
hits on any man, including yourself. Sentences: Judgments: Stereotypes confine a person’s
identity, and diminish the person to a single word. For Mierdos, his life may be a sentence. I
Sarah Garrity
English 112
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would argue that the type of sentence is not a grammatical unit with syntax and this that and the
other thing, but a sentence as it is relates to a judgment, which negates all other aspects of his
identity.