User:Thefakemelissa/Excavation

Excavation: A Memoir is a 2014 memoir by American author Wendy C. Ortiz. The memoir was published by Future Tense Books.

The book examines Ortiz's sexual relationship with her English teacher which began in 1986, when she was thirteen and he was twenty-eight, and the way in which she grappled with her understanding of their relationship as she grew older.

Summary

In 1986 thirteen year old Wendy Ortiz meets Jeff Ivers, her English teacher, who quickly singles her out for her writing talent. After showing Jeff an erotic novel she has been working on, the two develop a personal relationship fuelled by late night phone calls during which Jeff alternately makes sexual advances towards her and praises her writing skills. He tells her she must never write about their relationship and Wendy promises not to, though she secretly keeps copious notes the entire time they are together.

Nearly at the same time as Jeff enters her life, Wendy's parents' marriage crumbles. Her father becomes a stranger and her mother slides further into alcoholism. Wendy begins sneaking Jeff into her home where they begin a physical sexual relationship when she is only fourteen and he is twenty-eight.

Their relationship continues with regularity for a further two years until Wendy is sixteen and has her first serious boyfriend, Nicholas, who she falls in love with and who is "only" four years older than her. Jeff reluctantly backs off from their relationship though he occasionally calls Wendy to ask probing questions about their friendship or bait her with stories about his own relationships with other women.

For two years afterwards Jeff continues to sporadically haunt Wendy's life. When she is 18 and finally legally able to have a sexual relationship with him he "let's her go" so she can fully commit to Nicholas after they both declare their love for one another.

As an adult Wendy marries a woman and has a child with her wife. She notes that her wife has some similarities to Jeff though she and Wendy are nearly the same age.

Background

Ortiz began writing the memoir in 2002 and spent nearly a decade editing her work. She revealed that in the course of her research she discovered that Ivers was eventually convicted of sexual abuse though she was never involved in bringing a complaint against him.

Ortiz first published some of the material included in the memoir in The Nervous Breakdown under the title "Mixtape" in 2013. Editors of Future Tense Books reached out to her after reading the essay and offered to publish her memoir in full.