The dream of love was a world only the two of us could inhabit. It would be safe there. Known. Our mistakes and follies would be laid bare in this world and, of course, be forgiven.
I’d spent years pouring myself into writing in a desperate attempt to be known and had technically succeeded—meaning I’d finished what could be considered a book and passed it around to anyone who would read it. This facile “passing around” of a completed pile of papers aligned beautifully with the theme of the entire book, in fact, this was the very problem I was attempting to overcome. The revelation at the end of this dizzying process would be a blissful state of self-containment and wholeness. I’d become discerning and stop offering my stories to just anyone. Yet I kept trying to get them read.
Besides romantic love, there wasn’t, and still isn’t, anything I wanted more.
I had mangled the manuscript together in the only way I knew how: circularly, messily, and manically. One of the very first drafts was passed to a boyfriend of an acquaintance because he’d published his own books and needed help with his own draft. In exchange for editing his manuscript to give the young, female protagonist of his series more of a “voice” and female POV, he agreed to give me notes on my manuscript.
Our meeting was embarrassing. It was a very hot summer day. I rode to the cafe near his house on my bike feeling strengthened by the prospect of constructive feedback. He was shaky and nervous before we even began. He’d been unable to relate anything he’d read. He was sorry, but he found the whole thing unhinged, overtly sexual, and difficult to follow. I remember how I felt both angry and numb as I put my bike helmet on. I wanted to scream. I hated myself for revealing so much to a person who cared so little.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE, they said.
I didn’t know mine because everyone was my audience. It’s how I functioned. I thought the stories were good and the sentiments deep and I simply wanted to share them. I continued editing for months, then months turned to years. I wrote, rewrote, reorganized, blogged some, submitted some to journals, published a little, and had a reading or two. I solicited writer friends and agents of said friends and mentors and everyone was incredibly generous. The manuscript even got on the top of slush piles of top editors then one day I was very tired and empty and I stopped.
Defeat totale.
__
After our conversation, the man I would fall in love with drifted around the party speaking to many different women. He behaved in an engaging and interested manner, getting into deep conversations with each of them. Maybe he was just like that? He drank from a fancy bottle of scotch given to the passed-out birthday boy. I smoked weed and danced to the music now in the hands of different drunk people with iPhones. He moved in a little closer sitting on a chair on the perimeter of the dance floor taking full control of the music, putting on a really great song I’d never heard before.
I danced. Oh, how I danced!!!
