Tra and la! I am smiling a big
adopted-orphan smile as I write this. I am embarrassed at how happy I
am, like some Technicolor comic of a teenage girl talking on the phone
with my hair in a ponytail, the bubble above my head saying: I met a
boy!
But I did. This is a technical, empirical truth. I met a boy, a great, gorgeous dude, a funny, cool-ass guy. Let me set the scene, because it deserves setting for posterity (no, please, I'm not that far gone, posterity! feh). But still. It's not New Year's, but still very much the new year. It's winter: early dark, freezing cold.
Carmen, a newish friend – semi-friend, barely friend, the kind of friend you can'd cancel on – has talked me into going out to Brooklyn, to one of her writers" parties. Now, I like a writer party, I like writers, I am the child of writers, I am a writer. I still love scribbling that word – WRITER – any time a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don'd write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer. I'm using this journal to get better: to hone my skills, to collect details and observations. To show don'd tell and all that other writery crap. (Adopted-orphan smile, I mean, that's not bad, come on.) But really, I do think my quizzes alone qualify me on at least an honorary basis. Right?
At a party you find yourself surrounded by genuine talented writers, employed at high-profile, respected newspapers and magazines.
You merely write quizzes for women's rags. When someone asks what you do for a living, you:
a) Get embarrassed and say, "I'm just a quiz writer, it's silly stuff!"But I did. This is a technical, empirical truth. I met a boy, a great, gorgeous dude, a funny, cool-ass guy. Let me set the scene, because it deserves setting for posterity (no, please, I'm not that far gone, posterity! feh). But still. It's not New Year's, but still very much the new year. It's winter: early dark, freezing cold.
Carmen, a newish friend – semi-friend, barely friend, the kind of friend you can'd cancel on – has talked me into going out to Brooklyn, to one of her writers" parties. Now, I like a writer party, I like writers, I am the child of writers, I am a writer. I still love scribbling that word – WRITER – any time a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don'd write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer. I'm using this journal to get better: to hone my skills, to collect details and observations. To show don'd tell and all that other writery crap. (Adopted-orphan smile, I mean, that's not bad, come on.) But really, I do think my quizzes alone qualify me on at least an honorary basis. Right?
At a party you find yourself surrounded by genuine talented writers, employed at high-profile, respected newspapers and magazines.
You merely write quizzes for women's rags. When someone asks what you do for a living, you:
b) Go on the offense: "I'm a writer now, but I'm considering something more challenging and worthwhile – why, what do you do?"
c) Take pride in your accomplishments: "I write personality quizzes using the knowledge gleaned from my master's degree in psychology – oh, and fun fact: I am the inspiration for a beloved children's-book series, I'm sure you know it, Amazing Amy? Yeah, so suck it, snobdouche!
Answer: C, totally C
Anyway, the party is being thrown by one of Carmen's good friends who writes about movies for a movie magazine, and is very funny, according to Carmen. I worry for a second that she wants to set us up: I am not interested in being set up. I need to be ambushed, caught unawares, like some sort of feral love-jackal. I'm too self-conscious otherwise. I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I'm obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I"ve basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I'm dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There's a bowler and jazz hands and lots of teeth.
But no, I realize, as Carmen gushes on about her friend: She likes him. Good.
We climb three flights of warped stairs and walk into a whoosh of body heat and writerness: many black-framed glasses and mops of hair; faux western shirts and heathery turtlenecks; black wool pea-coats flopped all across the couch, puddling to the floor; a German poster for The Getaway (Ihre Chance war gleich Null!) covering one paint-cracked wall. Franz Ferdinand on the stereo: "Take Me Out."
