the suitor-writer

While running around with my friend Diana this weekend, we started talking about our friends who are also writers. Diana is a (wonderful) writer, a great friend and is helping me with a new project I am working on, too. We feel lucky to know so many talented people and to have amassed a stockpile of free (signed!) books.

And we also commiserated about that most feared friend of a writer- the pseudo-intellectual slash poet slash writer. They inspire much fear in writers and over time, will be avoided and shunned by much of the writing community, who live in constant fear of being forced to come over for day old banana bread, peppermint tea and haiku ("Kitty! Get off the couch!").

But there’s something even worse, I explained to a happily married Diana. The suitor-writer.

Men, whom you want to get to know better, who want to read their attempts at writing to you, first…Before anything else. Typically, this seems to run along the lines of really bad poetry and songs but it has also included poorly written detective/murder mysteries and, on one memorable occasion, some really odd science fiction (accompanied by a diorama, complete with headless Barbie).

I don’t why, but as soon as I hear a prospective suitor read something out loud that’s really bad, every other feeling, action or impulse that I was considering pretty much goes out the window.

With me after it, ankles neatly clearing the sill.

Staring hard at the floor and trying not to laugh while one swain waxed on about his, um, prowess, stopping ever so often to arch a carefully tweezed (and possibly waxed) brow at me, I bit my lip so hard to keep from laughing, I still have a tiny scar.

Listening to another short-lived potential love interest shout about his abusive father, unpopularity in high school and love for his ex-fiancée poetry-slam style, I felt unnerved to the point where I finally made up an excuse and went home.

Another time, held captive over the phone while the soft, lulling voice of a would-be storyteller meandered through the Iowan farms he missed so much, I fell asleep.

And I feel bad for reacting this way. I, of all people, should understand what it means to share your writing with someone you like. It’s not something that I do very often. I don’t typically bring any of it to anyone’s attention. It’s more like I am just found out.

So I understand how it feels, standing in front of someone that you really like, and sharing your writing with them. It’s me saying: I want to elevate your opinion of me. I want you to know that I’m relevant, that I matter, that I’m something other than whatever it is that you think you know about me.

I’m going to try to keep this in mind, the next time I find myself considering love with an as-yet undiscovered writer…I will think back, remember how it felt to place my work in his hands and why, after all, it’s so scary to share our writing with our crushes.

I think it’s because when you read me, you’ll know everything that I don't know how to say.

Once you learn how to listen.