The Writers' MeetUp

After I’d been writing for a few months, I decided it was time to get serious: To improve, I needed to get honest feedback from other writers. Towards this end, a friend had connected me with a published author, and while I’d come away with some interesting career advice, I didn’t get an assessment of my writing. Indeed, I hadn’t really expected it, as I can imagine that real writers are inundated with such requests and aren’t really interested in spending their free time consuming tripe like mine. But a quick search on the Internet revealed a group that might be: a “Writers’ MeetUp”.

The event was held in a small house off a kind-of seedy street known in the past for muggings and prostitution. I remember a friend-of-a-friend describing a scary experience on that street where an African-American asked him if he knew what time it was. I think my new acquaintance was high at the time and paranoid, and he, having a new watch on, guiltily described all of the stereotypes swirling in his head, and before he knew it the word “No” came out of his mouth and he walked away hastily. And then my new acquaintance excitedly began to describe to me the last the last time he saw the Lion King.

I arrived early and there were only two other “writers” in attendance: the organizer, heavily tattooed with a girth that revealed her to be a strict follower of the “American diet”, and a shy friend of hers that closely resembled a young Liberace and would only make eye contact with her. I was a little nervous about the skill level of the yet-to-arrive attendees, and so I asked them about the composition of the group. Her friend fluttered his eyelashes at her and knowingly said, “It’s a lot of fun to hear what everyone has to say,” and giggled, never taking his eyes off hers, and she looked at me and said, “The authors run the gamut,” and then reassuringly followed up with, “Don’t worry – it’ll be fun!”

As the time ticked by, more attendees showed up: a short, intense, dark-haired man, a late-middle-aged couple, an older man with a curly, Bozo-hairstyle, a young man with a Lyle Lovett-hairstyle, and a Vietnam Vet with an authentic, Duchenne smile (the crinkles around his eyes the giveaway).

Our organizer drew us to attention and explained that while we were a gathering of aspiring writers, there were no pre-qualifications, and as such we should not feel inhibited in the least. Everyone here was supportive; this was a “safe place” and a “judgment-free zone”.

The organizer then asked who would like to go first, but at just that moment we heard the creak of the door opening. All heads turned to see who it was, and, as our final author moved into the room, I saw a red hoodie with what looked like a pink fur lining obscuring most of the face of a translucently pale woman of about 21.

“Oh!” exclaimed the Bozo-hairstyled man, and then he said the woman’s name. He said “I’m so happy!” but it came out so fast that I found it reminiscent of the character Long Duk Dong from the movie “Sixteen Candles” when, playing to a predominantly suburban white audience’s Asian stereotype of the 80s, said something like “I’ma so happy” as he faux-made love to an Amazon on an exercise bicycle. He followed up with, “I wasn’t sure if you had time to come with all of your studies!”

The rest of the group murmured similar affirmations, but I got the sense that the others were less taken with her, and the young Liberace-esque author, facing the organizer, pursed his lips and rolled his eyes and grinned. Little Red Riding Hood betrayed nothing, not even that she’d been recognized. Without a word, she took a seat at the far end of the long table and pulled the drawstrings on her hoodie so that her ghostly complexion was framed in a sphincter-like circle. And as she placed her notebook on the table, I, straining to see the cover, thought I could see “Men are pigs” scrawled across the front.

And with that, the organizer repeated her question about who wanted to go first. Nervous about my limited credentials and still feeling a bit the interloper, I figured I’d lay back and see how things operated in this environment. My cautious approach went completely unnoticed as, after immediately raising his hand in a jabbing motion, the short, intense, dark-haired man took the floor.

His story began with a man who took tickets for a movie theatre. The main character seemed to be under intense pressure – worried about some unspoken threat, some thing that caused the author to clip his words as he read at an ever-accelerating pace. And then, abruptly, the threat was revealed: “Then he saw them,” he read, “the lifeless Others, with their vacant stares and outstretched arms. And he pulled the shotgun from behind the desk and fired, but even as he blew their arms off, they kept advancing on his position,” and I thought “Zombies!” At the time, this was a popular theme with several B-movies out. The story continued in this vein for several minutes, with the protagonist shooting the advancing living dead to bits. As he read, the author seemed to sweat as he jabbed in the air a gun that he’d formed with the fingers of his hand.

After he’d completed reading his passage, our hostess, ever gracious, asked for helpful comments from the group. The Bozo-haired man clapped three times and succinctly said “Bravo!” and left it at that. The late-middle-aged couple piped up and had similar sentiments: “I was really drawn in by the tension. It was palpable – I could feel it as you described the intensity that the ticket-taker was feeling as the zombies approached,” said the woman, and the man, sensing it was his turn, added, “I could feel the dread from the undead,” and then he looked at his scowling wife, and I wondered if he was serious. Not knowing the unspoken rules of this group but feeling compelled to say something, I contributed “It really reads well!” and the rest of the group looked at me in silence with nonplussed stares.

“OK, who’d like to go next?” asked the hostess, and the hands of the late-middle-aged couple went up. “We’ve written one together!” proclaimed the woman, and the man, looking at the woman intently for permission (to which she supplied a curt nod), said, “Yes! It was a labor of love,” and again looked to her for affirmation, or something. She responded authoritatively with “I’ll read it to you,” and she jumped into a story about zombies eating human hearts. In particular, these zombies prized the hearts of African-Americans, and the white humans were forced to protect them. “They patrolled the streets, ever vigilant for the vacant stares, enforcing the peace and protecting the downtrodden,” she said, and then went on to describe a world in turmoil, with nothing but the righteous to protect the innocent African-Americans and their hearts from the zombies.

“Comments?” requested our hostess once the reading was done. There was a long pause, and then Lyle Lovett raised his hand. “Your story seems to me to be the epitome of periphrasis,” and let it hang in the air as, I assumed, most (if not all) of us had no idea what this meant.

And then, out of what seemed to be her sphincter of discontent, Little Red Riding Hood spoke sarcastically: “Who are you to judge, Hemingway?” she said caustically, and then tugged on the strings of her hoodie, puckering it until it seemed nothing but a  few wisps of pink hair and a pale stool of a nose protruded.

“Come on, who needs to say ‘their inherent evilness made my breast swell with a righteous indignation and resulted in a compelling feeling that I must slaughter them in order to protect those who can’t protect themselves’, when a simply ‘kill the murderous zombies’ will do?” said Lyle, and then followed up with, “Or, alternatively, say nothing?” and the Liberace-esque author giggled.

A moment of awkwardness followed, but then, after she’d shifted her weight in the chair a bit, our hostess broke up the verbal pugilism deftly, saying, “Well that last piece has really inspired a lot of constructive criticism! How about we move on to another piece. Who’s next?”

Following the altercation, Little Red had become aroused from her reticence and was ready for the next round; she announced, “I am,” and, loosening the strings on her hoodie, began without further ado.

Her story was about a college student that was in love with her professor. “She never meant for it to happen, and now every time she went to office hours it felt like an unrequited love that could never be fulfilled.” “The professor spoke to her in a sultry tone, but she still couldn’t be sure that her feelings were reciprocated, and she felt the emotional pain keenly,” and so on. It seemed much different than the preceding pieces, and its inspiration soon became apparent. “Why didn’t her professor find her pearl-white complexion and pink hair irresistible?”, she read aloud, “As the only female professor in a department full of hateful women-objectifying men, why wouldn’t her teacher admit her love?”

And then she looked up at Lyle, challenging him, who had nothing to say. Bozo, on the other hand, was clapping and smiling, and said, “This is great! How do you come up with this stuff?” and she smiled a little shyly and tugged on her hoodie strings.

Our hostess pointed to the clock and said we only had time for a couple more pieces, and she said she’d like to read hers. “They had found refuge in an abandoned school,” she began, “but they needed to keep out of sight. Some of them were hurt and needed to be tended to, and supplies were limited.” As the story unfolded, it seemed to be about some sort of post-apocalyptic world where it was every man for himself. “They lay low knowing the enemy was just outside the walls of the school. Those unseeing eyes, those un-human moans, those things – the Others that just wouldn’t die,” and she went on for a few more pages about zombies.

After the rest of the group provided the requisite verbal high-fives for the story’s subject matter, I realized that time was running short, and for me it was now or never. I said as politely as I could, “Excuse me – I realize there isn’t much time left and I’d like to get some feedback on my story. It’ll only take a minute,” and the hostess, ever gracious, said “But of course!”

And with that, I read the first entry that I ever put on this blog. It was short – just a little over a page and a half – and I had intended it to be humorous, but it was so quiet that you could almost hear a pin drop. I say almost, because the Vietnam Vet chuckled at the appropriate times, and when I finished he again gave me the Duchenne smile and a wink.

After I’d finished, the rest of the group looked at me with puzzled stares, but by this time, I’d passed the point of no return and my inhibitions had fallen away. In fact, I was starting to enjoy this weird experience, bizarrely in control by having the floor. I asked the group, “Any comments?” After an awkwardly long pause, Bozo indulged me by saying, “You shouldn’t mention Ballard – it should be more generic.” The rest of the writers remained stone-faced, but I was determined to squeeze every drop of value out of this experience, so I again asked for comments, and the short, intense dark-haired man said “I got a little confused by all the characters – you should tighten it up a bit, “ and I thanked him with an honesty he couldn’t have known.

Après-ski Intrigue

To celebrate our first day of our annual ski trip, my buddies and I decided to treat ourselves to dinner at an upscale restaurant in part of the resort’s lodge complex. It felt like a great way to cap off a spectacular day on the slopes with a group that included a couple of my best friends: a tall, swarthy intellectual, and a less-tall (yet more-tall than me) and less-swarthy short-haired Doctor of Philosophy.

As we toasted to our inaugural evening, we noticed that at an adjacent table, the casino mogul Steve Wynn was celebrating his birthday with friends. It looked like most of them were old friends, since, other than Steve, most of them had white hair. He gave a brief speech about how important friendship was, and in particular the compassion and kindness that comes with deep personal connections, and we were taken with the apparent genuineness in his words.

After a few rounds of drinks at altitude, we were getting a little more light-headed than normal, and the next time the waitress came by to ask us if we wanted anything, my intellectual friend said to her with gusto “We’d like another round of stiff drinks,” and then added, “on me!” to our group, and a few of Steve’s friends stared at us quizzically, perhaps puzzled that things needed to be paid for.

At the conclusion of our dinner with Steve, we walked over to the main lodge to decide what to do. The foyer featured an ample seating area with couches; to the right was a restaurant, and to the left was a bar with mood lighting. From our vantage point, we could see that the bar was full of what looked like boisterous people in their 30s and 40s, but once a few of them came out into the foyer, we realized that the lighting was impeccably done since despite the heavy plastic surgery, these people that had left were inarguably a couple of decades older. This made our next move clear: We needed to determine the ages of the rest of the patrons.

After ordering some drinks and moseying up to a few of the customers, we had largely confirmed our suspicions. And I noticed that while it was fun to mingle with these older people, I felt out of my element. But I realized that this didn’t seem to be the case for the Doctor: He’d begun speaking to one of the women at the bar, listening intently, and nodding and laughing at the appropriate times. And he did a lot of that, as she seemed to speak without pause, gesticulating with eyes wide, giving him little opportunity to say anything. Since we were nearby and she was interested in pulling more people into her orbit, the rest of us were introduced.

Of medium height, she was extremely fit and wore a tight black long-sleeve shirt with rhinestone patterns on it, and she smelled strongly of sandalwood. Upon introduction, my intellectual friend smiled at her with a skill that he’d honed over years of selling snake oil, and then looked at me, opened his eyes wide, and then rolled them, and I smothered a laugh and faked a cough. My intellectual friend had already judged her unworthy of our Doctor friend.

Sometimes when someone talks, they fill your consciousness as you’re pulled in by their charisma, or that they’ve got something you really want to hear about – like that they’ve got the secret to getting rich, or a deep insight into human nature, or whatever it is they have to say because you find them attractive enough – and while she had our Doctor’s attention, this woman didn’t have this effect on the rest of our contingent. However, she made up for it in spades in sheer volume, expressing her opinion on all things at length and in detail. There was something about the jazz musicians on stage that went on for 10 minutes and 25 seconds, ending only when she felt compelled to go and speak to them and ask if they remembered her from last night, and then upon her prompt return there was an extended treatise on the value of the environment that lasted for 17 minutes and 21 seconds, and I thought about how, in my youth, one of my friends had asked me if there was anything worse than having a testicle slowly crushed in a vice.

And then, out of nowhere, she said, “And then, last night, two of these old guys got into a fight over a woman! You see that guy over there?”, and she nodded in the direction of a booth across the bar, and then said “That’s one of them. When it was happening, I thought that guy was having a heart attack, and then you could see that they both were rolling around on the ground with beet-red faces and veins bulging out of their necks and foreheads!”

She had stunned us with this revelation: something that was interesting, and stood on it’s own merits. She continued: “At their age it seems incredibly dangerous! One of them could have had an aneurysm,” and as I nodded along, I stole a glance at the booth. Accompanied by two similar-vintage women, the man was reminiscent of a pinkish Rush Limbaugh. I could see white hair sprouting from the back of his collar, and I wondered if Rush was also a silverback.

As we considered this information, a lull had settled over the conversation, and I felt compelled to interject, “It’s great that they were able to revive both of them!”, but my companions weren’t listening to me. The Doctor remained polite in his attention to her, but my intellectual friend, resisting her pull on our Doctor, had seen an opening and took it. “So…”,  he began, and I listened intently. I’d heard this tone before and I knew there was something interesting coming. And because he’s a very moral and philosophical person, I was almost certain that it would be in the one-on-one Lincoln-Douglas debate format.

With feigned casual indifference, he asked, “How old is that?”, and she said, “Oh, I imagine around sixty,” and my friend, ever so deliberately and with just the right tone thrust the spear, tipped with the poisonous question that was on all of our minds: “So how old are you?”

She evaded the question, but he was relentless: “It’s not like were not all going to die eventually!” To her credit, she was slippery and left him unsatisfied with something about “our age”. And while they were engaged in this intellectual thrust-and-parry, I looked in my Doctor friend’s direction and imagined the romantic feelings towards her that he might be experiencing, and, unlike my intellectual friend, felt compelled to bring these to a crescendo; making sure I had the Doctor’s attention, I looked at him and then at her and then back to him, and as covertly as possible formed a tube with the fingers and thumb of my left hand and with my right index finger executed a less intellectual/more physical thrust-and-parry. For his part, the Doctor gave no acknowledgement of my demonstration and continued to nod and raise his eyebrows when she spoke.

The balance of power in the conversation had shifted and my intellectual friend had taken control. “What films have you seen recently?”, he asked her, and in the shortest response she’d given to this point, she mentioned that she’d seen “Saving Mr. Banks”, a film about Mary Poppins and Walt Disney,  and that it was a moving experience.

She couldn’t have known it at the time, but this hit a nerve with my intellectual friend, whose wife had converted to Judaism a few times. “Of course, you know that by paying money to see a film about Walt Disney that paints him in positive light, you might as well be endorsing Kristallnacht and Hitler – Disney’s anti-Semitism is well documented. The way that guy rolled out the red carpet for Leni Riefenstalhl is outrageous!”

When drinking, my intellectual friend frequently employed these debate skills when protecting his friends, and when people ran into this buzz-saw of moral rectitude, other members of the conversation sometimes suffered benign neglect, and I often felt obliged to ensure that they were not left behind. The Doctor’s expression remained inscrutable but I believed that he was still taken with the woman, so as the one-sided debate raged, I, looking in his direction and nodding towards her, formed a circle with my right hand fingers and thumb and brought them to my mouth and, pressing out my left cheek with my tongue, mimed fellatio.

Because of his impeccable bedside manner, the Doctor has an incredible discipline of not betraying his thoughts when he so chooses, and this was no exception: No amount of generous altruism on my part could alter his enigmatic expression.

All the while, my intellectual friend continued to score uncontested debate points: “Hell, maybe we should just unfreeze Walt’s head and ask the old son of a bitch to deny it!”, and, in a selfless gesture of compassion, I made a giant arc over my head with both of my hands and again mimed some finger-lovemaking, but alas, I’d been too obvious and the woman had seen it, and she gave me a look that could be described as either puzzlement or horror.

Either way, the look was the signal to move along: From our contradictory positions and in separate ways, my intellectual friend and I had done all we could to help our dear Doctor, but there was no more to give as she had caught me out. I tapped my intellectual friend on the shoulder and said “We really should be going,” and to her, “It was great to meet you!” and I whisked him away to the other end of the bar.

Guest post from DrLaura: "Stalking Desire"

That fateful day high on old Miller’s Hill had left me shaken. I hadn’t expected what had happened, and it had left me a changed woman. Indeed, a conflicted woman. But it wasn’t just Jack’s doing, it was mine as well, and deep within myself I had discovered feelings that I didn’t know I had. He had made me bloom like a flower, and now my petals yearned for more.

After that summer, we’d both left our small town to attend separate schools. Mine was a little Christian college, and Jack attended a large, secular university where he’d received a scholarship. He’d promised to remain true to himself, and I believed him because I’d seen his virtuousness as I’d gazed deep into his eyes. And yet, I worried – I’d been given a window into his nature, and there would be so many temptations far from the safety of our pure and wholesome community.

My first semester that year had been fairly uneventful. I focused on theology classes during the week and Bible studies on the weekend with a couple of like-minded young women. We shared a common desire to live our lives the right way, and, with their Milky-white complexions framed by flaxen hair, they embodied a purity that I knew was right.

One weekend, after we’d been discussing faith, family, and morality, I’d stepped out to the powder room, but when I returned, I’d caught the two of them whispering and giggling. “What are you laughing at?” I asked, blushing. They looked at each other conspiratorially, and then looked back at me, caught, with guilty looks on their faces.

After a short, uncomfortable silence, one of them broke it: “It’s something that Schwartzmann said to me,” and I cringed. That horrible, odious, little, swarthy boy had somehow wormed his way into our college and would say the most inappropriate things. Unspeakable things.

She continued, “As I was leaving the Quad, I heard a whistled catcall across the grass. I reflexively turned and looked, and he shouted at me ‘Hey baby, you cold or just happy to see me?’”, and then, her voice dropping to a whisper, she said with eyes wide, “He asked me to join him in the ‘Winnebago of Love’!”

The blood rushed to my face. How dare he! Prancing around with his shirt unbuttoned halfway down, shouting these unspeakable things across the Quad for everyone to hear! But what on Earth could have possessed my companions to find any humor in this? I asked them.

The other answered with a question: “What, pray tell, do you think goes on in the ‘Winnebago of Love’?”, and gave me a knowing smirk, and I blushed as I felt the bloom of my petals rise again as I imagined what Schwartzmann might have meant by the temperature reference.

We finished up our studies, but I was unable to focus – I couldn’t stop thinking about the “Winnebago” that that odious little Schwartzmann was talking about, and I yearned to ask Jack.  With his unfailing attention to my emotions and the flowers he always brought me, I knew that Jack could make these feelings of anxiety disappear.

And, as if on cue, no sooner had we completed our meeting and these fine young women left, when a knock on the door came. “Who is it?” I called out.  In a husky voice, I heard, “It’s me, Jack” through the door, and my heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be! His secular university was hours away by car and we hadn’t agreed to meet. But he appeared in the flesh, and I was overcome with what I now know as an older woman to be the return of those deeply romantic feelings I had felt on old Miller’s Hill.

I ran to him, and, after a moment’s hesitation, warmly embraced him. I looked deeply into his eyes and said, “It’s wonderful to see you again, Jack! How are you?” as I chastely grasped his firm biceps.

His manner surprised me: He seemed shy, almost ashamed of something. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, hold my gaze, and I felt a nearly uncontrollable desire to minister to his needs.

And then, as if releasing a great burden, Jack began to reveal it all: “I’ve made so many mistakes… And now my mother has lost everything,” and gave me a look of dread. He continued, “I’ve sown my magic seeds …”

The room seemed to spin slowly and I could only hear the pounding of my heart, as my worst fears seemed to be coming true…  But he held me close against his sculpted abs and pleaded, “It’s not my fault – I’m a red blooded American,” and with a hopeful smile he said something about an endless supply of “golden Fabergés” and my heart melted… And then, over angelic harp music, I heard him say with a sexy determination “It’s huge and thick, and grows to the sky”, and I felt myself losing control as I felt the thrust of

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