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.
