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.