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Thursday, April 20, 2006

Not a news flash: Writing is hard

Remember the whole hoopla over Barbie saying "math is hard?" Well, I'm here to tell you: writing is hard. Sometimes it's fucking impossible. But also impossible not to. I've been having trouble lately getting it together, making the words come out right. They sound great in my head and then on paper, not so much. I try to tune out all the hype, all the crazy people who tell me I suck, and even more, the ones who give me useless, clueless praise. It's too confusing and confining to live by other people's standards.

I'm lucky to have so many fabulous people in my life, many of whom were there last night, who just get it. Who get why I write and get how it helps me make sense of the world. To have them be proud of me, to have them know the backstory that's not necessarily for public consumption, and like it anyway, means the world to me. I love all the writing I get to do now, am so grateful for it all, yet sometimes it feels a little off because I cannot explain every aspect of ME in 1100 words every two weeks. Things change so quickly, one minute I think I'm starting over, start liking someone, and then they're gone, and it's back to the drawing board. It's confusing, but I just keep going and hoping and being open.

Dan commented last night that I seemed so much more comfortable reading other people's words and introducing everyone, and I did. I love that. I loved putting together last night because it made me proud and excited that all these talented, smart people wanted to do MY show. I like making something from nothing like that. When I was asked to do the series last fall, my first thought was "oh no, how can I handle one more thing?" And yet it's tapped into many skills I had that were sortof hidden and allowed those to come out. I've met tons of new authors and hopefully helped foster a space where desire is okay to speak about. That was the thing with last night - it only worked because the audience was with us. I didn't feel like people would judge me for "confessing" something that I've already beaten myself up about plenty. I'm past that, and still, it nags at me, for many reasons. But Dan's right (so tired I just wrote "write") - I'm not a natural performer. I don't love being up there with people's eyes on me. I giggle and stammer and race through the words. I'd much rather let them read to themselves, even the dirty things.

Almost anyone who talks to me about the really dirty stuff I write knows that I will joke around about it, because there's actually not a ton of people I will sit around and discuss the really deepest parts of my sexual desires with. I'll write about them, but there's always more going on underneath. The best part about doing what I do is connecting with other people about these topics that we're all so isolated about. I like hearing people's stories less in a voyeuristic way than a sharing way. I love that, mainly with other girls, I can know them for five minutes and we're dishing all these crazy stories. But it's not just the "wild" stories, it's the really personal stuff too, the stuff that matters. Having people who get all of me, and vice versa, means everything to me, which is why I can't even be fuck buddies with someone who just disappears for a while. I'm not like that, and I think finally I've stopped apologizing to the world for that, for being, yes, needy, and wanting to be more than an afterthought. The highly ironic thing is that I have so much to give as a girlfriend. To the right person, obviously, but I feel that sortof maternal, sortof service thing of wanting to be needed. I want to tuck someone into bed and send them cards and make them mix CDs and just care about them in all the little ways you do in those situations. Care without needing anything in return, except that I finally realized I do need something. I can't say what that is precisely, but I can't just give and give and give with nothing in return, but that sounds like I'm counting, and I'm not.

This post kindof got away from me, but I think my point was that writing can be totally scary, to really go there. It's a lot easier not to, to keep it all light and fluffy, to not let your mind go there. Because there aren't easy answers. Writing this piece was tough in some ways, but once I figured out what I wanted to say, it was pretty easy. Tuesday night I got to see my cousins and hold the baby for a while and just walk with him outside to calm him down, and it calmed me down. He was just so sweet and warm and heavy and perfect there and I realized that I have to stop talking about all the things I want to do and just do them. I talk myself out of writing things all the time because I'm scared, and then I'm jealous when so-and-so's on Oprah or whatever. I can find so many ways not to write, or to write sortof what I want, but not push myself, not really go there, and that's what I want to find the time to do. Because it really saddened me that someone would think I'd be the kind of person to want to write a book in my sleep, even though probably they just wanted their cut. I could do it, maybe, it's not that, it's that I left something that was physically making me unwell to wind up here and it would be sad not to try my best just because I'm scared of failure, or scared of what people might think. The hardest lesson, one I still haven't quite figured out, is to tune out the comments. From people like Miriam, of course I want them, but the general ones, the ones that, whether good or bad, just don't matter in terms of what I do next. So yeah, writing is hard, but when it works, so so worth it, and I'm proud of myself and all the readers last night for saying things that were worth it. Things that weren't "easy" or simple or lighthearted, even though some were funny. Confessing, I saw last night, doesn't have to be about guilt and sin and all that, but it takes you somewhere deeper, somewhere slightly uncomfortable, to thet places where maybe we do things, at least in my case, that logic would tell us are "wrong." Getting over that hump, the one that tells you, for whatever reason, that you and your writing are "wrong" is so vital to getting the words out. The ones that matter, anyway.

When I was 17, and 19, and probably around 22, I thought I was pregnant. There was no real reason, other than that I’d had sex with a guy sometime in the previous three months. I was kindof paranoid about it, and I'd even get my period but still be convinced I was knocked up. Once I think I even got my period again and still trudged off to Planned Parenthood for a test to make absolutely, totally sure. I thought I’d be like one of those women who doesn’t know she’s pregnant and only finds out six months along. I was sure that I’d be that one person for whom the condom failed or something else went astray. Eventually, I got over myself and trusted that the Pill, and later, condoms, would do the trick. Back then, I thought getting knocked up was the worst possible fate that could befall me. It scared the hell out of me, and continued to do so. Until I turned 29. I’ve never been a big believer in the biological clock, but something happened to me a little over a year ago, where I went from thinking babies were silly, smelly, loud messy things to wanting one in a way that practically overpowered me.

I often liken it to feeling like some alien’s taken over my body, making me crave the company of a small, helpless child in a way I’m powerless to resist. I now look at babies I pass on the street the way I once looked at hot guys and girls (okay, not exactly the way I once looked at them), but with the most powerful urge to reach out and touch them, to get up in their face and bust out my best baby talk, to offer up my finger for them to curl their miniscule hands around. Holding my five-month-old cousin Adam, like I did last night to calm him down, feeling his warm, sweet head pressed against my shoulder, kissing his pudgy little cheek, is heaven to me. As impossible and impractical as I know it is at this moment in my life, I want a baby. Which is really the only explanation I can give for why on the night before Valentine's Day I went home with a guy and had unprotected sex, once that night, and once the next morning.

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