Better off unsaid?

If I hadn’t been so honest, we might be celebrating anniversaries now. I might have had a child with your long lashes...a triumph of medical science. It’s funny that in trying to avoid one trap, I seem to have found another one. A bright and sunny but somehow lonely one...if I told you that would you console me, or feel that you dodged a bullet? I don’t know. We don’t talk anymore. You represent the road not taken in my head. But living half a lie for forty years might even be a challenge to a fiction-spinner like me. In some alternate Silver Spring, I see us, domestic wheelchair conga line, ripping heartstrings to shreds everywhere we go...it really makes you think. I’ve put on weight around my middle and occasionally think about the degree I didn’t get and wonder why your mother still dislikes me so much. Maybe the baby would’ve helped. Maybe, I have to tell myself now, as you live a life I can’t picture since the plane hit the Pentagon, and your computer voice made me almost cry with relief, not. Not at all.(I have to think that, don’t I? I opened my big mouth. I need to think she’d follow along behind me, undoing all the careful feminism whenever my back was turned. Because then I made the right decision and was brave, not stupid and selfish.) “But I’m not ready...find someone your own age.”

shakes hands with erika

yep.

Thanks...I did apologize for the last part of that statement when I talked to him, in that immediate post 9/11 "We need to make up because we could be DEAD" thing. I asked a lot of people to forgive me for things that week. Most of them did, too. His age wasn't the issue. I just freaked. I made the right choice. But when I feel that I didn't get the shiny future I wanted to be free for, I get upset with myself about it and start idealizing domestic bonds. Sometimes. Not as much as when I thought he was a million miles too good for me, though.

Words better left unsaid? Sometimes it seems like I can't go a day without saying them. Too much time alone? Something off in my brain that sees the world at a skew angle, so that it only strikes me two days later why somebody might have been offended by what I said? Maybe I missed some accquiring important skills during the twelve or so years I spent where any day I was in contact with people my own age included getting beat up. But seems like my mouth can hold not only my foot, but my leg all the way to kneecap.

Pillow Talk

I wished, after he said it, that he hadn’t. It was what I’d always wanted to hear from him, those three words. I don’t think it was a complete lie, but it wasn’t the right time to say it. He should have told me when we were just out for a drive to his parents' house or a walk around the block after dinner. Maybe, when we were eating pizza and arguing over semantics or who was better at Scrabble. I would have believed it then; he might have actually meant it with all of himself, not just his cock.

The editor considering my book told me they will hold a meeting about it "sometime after next week". Apparently summertime is making it tough to get everyone who needs to be in the same room all at once. Still, there would be no reason for to tell me this if it were not true. If the answer is "no", as a professional editor he would just tell me "no".

At this point I think it is on the edge on quality - Content is apparently good, and much of the writing is good but apparently he will want major revisions of some sort. Obviously I assume an editor would prefer something that could just be shipped to copy editing. But if all the content is good, and much of the writing is good I hope an editor will assume that with a bit of editorial direction it can all be made good. Given the effort this editor has put into the MS, if it is rejected I will try and find a tactful way of asking for his critique so I can improve it.

Of course there is one another problem. As a really small publisher (smaller than a lot of publishers conventionally thought of as small) this publisher has an even smaller publicity budget than usual. Usually they rely on their authors having a major blog or website that can sell books. I'm co-blogger at a well known fairly major web site, but don't have anything major of my own. I have put a website out there and will start a blog soon, but it takes from six to eighteen months to really become well known in someting like this. I have put forward an alternative promotion plan which I can carry out; but that means the publisher will have to be in a risk taking mode, when they are already taking a risk by publishing a first time author.

So I'm hopeful but not optimistic if you know what I mean. A really weird place to be emotionally.

Oh, wow, Gar. I'm being hopeful and a litle more optimistic on your behalf. Good luck getting through the wait, and getting good results from the eventual meeting.

BTW, this week's drabbles have been wonderful and painful. Excellent topic, Steph.

Mine's a little silly. Actually happened, thankfully not to me.

Just Making Conversation

“Can I help you find something”

“I’m looking for long underwear for my boyfriend.”

“Is this for hunting, skiing. . .”

“It’s for keeping warm. I want the warmest you have.”

“Okay, well, this rack is all Expedition Weight. Do you want help finding the right size?”

“Oh, yes. He’s lost twenty-five pounds, so I know he isn’t the same size he used to be. I think he needs a medium, now.”

“Twenty-five! That’s great! How did he manage that?”

“Liver cancer.”

“Oh. Um. Here we go, medium. The girl at the counter will ring you up."

Hee, -t! Almost same thing happened to my mom. She's had a perm and set her entire life, and then got a short little pixie cut. Ran into someone she hadn't seen for a year who was all "Pats! LOVE the hair! What made you decide to do something so DRASTIC?"

Mom was all "Well...chemo."

Yeah, that's one of those questions that should probably never be asked; no way it isn't awkward.

The Thanksgiving I was diagnosed with MS, my sister Alice and her husband Nick were over, and she was adoring my makeup: you look so rosy, just a perfect colour for you.

Nice. Ta ever so. I'm not wearing makeup; it's a fever from the disease.