something clever

A few months ago, at a book party, I met one of my favorite authors. I had read her book years before, between "real jobs," and I say that to the real waitresses out there because I am not a good waitress, if I were I might have worked at a real restaurant.

Anyhow, I could not justify $25 on a hardcover. But I read her book, all 400 some pages of it sitting in the window at Barnes and Noble overlooking Union Square, back when they would let you sit on the sill. I loved her book. I chose my next job, because of her book. I looked up the name of her agent and wrote him a letter--it was more complicated than that--but basically that's what happened. Still by the time I met her, all I could remember was a scene where time slows and light puddles next to a sleeping baby in his crib before making it's way over to him, to blanket him. It was brilliant.

We got into a conversation about travel and I tried to explain just how strange plane travel really is. I said something about the fact of not experiencing the time and the place in between. It's being so easy made it feel artificial, and the new place less wonderful, "unearned" is the word that comes to me now. And looking back on her expression, I think she could tell, I admired her and all I wanted was to be remembered.

So last night I went to a book reading. I had heard of one of the authors, had picked up his book "More Than It Hurts You" at least once or twice without buying it. The poets names both sounded familiar. Had I heard them read before? It was raining and I felt I the way you sometimes need a movie or a book by a fire, or an empty park all to yourself, I needed to be read to.

Readings are complex things, because once you've sat there and listened and watched the author turn themselves inside out, plunge into their mind and yours, reminding you of some strange, ineffable moment in your own life, you know you'll want to share it. It's stealing. The book is their own and it's their story not yours. It didn't happen to you, you only feel that way, all fifty people in the audience feel that way. But still you can't resist.

And everyone there in the audience is some kind of frightened writer, though most will deny it and the ones that are proud of it make you crazy with envy and also a little sick.

When the reading is over, I always want to ask, did you ever think that you would stand in front of a total stranger with something in your hand, something illustrated, with a bolded title, a bar code and blurbs if you are lucky, and say, "Who should I make this out to?" Would they be kind enough to lie? Or would it be more refreshing to hear the truth?

This reading was at a spa, but the space that everyone goes to when the reading is over is a writing space. I go through a couple glasses of wine before I feel brave enough to tell the author, Darin Strauss what I want to say. I want to say, " I have been standing here for half an hour throwing up and swallowing back different phrases in my mind but none of them seem original, I won't be able to tell you anything you haven't heard before,"" but even that sounds pretentious, planned, writerly or worse want-to-be writerly.

So maybe it's better to just say nothing. I will say nothing. And I think something about his line, "How do parents know the things they know" which is clinging to some corner of my brain, just scraping and gnawing, it's so much more than what it sounds like. It is spoken as he is walking into a church next to his father to attend the funeral of a girl he killed, "half a lifetime ago" he says. There had been a car accident and the story he told was true, but I won't give it all away.

Instead what comes out is something entirely unplanned about rawness, richness and honesty and hanging on every word. "I know it's a cliche." I'm so used to that saying that to authors I want to punch myself in the gut each time but it comes out.

Still his book was all of these things and I did hang on every word. But the story begs the question of exploitation. From the first line, "I killled a girl, half a lifetime ago," you think, "And you're writing about this? You're turning this girl's death, her family's loss into art?" You want us to feel bad for you for killing a girl? But because of what happened, the way it happened, he got more than pity, he got anger and grudging forgiveness and then a lawsuit.

But people were compassionate too, empathetic. You can romanticize death, he explains it's possible. You can make it into a story, you can make it about you and your hurt, your anger. It's your ace in the hole with friends, with the opposite sex. But the whole time, you know it isn't yours to own, and as soon as you start to feel okay about it, you wish you didn't. This is what he says, and I don't know why I connect with this.

So, even though people might cringe thinking of the family of this girl, the one he killed, and the friends of this girl who will read this book, I understand why it has to be written. Because it makes you feel something. And whether you need to define it, mold it into some recognizable shape, with a name, and explain how in some twisted way you can relate to even the worst parts of his confession, it is up to you, because it isn't your story it never was, and maybe it's enough to just say, "I was moved."