Perfect Moments: Two Beautiful Women, a Certain Amount of Booze, and Maybe I’ve Got a Story…!

In the mid-1990s, boy, was I ever confused, perplexed, and probably (by many measures) in need of adjustment. Especially about my writing.

Here’s what my quote-unquote oeuvre consisted of then:

• A non-fiction Op Ed memoir(ish) piece in a regional edition of the New York Times.
• A published mystery. (Depending on who I was talking to at the time, I sometimes called it a published novel, with an exquisite inner — and yes, entirely maladjusted — sense that this actually made a difference.)
• Opening chunks of a sequel to the mystery, for which my publisher made an offer I could refuse.
• A short story, published in a literary magazine in Massachusetts.
• A handful of “completed” short stories.
• A larger handful of incomplete short stories.
• Several completed non-fiction pieces, of the essay/”creative non-fiction” sort.
• Some software reviews and how-to articles in a few computer/Internet-related techie magazines.

Oh, and I’d also done one complete draft — one — of a, well, a novel I couldn’t otherwise categorize. I’d gotten feedback from several advance readers of that draft: difficult, disturbing feedback, for the most part (or so it seemed to me). Feedback which praised the writing as writing but left the readers dissatisfied, wanting more. Wanting to understand what it was they had just read. Wanting me to decide what sort of book I meant to write. Did I think of it as a “literary” book? Then perhaps I didn’t need to work on it much more. Or did I want people to read it and recommend it — did I want people to enjoy it? Ummmmm, well… (Followed by a certain amount of uncomfortable silence, throat-clearing, and scuffing of feet.)

With that feedback in hand, I’d begun a second draft. And then stopped, about halfway through.

My personal life languished more or less in draft form then, too. (You might say that I’d written it well enough, but obviously had no idea what sort of life I wanted it to be.)

I’d moved to a region of the country which I’d sworn on my bigoted, New Jersey-bred blood I’d never, ever move to. My entire family and all my friends, to all of whom I was close, were 800-some miles behind my anemic-salaried, unlikely-to-fly-anywhere self. On the other hand, I’d moved here to live with a woman I thought might be (and indeed turned out to be) the woman in my life: smart, funny, and clever; well-written, well-spoken, and beautiful.

This was a bigger deal than it might seem. I’d always felt clumsy and, well, weird around women. [Edit to add: …and around men.] That a few of them had dated me, and that two of them to that point had married me, seemed unlikely in direct proportion to the likelihood that I’d end up with none of them. (Or for that matter, to the obvious fact: that even after all those dates and all those months of marriage, all those women lay irrevocably in my past.)

The Missus-to-Be (let’s call her “Toni”) had also introduced me to her best friends, mostly students (like her) in a graduate program in English and creative writing. These friends gradually became interwoven with our lives as we shared meals, holidays, parties, movie-, play-, and parade-going, and finally a writing workshop which probably ruined me for writing workshops for good.

One of Toni’s girlfriends, in particular, spent a lot of time with us. On a weekend evening or a weeknight when they shared a class, Andrea would come over to the house and the three of us would sit around talking, playing cards, and drinking wine.

Now, Andrea without question had enormous gifts as a poet and writer of fiction. Not only friends but complete strangers felt this way: whenever Andrea entered a writing contest, or so it seemed, she won. Didn’t place. Didn’t show. Won.

I really was dazzled, sitting at a table playing poker and getting mildly schnockered with two such women. It sometimes took all my psychological wherewithal (what there was of it) to talk at all — much less to volunteer anything. Which was one reason, the least important reason, why that one evening so surprises in retrospect.

The exact date: also not important, and I don’t remember it anyhow. What I remember is that to workshop to that point, I’d brought only new stories, or old stories reworked, never any of the novel. I sorta remember that Andrea and Toni had been embarrassing me with their semi-teasing talk of how well they thought I wrote, and how interesting (they believed) were the ideas I pursued in my stories, and about my funny fictional (but excruciatingly realistic) alter ego named Webster…

…and then Toni mentioned the novel.

No, Andrea said, and turned to me. You’re working on a novel?

I glanced nervously at Toni and then, for some reason, I just headed off into monologue territory:

It’s called Grail [I probably began]. But I never really liked that. It’s just a working title. The book’s sorta like the King Arthur story, y’know? It involves these old guys, World War II vets, and then there’s a couple — the guy is the nephew of one of the old guys — and a couple of other friends. And they’re looking for this, like, mug — a flagon, actually — that was used in TV commercials for an ale brewed in Wales, the country Wales not the sea animal, and most of it takes place in this little village in Pennsylvania… and the motor home… and the Irish wolfhound… and… and…

On and on I rambled. I think the word is logorrhea — unmapped territory for me, for sure. I couldn’t seem to shut off the tap for what must have been fifteen, twenty minutes. But I finally (as happens) heard myself. At that point I concluded something like, “…in New Jersey. So, that’s pretty much it.” Embarrassed, I picked up the deck of cards, started to shuffle. Stubbornly looking down at the table.

“John,” Andrea said. “My God…”

I looked up, but Andrea wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at Toni, my sweet Missus-to-Be. Toni wasn’t looking at me, either, but in turn back at Andrea. Her — Toni’s — eyebrows were raised, and her lips were set firmly and in a straight line. She nodded a bit. Her whole demeanor said to Andrea, unmistakably:

See? Told you so.

As Seems to Fit finally sort of judders to completion, of course I have no idea what will become of it. But I will tell you, friends: that one moment, that one instant maybe fifteen years ago? It made the whole thing worth every second of effort and angst. Find a moment like that, and you will never, ever stop writing.