ON WRITING WELL, pt. 2

Have you told others you’re a writer? What do they say?

My first book set was Zane Grey. Every birthday and Christmas I got a box from Grandma with a book.

They went unread then and still are. Never a fan of the fake Western, the books came into play as reading material for my sick father in law. He liked hearing his wife read them with her English accent.

Tell the truth, I liked hearing her read them too. A New York dentist creating a western world read by an English lady made the stories that much better, as if we were all in a stagecoach on a dust covered trail.

The more I learned about Zane Grey the less I liked, but his stories worked in the proper place.

All stories have a best place for reading. You just don’t know it until you finish the book.

That’s what happened while reading Pat Conroy’s South of Broad on the roof of a Seville, Spain apartment building.

The book was Catholic influenced and I was in the most Catholic of places I’d ever seen. Think of church sculpture mounted on building all around the old part of town.

It hit home the way no one could have intended.

The same thing happened after an accidental double date. One night in New York at my first apartment my neighbor asked me to dinner. She and her boyfriend were having one of their friends over and thought we might all hit it off.

It was a nice night of fussy food and over analysis. People trying to impress each other do that. I was there for the food and it was delicious.

One warning before their friend got in was, “She’s got border issues with intimacy.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but was hopeful.

At the time I was a bond analyst on Wall Street but identified as a writer. Like the waiter/actors, I was a bond/writer bent on writing well.

And that’s how I was introduced, our neighbor the writer.

After dinner everyone said goodbye and I offered to walk their friend down to the subway stop.

“No thank-you. I got here on my own and I know the way back.” And she left.

My neighbors were confused.

“We told you she has border issues with intimacy. Why were you hitting on her?

I said offering to walk her to the subway didn’t qualify as hitting on anyone.

“Maybe not where you come from, but it does here. And she can’t say no.”

And you wonder why New Yorkers are so neurotic?

Two minutes later came a knock at the door. That’s about as much time as it takes to walk to the elevator, take it down to the front door, turn around and come back.

Their friend stood at the door smiling. My neighbors were not smiling.

“I decided to take you up on the walk to the subway,” she said.

I already had my coat and we dashed out.

Instead of walking her to the stop, we went down the stairs and rode out to her place.

“I’m going to be the governor of this state one day,” she said. “That’s my dream.”

I nodded.

“What’s your dream?”

“I’m living it right now. New York writer, that’s me. Can’t get any better. All I’ve got to do is get published and move to the Upper Eastside. How hard can that be.”

The future governor and future dilettante walked to her apartment building’s front door, where I broke out a Woody Allen line.

“If we go inside it’s gonna be awkward, so we ought to get the first kiss over here.”

And we did.

Once inside her apartment door she spun around and gave me the burning eye look of a zealot, or what I figured a zealot might look like.

“I’ve read all of Dickens,” she said with the sort of enthusiasm that suggested she read all of Dickens more than once.

“Let’s hope for the best of times and not the worst of times,” I said.

She giggled at my only Dickensian joke.

Needless to say my neighbors weren’t to excited when they found their friend stopping by to visit, then staying at my place.

We never talked about Charles Dickens since I’ve never read his work, but did talk about the American Charles Dickens, John Irving.

“He once said he was glad he read Dickens before Hemingway. If it had been the other way around he might a copywriter instead of a novelist.”

“Which would you rather be?” she asked.

“Neither, but if I had to pick it would be John Irving.”

“Oh, I see.”

If you had to pick a writer, who would you be?