B-List

Thanks to everyone who came to the surprise birthday party last Sat. I spent the past month crying into my cups, convinced my 21st would pass unmarked. I was wrong! It feels so good. Although when my Mother handed me a mint mojito the other night, "your first drink!" I nearly choked on the ice. Irony is when the audience knows something the actors don't. So: a toast to irony. And singing telegrams, one of which ended up on my voicemail this morning. If only I had more friends who talked dirty to my family's answering machine the way Carmel does!

Speaking of talking dirty, I've been going through this phase recently where I'm reading old-school erotic fiction. I know: you're thinking Zane, Caramel and Chocolate Flava: Stories of Interracial Passion. But let's be honest: for all its merits, that's pornography rather than erotic fiction. It's hard to make this distinction about books, since people in print can do things people onscreen just can't. (Into hardcore S&M? Underage? Obsessed with feet/leather/Star wars?) Literary characters have been twisting the bookcovers since before Gutenberg, so it's all been done before. Nonetheless, a book can still be pornography. Let's establish for the record (my New Year's Resolution is absolute, gut-wrenching, hair-raising and awkward honesty) that I have absolutely nothing against pornography. Even when it's terrible, I can understand why some people think it's great. And I won't argue with them.

But erotic fiction is a whole different (four-legged?) beast. When people talk about DH Lawrence, Henry Miller, Erica Jong and Anais Nin, they don't talk about how witty these people are. They don't mention that a good erotic novel is a head game, that the sex is often perfunctory, delayed, or omitted altogether. And it doesn't even matter. I've read a few modern romance novels and I get bored. I skim for fun parts only to realize there are none, the characters are insipid and their relationships are so conventional they put me to sleep. The same is true of so-called erotic films. When the action onscreen involves a feather, moonlight, Pablo Neruda or any version of the word "arouse" spoken aloud, I say, "Qua?" Because who says "arouse" when they're in the mood? Who can find a feather in the middle of a moonlit night and translate Neruda in the dark?

But it's easy to be a critic. I decided to take a break from ranting and instead take a more productive stab at writing erotic fiction myself. I haven't done this since seventh grade. A good friend brought in some "so-called" memoir she'd written. After a few hours the dog-eared notebook pages had made the rounds of our entire class. Sensational! I thought. I went home and tried it myself. I scratched out a few shameful paragraphs and went to sleep. The next morning, I had visions of my parents unearthing the notebook (in my imagination, glowing red) and by the time I got home, paranoia had nearly unhinged me. I tore the pages out, ran water over them to loosen the ink, ripped them to shreds, and flushed the soggy shreds (in separate installments) down the commode. A few cringe-worthy phrases live on in my memory, cringe-worthy only because those were the days before UrbanDictionary.com, and I realize I was actually describing acts that were occasionally anatomically impossible. Only I didn't know it.

The sad fact is, it was no easier this time around. Maybe it's my lack of experience and maturity, but I can't get past my initial queasy "Why the hell am I doing this?" I'd rather write things I can publish under my own name while my grandparents are living. Call me old-fashioned, because I am.

So instead, I suggest this prompt for all aspiring writers, even people who don't want to write erotic fiction but at some point want to write an erotic scene. Make a list of ten phrases/expressions/movements that you think are incredibly sexy. Paste the list above your desk. These 10 things should never appear in your writing, because they are probably all cliches. Good writing is about suggestion and imagination.

The fact is, I know my Dad isn't a considerate person: not in the sense of bouquets of roses and diamond rings and eloquent speeches. But sometimes I forget how perceptive he is. Today we were sitting in his and my mom's bedroom, and he reiterated the now-common refrain in my family, "Anika, you definitely do buy a lot of stuff." "Yeah," I sighed, only partly embarrassed anymore. The fact is, I bought out a Macy's, a CVS and a DSW my last quarter at Northwestern. Or so it felt later, when I was unpacking boxes of shoes and hats and dresses. My mom seizes every opportunity to tell me how I'm losing my values. My sister, jealous that I get new outfits while she gets nothing, agrees with Mom. But my Dad has been silent up until now.
"Do you think maybe the reason you were buying so many things was psychological?" Which sounds like a question people would have trouble asking seriously. But he did, and the answer was a serious yes, yes, yes. And he followed with, "Sometimes we tell people to stop smoking, to stop eating, but sometimes I wonder what makes you eat or smoke if it isn't good for you. We don't ask about the underlying reason." And it was the way he asked - with such genuine consideration and respect - and it was the perfect question, and I wasn't expecting it from him.

The fact is, the perfect question unlocks the speaker's thoughts without offering judgment. But it isn't effortless. It doesn't just happen. In order to ask it, the person doing the asking has to put aside their own feelings, their own opinions in the matter. They have to look at someone else who's engaging in behavior, and they have to care enough about that person to ask, why does that person do this? It requires foresight, planning and above all empathy. These aren't traits I normally ascribe to my father. But when he asks me something so sweet, so kind and so sincere, I realize two things. 1) That I give him pretty short shrift sometimes and 2) I'm his daughter, and there are things about him I should still strive to emulate.

Oh, and the third, something that a lot of girls don't learn until far too late in life: a boy can buy you roses and rings and read you movie-perfect scripts, but it doesn't mean a rat's ass. When he offers you a real compliment or a great question, basically when he bothers to think about you before he speaks, these are signs of affection and character. The second is a much higher standard, but I suspect that small moments of honesty create and save entire relationships.