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An affair to forget
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Dear Mr. Blue, I am a young, innocent college student. Recently I got rather
intoxicated and had a romantic encounter with an equally drunk
young man. I haven't seen him since our encounter. I have
no qualms about what I did, but I want to feel OK about this and to feel
OK about being with other people, but right now I'm hung up on the fact
that it happened and that nothing of this sort has happened to me before.
Casual sex is something I never imagined myself doing. Am I still a
relatively good person? Former Good Girl Dear Former, Yes, you are still a good girl, and Santa will not put coal in
your stocking. You've confessed your indiscretion to Mr. Blue and I'm
sure you've shared the news with the Almighty, and now you should put
your regrets in a small brown paper bag and toss it off the nearest bridge.
Mr. Blue had an evening of drunken passion a few weeks ago with two
sisters named Elsie and Glenda Prin, one a trombonist and one quite adept
at the castanets, the two of them wearing a black sleeveless dress slit up
the side -- did I mention that they are joined at the waist? -- and we
drank ourselves silly on black Russians and danced round and round on a
cafe table, and the next morning I felt like death on toast, but am I going
to let chagrin get in the way of my offering wise advice to you? No, of
course not. Dear Mr. Blue, I'm 25 and at a crossroads. I need to decide between writing for a living
and going back to my fractured family in the Midwest and helping out
with the raising of my 8-year-old sister and the care of my 30-year-old
bipolar sister. If I go back to them, I'll never have time for myself.
Writing makes me feel exalted; but I don't want to feel I've neglected my
family and
responsibilities. Can I have it all? Must I make a choice? Should I follow
my dream, whatever the cost? Stranded Dear Stranded, This is a false choice. You can be a writer and still be a
decent, responsible person. You don't have to flee to Paris and live in a
cold garret. So say I. Do some good for your family, especially that little
girl who is at a vulnerable age. Be a brother. This is easier to do if you're
in Milwaukee. But you needn't live under the same roof. If your family is
truly broken and troubled, it's better not to, for them and also for you.
And of course your family is your primary source of material, so taking
care of them is a form of research. Dear Mr. Blue, A couple months ago I met this pretty fabulous guy, a graduate student,
who I liked pretty much instantaneously and who seemed to like me. We
had a fabulous first date and have seen each other a few more times
(always at my suggestion). The last time, things got hot and heavy and he
ended up staying over. He
didn't call me the entire next week. Eventually he sent an e-mail but didn't
suggest we meet
again. I am a little miffed, and confused. I'm getting
contradictory signals from him. I am having a party in a
couple of weeks, which I invited him to, and he responded very
enthusiastically. Is he shy? Lazy? Cautious? Socially unskilled? Ambiguity
is OK, I suppose, but I wish I knew where his head's at. Mr. Blue Garrison Keillor's column appears every Tuesday in Salon Books.
Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue. Befuddled Dear Befuddled, You've thrown yourself at Mr. Pretty Fabulous, waved your arms, jumped up and down, sung Gershwin, served brownies and somehow the boy cannot bestir himself to show an avid interest. I don't know what his problem is. Probably he's all absorbed in himself and is fairly passive, being confident that his phone will keep ringing. In any case, it's not your problem. Don't adopt a parental role with a romantic partner. Don't do it. Let this boy live his life in whatever churlish style he chooses and if he only sends some desultory e-mail once in a blue moon, then so be it. Get off this bus and wait for the next one. Dear Mr. Blue, I've been paralyzed in my writing for four years, since my dear sister and her fiancé died in a car accident. A year before they died, I had quit my newspaper job and started a novel. When I later returned to the book I found a series of horrifying images, including a reference to a cemetery in a distant city that I'd only driven by, but which oddly ended up being the place they were buried. I'm spooked. If this is prescience, then it is powerless, and it is infuriating in its uselessness. If it is coincidence, then how can cosmic rhythms be so malevolent? What does any of it mean? Meanwhile, my precious husband, family and I are trying to rebuild our lives, finding joy in one another and learning to live with terrible absences. But I am miserable as a writer. I am able to freelance nonfiction stories and essays, but I find only marginal satisfaction in that. I pile up nonsense tasks to keep me from fiction, and when I finally arrive at the page, I freeze, afraid of what might come out. It's insane. Everyone says to just give it time. Time hasn't worked. I'm 35 now, and the prospect of fighting this another four or 10 or 20 years makes me tired. How does one begin to understand, and therefore defuse, the incomprehensible? In Ice Dear Ice, To comprehend the incomprehensible is the deepest reason to be a writer, but we must respect that there are limits to our powers. You and I are fiction writers in the belief that the physical detail of ordinary life and the everyday language of unremarkable people are the vessels of the incomprehensible, and that one comes closer to comprehending it here than one can in abstract language, such as "malevolence" or "uselessness." Your fury at the powerlessness of your fiction to prevent the death of your sister is misplaced: You have no such powers, nobody does. The reference to the cemetery in your novel is pure chance, a blank fact, and it doesn't suggest cosmic malevolence any more than the house number 666 indicates the presence of Satan. It may be that your career as a writer has ended. Such things happen. If it's true, there is another life after the writing life, so don't waste time being miserable about not writing. You might try to write about your sister, if you haven't, and try to comprehend her life by denoting its myriad details. You would find yourself, in attempting to bring her to life on the page, shifting naturally into fiction, and wouldn't you want to see what comes out? Good luck.
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