The Mayor's Son

When I was a sophomore in college, one of my classmates was the mayor’s son. We were part of a group of would-be writers that formed a society, established for the purpose of hosting readings on campus and publishing the annual literary magazine. One afternoon, early in the fall semester, we were hanging around the English department, me, the mayor’s son, the future MFA poet and the goth girl.

Out of the blue, the mayor’s son asked me out. He said, “Would you want to go out with me sometime?” My reaction probably looked like horror. I recoiled, I’m sure. I was shocked and caught completely off guard. “I’m married!” I blurted. No softening, no concern for his feelings. It wasn’t him, it was me. He wasn’t, I realized later, considering the episode, an unappealing person. He was smart, we had common interests, was nice-looking and, after all, the mayor’s son. He was also maybe 20 to my seasoned 22 years of age. I gathered, quickly, that while we knew one another in the casual, going-to-classes way, that he hadn’t learned much about me at all. Not only was I married, but had a three-year-old son at home. No one had proposed anything as fantastic as a date to me in over four years.

Looking back, I still feel badly. I could have handled that better, I think. It was a reaction inspired by my deep belief in my lack of desirability. I looked at him as if he’d asked if I’d be interested in skinning a cat, murdering his ex-girlfriend, or robbing a bank with him that afternoon.

Later that semester, I was into poetry. I composed a poem that dealt with images of light and dark, good and evil. It was, simply, about apprehension, if there was an “about” at all. My poetry, particularly in the early days, usually sucks. I didn’t think this one was bad and shared it around, with some other work, with my writer friends. We did that; we were writers. I was hanging out in the hallway between classes when the mayor’s son approached me, a copy of my poem in his hand. “I read your poem,” he said. “Are you racist?” he asked.

Again, I found myself agape at this guy. How had this poem about light and dark been so utterly misunderstood? I read it again. I didn’t know what to say to him except that no, I was not and didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. I decided later that he’d decided to hate me because I had humiliated him when he asked me out. In anything I wrote that he read, he would find some subversive, terrible thing to pull out of it. He would be no fan of mine.

I think of the mayor’s son when I write and when I’m caught off guard, in equal measures. I try to pause before I answer a question I’m unprepared to hear and remind myself that not everyone who reads me knows me, or perhaps ever will. Writers should be prepared to be misunderstood here and there. Consider this a reminder to take a deep breath before you respond.

Reading List

I found myself nodding in wholehearted agreement over this post by Dwight, offering up some shorter reading selections for the busy. These are also great travel reads. I'm going to be flying soon and I'm hoping I'll be allowed to carry on a book (must have my pages to survive the turbulence, the up, the down, the general gravitationally-induced panic).