I Have Become Accustomed To Rejection

Another day, another rejection, but this time, it’s personal. An editor at Miracle Monocle invited me to submit some work to them which was so flattering. I get a thrill from that sort of thing. I do. I am that writer.  Yes, I admit it. I sent them a story about an elephant only not. There were some “adult” themes and language in the story so they passed. They said, “The writing itself is excellent, but the subject is just beyond where we’re willing to go right now.” I understand, and it’s a fair assessment. I write about lots of things that go beyond, that wander into uncomfortable places and I know not every magazine can include that work in their aesthetic.  I will send them something else but I was mildly disheartened to be rejected after a solicitation (something I have myself done as an editor, it happens, it’s all good).

The rejection felt like the golden boy you always liked asking you to the prom and even though in the back of your mind you knew something wasn’t quite right, you got dolled up in your tacky satin dress with too many ruffles and practiced extending your wrist for the corsage and wore lipstick in a color your mother disapproved of and painted your cheeks with dark red blush and you stood at the base of the stairs leaning against the railing staring at the front door, ignoring the sweat beneath your hosiery, how it trickled down your legs and into your shoes, and you waited–you waited as your parents slumped into the family room willing to concede defeat while you told yourself he would be there, he would take you to the dance and then you told yourself maybe he was hurt, and was trying to get to you only he couldn’t and so you cry not because he’s not there but because he is alone on the side of a country road somewhere, with a wilting corsage resting on his chest as he bleeds to death and all the while, at the Studebaker Inn on Highway 41, there is an empty motel room where a bottle of cheap champagne is sitting in a bucket of melted ice and the bedspread is neatly folded at the edge of a bed waiting for your first kiss and your first everything and you hold onto these terrible sorrows until Monday morning at school when you see the golden boy and he looks right through you as he walks on by. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad. I cheer myself up immensely when I write.

I suffer from thin skin but in my defense, I have good reasons to. Maybe that’s why I blog about rejection. It is a terrible condition. It is really hard for me to reconcile with the knowledge that people have opinions of me and that sometimes those opinions are not positive not because I think they shouldn’t have negative opinions but because I don’t know how to accept I do not live in a bubble, unknown and unseen, just doing my thing. I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t really care what people think of them and writers, we are the worst. We obsess over what editors and friends and families and readers and other writers and everyone we’ve ever met thinks about us. Some people pretend not to care but I think they are lying. Or maybe it’s just me. I don’t know. I understand J.D. Salinger. I am nothing like him nor am I so audacious as to compare our writing careers but I understand the desire to recluse. Can recluse be used as a verb?

I want to have it both ways. I want to put my writing out there and blog on different sites but I don’t want anyone to see me doing it, to notice, to care.  I want an invisibility cloak like the one in the Harry Potter movie. I never got into Harry Potter. I enjoy the movies visually and the magic stuff is adorable but I don’t even think I’ve seen the last two movies. Still, the one thing I retained from the movies is the invisibility cloak. Also, I did quite like the big hairy guy who lived on the Hogwarts campus. With a bit of grooming and the application of depilatory products, he could be Mr. Gay. Until I find my invisibility cloak, I need to work on developing a thicker skin and not caring about things I cannot nor should not control and on trying to be a better, less petty person. I don’t know how well I’m going to succeed at that last part. I do not have any active concerns but I can hold on to a grudge for the longest time. My mother once told me, forgive never forget and I took that advice pretty seriously and probably interpreted her words incorrectly.

I played in a poker tournament yesterday (10th place, not bad) and as I sat at the table I realized that men are so fascinating to me in how they take up space and interact with people and see the world. I’ve realized this before but I’m always reminded of this fascination at the poker table and at the gym and also on campus where men outnumber women almost four to one. At the poker table, I meet people I would never encounter in my daily life and it’s good for me to know people who are nothing like me. I learn a lot and it has taught me to not be judgmental and overly bourgeois. I’ve been playing down at the casino for so long that all the awkwardness (and there has been AWKWARDNESS with these guys and their inner Klansmen) is gone so it is always, always a treat to get my game on. I like winning money, too.

Men, in the company of other men, have the most adorable and the most crass conversations. At the gym this morning, these two older guys were lifting weights and being macho with one another and one guy patted his belly and said, “I can’t wait to see my abs again,” and the other guy said, “I can’t wait to see my dick again,” and that cracked me up. I couldn’t help but laugh and the abs guy said, “Shhhh. There are ladies here,” so I looked around because I didn’t know what ladies to whom he was referring but it was just them and my trainer and I. Charming stuff.

There are rarely other women at the poker table so once the guys get over the fact that someone with breasts can play cards, they start to resume their masculine banter. I am always blushing on the inside (because you cannot show anything but fierce bravado)  because I have heard the filthiest jokes you can imagine at the poker table–jokes that make me think, “I hope you don’t kiss anyone with that mouth” and “I’m going directly to hell for laughing.”

There was a guy at my table last night who was, like the Harry Potter hairy guy, sleazy hot. You could just tell he had some badness in him and that he was incredibly smart–his hair was salt and pepper and long and unkempt and his beard was growing down his neck and he wore his shirt open and he was in fantastic shape, I mean his forearms were perfection; the muscles rippled when he looked at his cards. I had to keep my wits about me because he kept staring at me and I kept staring at him and I couldn’t figure out what his deal was and during a break I told J, who was also in the tournament, and he said the dude was harmless and I thought, “that’s not the point.” After the tournament, we played in a cash game in the poker room and Sir Sleazy Hot was across from me again and he continued to stare and I couldn’t tell if he was going to be mean or if he was racist or insane–there were a lot of possibilities all of which I was willing to forgive in the wake of his sleazy hotness–and finally after an hour or so he asked me if I was a student at the university (there is no other explanation for a black person in these parts) and I said yes, and then he talked up a storm for the rest of the night. He’s an engineer and a carpenter and on and on and on and he was the most interesting fellow, and as I suspected, scarily intelligent so I tried not to get into many hands with him. I think he was starved for conversation. Fascinating.

Some shamelessness:

I talk about an assignment I use in my technical communication class for the First Year Writing Program blog at Emerson College.

I also wanted to thank the editors of Necessary Fiction, Knee Jerk Magazine, Night Train, Pindeldyboz, and Twelve Stories for nominating my writing for the 2010 Million Writers Award. I appreciate the recognition so very much. It’s a great thrill. I did a little dance when a couple people e-mailed me about it. I do little dances a lot but this was a special little dance.