Original Love. J.J. Murray
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Название: Original Love
Автор: J.J. Murray
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
isbn: 9780758236111
isbn:
Maybe I should name my book Searching the Seven Seas for Ebony. Henry would say it wouldn’t fit on the cover, and Eliot would say it wouldn’t fit on a movie theater marquee. I count the syllables. Ten exactly. Carlton Muse, the blank verse poet, would probably have an ear-gasm. Writing wouldn’t nearly be as frustrating if the title you lived with for a year or two was actually accepted by the marketing department.
I re-read Ebony’s back story so far and realize that I’ve created a lonely middle school teacher who would rather…what? She’d rather write, just like me. Maybe she’ll even have an “I’d Rather Be Writing” bumper sticker on her Sidekick. Let’s make her an aspiring writer:
My One and Only can’t mind that I’m a frustrated novelist who has more rejection letters than pages of a novel. I looked into the whole subsidy publishing thing, but I didn’t have the fifteen grand up front. I checked out POD (Print-On-Demand) publishing, but it sounded too scientific. Saying “I am a POD author” might freak people out. I guess I could go to Quik Copy and crank out my novel and slap some staples on it, but I only have a ten-percent discount card at Quik Copy, and the machines I choose always chew up my originals.
But it isn’t about the money. Okay, it’s a little about the money, but it’s more about validation. I want to be noticed as an adequate writer. Not a great one. Just adequate.
And paid enough to quit teaching seventh graders for all eternity.
Several of my rejection letters contain the word “idiosyncratic,” and a few even say my work is “quirky,” “strange,” and “eccentric.” I always like to keep the reader guessing…which is probably why my novel’s plot is too unpredictable and unbelievable. “Too dense for mass consumption,” one letter states in bold italics.
What’s my novel about? Well, it’s kind of an autobiography, and it tells the tale of a normal, regular, middle-aged hoochie in search of her Boo.
It’s not as depressing as you might think.
I titled it A Regular Woman the first time around, mailing it to every publisher and agent in New York, many of whom didn’t have the decency to write me a rejection letter. Maybe they thought it would be about a woman who didn’t have a problem with constipation. The second time around, I changed the title to The Quest for the Holy Male and maybe changed a paragraph or two. Same result. This time I’m sending it out as Soul Quest. I think it’s a snappy title, and all the publish-it-yourself books teach you that a good title will often sell a bad book. Case in point: Bad as I Wanna Be by Dennis Rodman. I never should have read that book. It has ruined me for life when it comes to plotting my stories because it has no plot.
Time to throw in the sex, as if I’m the one experienced enough to write about it. All I had growing up was this incredible fantasy life. And Ebony. But I guess most writers who saturate their books with steamy sex are writing about what they’ve never done, either. Fantasy, that’s all it is. Ebony will just have to be more like me in this book:
The One also can’t care that I’m not that experienced. The first time I made out was on a balmy Friday night in high school. The boy had a zit on his chin. The next day, I had a matching zit on my chin. The following Monday, we were the “Zit Couple” at school.
It was a very short relationship.
It was tough for me in high school. I had braces for six years to cure a vicious Bugs Bunny overbite and crossed front teeth like the creature in Alien. I had so many teeth pulled that I almost became addicted to “sweet air” at the dentist. Though I have very nice teeth now—a couple of friends even say my teeth look like dentures—no high school boy could look at me then and see into my smile’s future. And I still wore a retainer at night in college. I freaked out this one brother during my first marijuana experience. He thought my face had melted or something.
Maybe marijuana wasn’t all that he was doing that night.
And my first time was horrible. I was on the beach during spring break in Florida with a bottle of Hennessy and a boy—in that order—and the next thing I know, a cop is shining a flashlight on my ass. We never found the boy’s underwear, and I found sand up in all my crevices for days after that. I haven’t been completely celibate ever since, but I think I’ve got enough saved up to satisfy The One. At least I hope I do.
I have to give Ebony a shortcoming, something that embarrasses her that Johnny…Nicoletto will help her overcome. Where did “Nicoletto” come from? Must be a name from back in my childhood. What kind of shortcoming can I give her? She, of course, will rock his world, but nothing embarrassed Ebony. Nothing. Everything that girl did she did with style, grace, and flair, and she could dance so gracefully and—
Hmm. Would it be too ironic to have a black woman who can’t dance? Oh, the letters Desiree will get. “Every black person I know can dance, ho!” the letters and e-mails will shout, probably in all capital letters. But not all black people can dance well, so why should I perpetuate a stereotype? This version of Ebony is going to break more of those so-called “rules” that book critics demand never be broken:
I guess the main thing my soul mate can’t mind is the fact that I can’t dance. I can’t dance. At all. At least I can admit that, unlike that Vanilla Ice fool. I’m a little embarrassed about it, but at least I have the sense to stay seated at clubs while other hoochies practically have sex on the dance floor with their dance partners. That isn’t dancing.
That’s public dry humping.
At a sock hop in middle school, a friend of mine told me that I danced to the words and not the music—and I didn’t even know the words. At my junior prom, I danced so wildly that I accidentally kneed my date in the groin. He sang like Michael Jackson for the rest of the night. In college, I enjoyed pinballing around the mosh pits, and even there I was a klutz. I know, a tall black girl flying around in a mosh pit isn’t exactly what Malcolm X was talking about when he said, “By any means necessary.” Anyway, I’d jump up when the rest of the moshers would hit the floor, and I would dive into their arms, only to end up with my nose corkscrewed into the floor.
I used to watch Happy Days when I was a kid and wish that I could dance like those freckled white kids. It looked so easy. Maybe I was born in the wrong decade. I even took a free dancing lesson from Arthur Murray Dance Studios. I more or less learned the bossa nova, and that night I went to a club and tried it out, only to find that doing the bossa nova by yourself looks wack. The dancers around me gave me plenty of room, and for that I’m grateful, but…
No, I’m no dancer. So my soul mate has to know that I can’t dance, and he can’t care that I can’t dance. He can’t mind if I nurse a drink at a club while he dances the night away. But he has to go home with me.
If he wants to.
I look up and see sunbeams winking on the bay. I am wasted, my eyelids as heavy as the waves rolling in, but I have one more chapter in me. I throw open every window in Henry’s apartment, put “I Wish” on repeat-play, and let my fingers roll:
Chapter 2
I used to be a basketball star. I was a playground legend. No boy could outplay me. Maybe that was why I had so few dates. Still, it got me a scholarship for СКАЧАТЬ