I don't know why, but today I got to thinking of someone I used to know. We'll call her Jane, though that's not really her name.

I met through her a personals ad years ago, back when I was more willing to try dating and was going through one of my brief periods where my need to find love outweighed my need to please my parents.

Blind dates freak me out as they do other people as well. When I look back now, though, I recall this one more fondly than any other I ever had.

Before we met in person, Jane and I talked for hours almost every night for almost a month. Friendly and inquisitive, a huge reader and sports fanatic, she made our phone conversations very interesting and had a great sense of humor. She also had a very engaging voice and was great at filling in the gaps when I became too shy.

We finally decided to meet. On the day we picked, I walked into the restaurant a nervous wreck. In the lobby we recognized each other from raised eyebrows and shared telephone descriptions and I relaxed. A cross between Susan Sullivan and the mother from "That 70s Show," she had the hearty self-deprecation of a stand-up comedian. It looked like things were going to go smashingly.

Then, about halfway through the meal, she said with lots of gusto: "I could never talk like this with you if I found you attractive."

If anyone else had said that, I would have probably cried inside or been taken aback. But her charming honesty and carefree tone suggested she didn't mean it be cruel. Part of me, in fact, knew exactly what she meant. I have often completely shut down around people I find appealing. Sometimes, I'm lucky if I even remember my name around them.

The difference between her acknowledging she didn't find me attractive and the other times where that had come up in a date was in her approach. She didn't frown as she as soon saw me or jump up suddenly, declaring she'd forgotten to feed her cats before leaving home. She wasn't trying to be mean or hint she wanted the date to be over. We ended up talking for another hour and she promised to call.

I didn't think she would. She was certainly sincere, but had no clear interest in me. After a few days passed and she didn't, I figured she had just been polite. I was a bit disappointed, but not brokenhearted about it.

Then, one night, about a week later, I came home from work to find a message on my answering machine from her asking if I wanted to go on a skiing day trip. I was so flabbergasted and nervous (and also unbelieving it wasn't a joke) that I didn't know what to do...I still didn't know what to until almost a week later. And by the time I worked up the nerve to return the call, it was too late.

Thinking of that this evening, pretty content alone but still wanting to make new friends, I hope I would never be that cowardly again. I need more pluck in life and more social skills, I always have, but this time I really do want to try more.

A kind-of-related website:

http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/05/13/the-4-step-plan-to-not-suck-at-talking-to-people/

Saturday odds and ends...

I love Poets & Writers magazine. It not only has great sources for writers, some of those very sites are super for readers as well.

 

There are also some very helpful links referenced(book review outlets) and neat little sidebars with columns like "Page One," which features opening sentences to recent works of poetry and prose. There are lovely openings like this one:

 

When you are alone and too tired even to turn on any of your devices, you let yourself linger in a past stacked among pillows. Usually you are nestled under blankets and the house is empty. Sometimes the moon is missing and beyond the window the low, gray ceiling seems approachable.

 --Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine

 

 

Their ads can also catch your eye. :)

 

And this month's section on independent publishers is loaded with lots of info. Two Dollar Radio is just one of the presses you can find:

 

http://www.twodollarradio.com/Books

 

 

Speaking of monsters, this anthology (recently reviewed in Locus) is quite good:

 

 

When I was 11 or so I saw The White Hotel in a grocery store check-out line, in a small rack of books next to People magazine. It was the early 80s and even though I'd already snuck in reading Judy Blume's Forever and a few Stephen Kings, I'd never been bold enough to try for something like what I thought the book above represented.

 

In my mind's eye it would have the things you'd find if you merged Jackie Collins (whom I'd only ever heard about in hushed whispers) and Stephen King together. Scared, but very curious, I reached out and pulled the book out of the rack. If you opened it to the inset, you would see this:

 

 

 

I remember this picture so vividly and how much it terrified me, so much I immediately returned the paperback to where it belonged. I think my dad said something along the lines of, "You shouldn't look at that."

 

For years that book remained completely different in my head than it actually is. I thought of it as some kind of horrific, sexed-up version of the tv show "Hotel." It's only now that I've decided to read it, finding the current edition (much more understated), that I'm giving it a go:

 

 





It is no less terrifying than my younger self thought...but for completely different reasons. I have been sucked in since the first page...


The reason the book jumped back into my brain is because of this title, which has given me a long list of books to be read:

 

Fireside is an absolute charmer! It is sweet and romantic without being sappy and it has such genuine heart to it that you can't help but grow to adore the characters, both main and secondary.

In a previous review for a different book by a different author I got a bit bent out of shape about the alarming amount of sex. Here, in this lovely novel, the love scenes are actual love scenes and they are neither rampant nor rabid.

As one of the main characters, Abby, says in a very emotionally raw and tender scene: “First, I need you to know this about me. At this stage in my life, I couldn’t possibly be sexual…I couldn’t possibly make love to someone, Mac, unless I was in a committed relationship. It simply isn’t in me. Perhaps it’s some kind of odd British prudery. I don’t know, but there you have it.”

Cate Culpepper writes about women who deeply value relationships and take their time getting to know each other.

Mac is a restless spirit who has never stayed at one job for more than two years, while Abby has sealed herself off from love out of self-doubt of her own worthiness.* Her strong work ethic comes from a good place but also because she "found a kind of insidious safety in her solitary life. Devoting all her energies to her work carried certain advantages."

The author captures scenes and people in a way that makes the fact you reach for a tissue while you happily cry seem perfectly natural. She reminds you that love really is special and that it's something worth waiting for. It makes me smile to think about reading more of her novels! :)

 

 

 

 

 

*Abby's self-doubt creeps up a lot in the book, especially in the beginning. Some of those passages just really get to me:

 

-It seemed, as her mother had pointed out more than once, that Abby was simply not the kind of woman capable of arousing strong feelings in others.

 

=Abby had never been a raving beauty, and rarely anyone’s first choice. Hope that she could inspire the kind of devotion she wanted to feel herself. That she was worthy of love, and nothing she’d done in the past had changed that.

I did so want to like If I Were A Boy by Erin O'Reilly. The title grabbed me right away, making me think it would be a lot deeper emotionally and romantically than it actually is. For me, the "If I were a boy" resonated, because it is something heartbreaking and real a gay woman might say (even these days) to herself or to someone else when the world makes it especially challenging to be a lesbian. One of the two central characters in the book mostly says it as a joke, though, which seems to be the catalyst for both women suddenly realizing there is an attraction between them.

The two main problems I have with Erin O'Reilly's otherwise sincere and (from what I can tell) good-intentioned tale is how physically-driven Helen and Katie's relationship is (Cinemax-driven might be the better word) and how one of the women's sister is so homophobic and so over the top about it, it almost becomes a farce.

At one point, Helen tells her mother she's worried her "overloaded baser instincts" have gotten the best of her, not knowing the woman she supposedly loves, Katie, has just overheard her. It's a very insulting comment, a very hurtful one, and yet it's kind of true...because so much of Helen and Katie's relationship is nothing more than sneaking around and lying to their husbands. Yes, their husbands are major jerks (horrific in the case of Helen's husband Bobby), but they still sneak around...grabbing sex whenever they can, mostly on a beach, when the rest of the group they're all vacationing with is away fishing for the day.

If I sound a bit bitter, I suppose it's because I am, a tad. Quality lesfic is hard to find, especially quality lesfic that represents love as something far more than physical. Sex sells, as they say (whoever "they" is), but some of us still prefer our love stories old-fashioned.

The writing itself is not bad and there is a plucky spirit I like (Katie is so so sweet in her fierce need and sincere desire to protect Helen) but that's just not enough for me...the innocence and mood of the kiss on the front cover is never quite matched within the book.