I got a master’s degree, OK? So for all you people out there constantly asking me “When’s your next blog?” and “Have you quit writing your blog?,” the answer is “No, bitches. Now shut your pie holes and read on.”
To get said master’s degree, I had to write a novel. Not a very good novel, but I had to at least write one. So I spent over a year freaking out about it. Nightmares, anxiety meds, hookers who somehow caught on fire. It was just a bad time in my life, but I really needed to finish grad school. I was exhausted by the fucked up relationship I’d chosen with the dominatrix named Academia.
So this past fall, I resolved to finish. And I’ll be the first person to admit that, while I should have finished in the spring, I stayed through the fall so I wouldn’t somehow end up in Boston, starting on a Ph.D. in Victorian literature when that was the last thing I really wanted to do. Terrible economies, misguided dreams and fucked up expectations can lead you to do very bad things. Just look at Heidi Montag.
I only had one class, which was independent study: write your damned thesis. This made it possible for me to write for dailyfill.com and moviefill.com. One day in November, about two weeks before my final thesis was due, and I had 14 more chapters to write, The Boyfriend™ was kind enough to drive me to the office and pick me up. It really was very sweet (except for the swerving in and out of morning L.A. traffic and cutting off semis in a rage fueled by hatred for stop-and-go freeways). I actually got there quite early. I spent the day mocking celebrities, updating Twitter, and freaking the fuck out about my thesis. And then The Boyfriend™ returned to fetch me. As I walk down the stairs, my fingers ache from all the typing, and I dread going home to type even more, though I need to finish at least three thesis chapters tonight. I also need a shot of whiskey to bookend each chapter.
And we were off, back home for an evening of The Boyfriend™ playing video games while I forlornly look on from the dining room table, watching him own shit in Gears of War 2 while I’m forming sentences like “Her lace petticoat dragged along the worn cobblestone, snagging in places like the fingers of the dead reaching up to catch it. If only she had a hammerburst assault rifle to fuck their shit up, then Alixandra would feel much safer beneath the stark canopy of a starless night, amongst this city of ghosts and corpsers”––gah!
But the evening stop-and-go traffic threatened to keep us sitting on the 405 and me from an evening of torture. “You want to go to dinner?” The Boyfriend™ asks.
We’re like two blocks from the freeway, and I’m feeling guilt build inside of me before I even know how I’ll answ––“Definitely.”
He swerves away from the freeway, and let me take this moment to point out something: on our second date, he picked me up at my place. Yes, not only had I just met him three days prior, I let some strange man know where I live and I got into his car without giving any of his information to my three best friends (what? I was running late and I had to get my eye shadow finished, so I had no time to call any of them). But that’s beside the point. My point is that as he drove us on that second date, I noticed how slow he drove. Slow and careful and methodical. I recall thinking, “Wow, he really stays within the lines. And when he changes lanes, he makes sure there’s equal distance between the car before us and the car behind us. And also when we change lanes, I never feel the bump of the tires hitting the reflectors. Is it possible I’ve met the man of my dreams? The only other OCD driver in L.A.?”
No. No, I hadn’t.
While The Boyfriend™ is still that careful driver, he is no longer slow or methodical. He’s actually very clean and confident in that “I was a cop on a TV show in a former life” kind of way. When The Boyfriend™ drives, it probably looks very slick on camera (but I’ve been told that’s “all in the editing” so now I don’t know what the hell I’m saying).
“There’s this place I’ve been wanting to try, up on Bundy,” he’s saying as I run some numbers in my head.
I have precisely 13 more days until my thesis is due. I have 14 more chapters to write. This means I have to write how many…pages per …day… to… finished…? Oh god, we really shouldn’t go to dinner unless there’s room for a third wheel: my laptop.
“They apparently have a brownie strawberry shortcake.”
Wait. I hadn’t calculated in time for editing 250 pages of novel. Oh fuck oh fuck.
“Are you OK? Are you hungry?”
“Definitely, let’s try it.” Skipping one more night isn’t going to do much damage at this point. No matter what I do, I’m going to be staying up for six days straight writing until my fingers cramp, and when I realize I don’t have Reese Witherspoon’s needle chin to type with, I’ll have to stick a pencil between my teeth and use it to keep pressing down the keys.
I had a horrible vision of me suddenly falling unconscious from exhaustion and the pencil slipping up into my nose and giving me a fake lead lobotomy. The last thing I wanted to think about was my thesis, my novel and my “craft” of writing. What pretentious bullshit it all was.
“Keep an eye out for it, OK? It’s called Latari,” The Boyfriend™ tells me. “So you work on your thesis at lunch?”
“No, I’m scrubbing my thesis from my mind for the entire evening. I don’t want to think about it. I need a break before I try to commit hari kari with your rear view mirror.”
He nods absently. “That’s cool.”
We pull into the parking lot and the valet takes the car. I barely remember to take my purse with me because suddenly, I’m exhausted. The Boyfriend™ opens the door to the restaurant and I enter––and nearly scream. The hostess looks just as horrified as I do, except I’m sure her horror is merely a response to my twisted expressions and convulsions.
“Oh, I got the name wrong,” The Boyfriend™ says. “It’s Literati.”
This place is a monument to my failure, my inability to finish a graduate degree, my anxiety of actually finishing a novel. Good job, baby. Way to make me feel better.
Books are the decorations. Reviews of books decorate the walls. Norman Mailer’s narrow eyes follow me as the hostess seats us. I cringe as I settle into my seat and take the menu. Books everywhere. Every-fucking-where. And when I dare to look up from the menu and smile at The Boyfriend™, directly over his shoulder is a framed picture of a fountain pen, dripping bright red blood from its nip. Written beneath the pen? The word “HELL.”
I whimper. I realize that this could be Hell.
The Boyfriend™ raises an eyebrow. “What?”
I rub my forehead. “I left my school bag in the car.
“Okaaaay…”
“My laptop’s sticking out of it.”
“Okaaaaaaay…”
“In the front seat.”
The Boyfriend™ reaches for his keys.
“No, no,” I insist quickly. “It’s fine. Really, I’m just being paranoid. We’re like the only car in the valet lot.”
I look back down at the menu and use my hand to shield my eyes. The bloody pen looms. I think there was beef tartar on the menu. I look back up at The Boyfriend™ and the blood seems brighter.
“What looks good?” he asks me.
“My thesis is a Word file.”
He puts his menu down.
“That’s all.”
He reaches into his pocket.
“No flash drive. No Google Doc copy.”
He hands me the car keys. I receive them as if they’re the tools of Holy Communion and dash out to grab my bag. For the rest of the evening, it rests beside my feet. And just in case anything absurd were to happen—like the waitress snatching it and running, or I somehow forget it’s there—I have the straps wound tightly around my ankle.
The Boyfriend™ quietly eats his dinner. I think he’s realized that I’m precariously trembling on the verge of insanity and possibly even the words, “I’m enjoying my sea bass” could send me screaming out the back door, limping as I drag my laptop bag with me. I’m also pretty sure if that happened, The Boyfriend™ would have calmly paid the bill, left Literati, and retrieved his car from the valet without ever considering he should drive up and down Bundy looking for his insane girlfriend, who would’ve been lighting matches and looking in bushes and around bus stops, quietly calling, “Here, hooker hooker hooker…Here, hooker…”
Frankly, I wouldn’t have blamed him.
