Rachael's One

One is the first, and therefore, automatically, it's the most exciting.

1. My first kiss. Mine was while sitting on a floor of a Bakersfield family room. I'd travelled from the coast by Greyhound (I was sixteen! What was my mother thinking?) to visit a young man of whom I'd become enamored while, yes, at Bible camp (um, maybe that's what my mother was thinking). I'd just turned sixteen, and I was terrified I'd remain Sweet Sixteen and Never Been Kissed until I was seventeen, with no way to go back in time to fix it, a perpetual John Hughes joke. I can't remember the boy's name (isn't that awful?) but he was 6'6" and very blond. I had to crane my neck when I imagined kissing him. That night, we sat on the floor across from each other (probably because we'd thought we be able to reach each other's lips), and I remember scooting closer and closer, until our mouths finally met. And I thought, Wow. Is this all there is?

2. My first boombox. We lived overseas on the tiny island of Saipan (random fact: I'm one of three Pens who've been there!) when I was a teenager, and I wanted one thing more than anything else in my life--a boombox so I could play the bootleg tapes we bought at the Chinese store in Garapan. I had a whole collection: Tears for Fears, Madonna, A-ha! But I didn't have anything to play them on except my best friend Tammy's boombox, and I dreamed of the time I could have my very own. After I saved up the money and ordered one from the mainland, I drew a picture of the exact boombox I'd ordered to scale and set the drawing next to my bed to pass the two months I waited for it to arrive. The songs I imagined it playing were better than any of the actual songs I ended up using it for.

3. My first apartment. It was tiny, barely 300 square feet, $350 a month. I had one fire, many gas leaks, marching tarantulas, and creeping mold, but I loved that place. Everything in the fridge was mine. It was built hanging off the back of a garage, completely illegal, and the teeny bedroom was on stilts, but I loved the forest of eucalyptus that grew on all three side of the room. I felt as if I lived in a tree house. But I outgrew it, even though I didn't want to, and moved to a larger place in a better location. Le sigh.

4. My first book. That was the best. Nothing took away from it. Nothing detracted from seeing that ARC for the first time. This was one of the best moments of my life.



Firsts are great. But I will propose this: after one, I quite like two and three. And four and five and eleven and 127 and 1252. They aren't like the first one. The other night I came home from work to find my third book's early copies had arrived. I didn't wait for Lala to get home, I just let the dogs out, fed the cats, and opened the package. Then I set a copy on the dining room table for her to see when she got home.

It was not as exciting as the first one. But the joy of accomplishment (it isn't a fluke!) might be even deeper.

I've gotten better at kissing, too.

At The Heart Of It - One Lone Writer

by Sophie

ONE

It's become a big part of my outlook to think of the books I write as being the result of teamwork. From the evolution of the idea through the mad pile-on of the first draft, through editing for clarity and later editing for language, to the back-and-forth with the editor to tweak and re-shape, all the way through promoting and marketing, there is no single step that I do without the support, encouragement, and participation of others.

It all starts here, with my friends. A week does not go by that I don't see at least one of the Pens, and I truly mean it when I say I could not have finished any of my books - and that's going back almost 15 years, people - without them.

Then there's my agent, editors, publicists, and the army of people at the publisher, legions whom I'm only now getting a sense of. Authors often moan about the job done by individual members of the pipeline, but the truth is that I don't know how to do any of these jobs and I rely on each to contribute their piece: a compelling cover, streamlined marketing copy, subject matter that will appeal without offending, and so on.

All of this is fine with me. Working this way makes sense to me - my books are much better for the many hands that touch them along the way. I don't understand these authors who freak if someone touches their prose. None of us is that good. NONE OF US IS THAT GOOD - I repeated it for emphasis, because I believe that when we begin to have outsized views of our own abilities, we become brittle and our work suffers.

However:

In the writing day, when I am inching forward with the story, I am alone. Searingly, achingly, echoingly alone. There is only room for one person in the cramped toll booth that is the story place; we stew with our thoughts and our dreams and our darkness and our flashes of brilliance, and we dab and shape and mold, creating the homely thing that is the foundation for the work we eventually hope to create.

I can do this in the company of others - I love to, in fact; in coffee shops or bars with a friend - but make no mistake: the process itself is solitary, no matter how much gossiping I do before, whining I do during, and drinking I do after.

This is, perhaps, the best possible world for the introvert at the heart of most writers. We have to create without the melody of other voices. Later, when the unfurling is done, we can - gladly, full of hope and intent - join the others, find our place at the table.

Gigi's Meeting with MacGyver

By Gigi

When I was twenty years old, I experienced the most thrilling celebrity encounter I knew I'd ever have. I met Richard Dean Anderson -- MacGyver himself -- and personally handed him a copy of the MacGyver movie I filmed at age seventeen.

I wrote about the details of the movie itself here, a project I wrote, directed, and starred in with my best friend one summer during high school. We were so sad that our favorite TV show was ending, so for a summer project we put our high school theater tools to good use and made a continuation of the series ourselves, set in the mountains outside of Los Angeles and full of MacGyver-isms.

 Yup, that's our MacGyver Movie, "The Rescue of Mac and Sam," in his hand.

Here's the interesting thing about that experience: Once I gave MacGyver -- er, Richard Dean Anderson -- that VHS tape with my homemade cover, my childhood desire to meet celebrities was over.

Growing up outside of Los Angeles, I had plenty of opportunities as a teenager to attend concerts, music video shoots, Jay Leno episode tapings, etc. It was interesting at the time, and I do think it's cool that I've had my photo taken with my favorite rock stars -- which, to be fair, is much easier to do when your favorite bands are the not-quite-superstars Toad the Wet Sprocket and Teenage Fanclub -- but once I gave my movie to the man I thought of as MacGyver, my childhood hero, what else did I need?

As it turned out, not a whole lot. I never even learned if Richard Dean Anderson watched our little movie (he was wonderfully gracious when he accepted it) but it wasn't really about him; it was about me and my friend doing something meaningful for us. I continued to be enamored with writing screenplays, but I lost my fascination with celebrities. Sure, I'm still going to click on The Daily Dish on the San Francisco Chronicle website, but I was done standing in line to meet someone famous.

At least, I thought I was over it. Fast forward a dozen years, when I started attending mystery writer's conferences. At a convention last year, I saw Aaron Elkins on the attendee list. If you're not familiar with Aaron Elkins, he writes an amazing forensic anthropology mystery series featuring "skeleton detective" Gideon Oliver. I love these books. I've loved them since I was a kid. I knew that if I met Aaron Elkins at the convention, I would completely freak out.

It turned out he had to cancel, so I never learned if I would have freaked out in his presence or not. When I thought about my reaction to this near-encounter with a minor celebrity, I realized there were a few more authors who I'd probably become either speechless or a babbling idiot in front of -- and they're all writers who made a great impact on me when I was a kid.

I've discovered some great authors as an adult, as well, but I don't have the same gut reaction when I think of them. They're people who write amazing books, who I'd be happy to meet and tell them how much I love their books, but I doubt I'd be tongue-tied around them.

Is there something magical about the celebrities we latch onto as we're growing into ourselves? Whatever it is, I hope you'll forgive me if you run into me at a mystery writer's convention and I'm a babbling idiot because I've just spotted Aaron Elkins.

Martha's Celebrity Matchup

Years back, my husband and I were on vacation in New York City. We were strolling down some famous shopping street in Manhattan. We were likely either on our way from or our way to Serendipity 3 for the Frrrozen Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate as I insisted on enjoying it every day of our trip, sometimes twice a day.

I looked up and saw the cutest puppy. I grabbed my husband's arm. "Oh my god!! Did you see?" I expected him to make fun of me for pointing out a ball of fluff. He's into sleek race dogs who double my height on hind feet. But instead he squealed right back, "Yes! I know!"

I asked if we could get a dog like that and his forehead furrowed. What dog, he asked. That dog we just fawned over, I said. He didn't know what I was talking about - he'd been fawning over the dog's human attachment - celebrity designer Isaac Mizrahi.

Mizrahi vs Dog
Winner: Dog
Runner up: Husband...for Out-Pop-Culturing Me

And so goes most Celebrity vs Random Non Celebrity Item matchup for me.

Canoodling with Jon Hamm post comedy show or dinner with friends?
Friends.

Checking out James Franco at his mom's local theater production or, um yeah, dinner with friends?
Friends.

Chatting up Aziz Ansari about how much I loved his set or gelato?
Gelato.
(Although for the record that was one of the funniest live comedy shows I've seen ever hands down ever ever ever ever ever and if his cousin who is the subject of his comedy was there I would have stayed to hang out with him no problem.)

I love pop culture celebrity. I encourage it. I buy celebrity magazines and follow the gossip and watch award shows and remember senseless things about who is dating who and am enthralled by celebrity social networking battles but for me, it's just another show. In the distance.

I think it's because as much as I love singers, I don't want to be a singer. As much as I love movies, I hate the idea of acting. As much as I love comedy, I don't want to be funny on stage.

Show me a talented writer, though, and that's a different story.

the negative side of celebrity

Topically, Anthony Wiener (the politician) is in the news. So many thoughts bombard my brain on an almost ten minute interval that it is impossible to convey. So...here are my completely random ramblings.

It's fascinating to me that as authors, trying to find a common audience in readers, we can troll over into the how and why of engaging a reader and how to find our audience.

Originally I was going to talk about how as a writer, I have had moments of complete weird fan girl weirdness, and have gushed embarrassingly at wonderful, amazing writers. But, sadly, it's already been done. Yes, I have appropriately, and inappropriately, fawned over NYT and pre-NYT best sellers (of course I have absolutely predicted that they would be NYT best-sellers before that happens--because they are in my mind - AMAZING!!)

As authors we instinctively know (or a good friend informs me that we have somehow inadvertently passed) the bounds of good behaviour. And then we are unassailably embarrassed. However, the reality is that writing that touches our heart...whether beautifully enscribed or rawly penned, is the source of our richly earned fountain of emotions. All we can hope is that we have justly and accurately portrayed those emotions. And that our words eloquently and justly evoke our readers. As a writer, my goal is to provoke readers to think and react beyond a level of compassion that they have exhibited before. If I accomplish this goal then I as a human being and as a writer, have made the world a better place.

Lisa

Celebrity Nullification Factor

L.G.C. Smith

I don’t know any celebrities. I told my sister Sarah what our topic is this week, and that everyone else in the world either knows or has met interesting celebrities, or has meaningful thoughts related to the topic of celebrity, while I have nothing. She laughed.

Now my sister does know, meet and deal with celebrities of all sorts, including Hollywood A-listers, rock stars, billionaires, politicians, and even royalty in the running of her famous organic farm. But I don’t know them. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin never walked into my shop. Bill Clinton didn’t eat one of my peaches out of hand at Chez Panisse. Well, I know Al, my sister said. Sure, but Al, her business partner and ex-husband, doesn’t count, no matter how many times he’s been referred to as a celebrity farmer. I mean, come on. Seriously?

What about Alice Waters, Sarah asked. Okay. I have met Alice Waters. So that’s one. But she’s a foodie celebrity. That doesn’t count.

Sarah arches an eyebrow at me. And what about all those NYT bestselling authors I know?

Well, there aren’t that many of those. They're professional relationships. Except for the ones who are friends, and they don’t count.

She snorts. Just because I know someone that doesn’t disqualify them as a celebrity.

Actually, yes, it does. Because I possess the Celebrity Nullification Factor.

My sister forgot about that. She shouldn’t have. I got it from our mother.

Here’s how it works: I am five years old. I am wildly jealous that Darilyn from across the street has pretend high heels. This catapults her to the pinnacle of neighborhood super-stardom. I beg my mother for high heels like Darilyn’s.

What do you want those for, my mother asks with disgust. They’re cheap. They’ll break in two minutes. You’ll just fall in them.

The shoes are beautiful. They sparkle. They are crystalline plastic flecked with pink and purple. I will take good care of them. They will never break. I will never fall. I want to be a star like Darilyn.

Why? My mother demands. If I get them for you, your sisters will want them. They’re too little, but they’ll cry and scream and probably take yours and ruin them. Do I want to suffer that horrible fate? Wouldn’t I rather go to the zoo?

Well, now that Mom mentions it, yes, I would. Watching the giraffes eat peanuts with their long purple tongues is tempting. And my siblings can’t ruin that. Mom knows when to press. It’s up to you, she says.

It also works like this: I am nine years old and have been exiled to a stinking tropical island in the Western Pacific. We don’t get any good TV. We get The Rosary Hour. All of us Protestant kids learn the Hail Mary by heart. But we do get Tiger Beat magazine at the PX. We brought our Monkees records from the States with us. We LOVE the Monkees! But the Monkees will never play a concert on Guam. The only famous person who visits Guam that year is President Nixon. I did see him drive by in the motorcade. He was more wrinkled than in pictures. WE WANT THE MONKEES!

My mother argues that the Monkees are just regular people. They aren’t that special. Yes, they’re cute. Lots of people are cute. Look at all the cute people we know! If we want live entertainment, we’ll go see my friend Blanche’s mother’s Polynesian Dance Troupe. Music! Dancing! Fire! Yes, the Monkees are famous. That doesn’t mean anything. They could just as easily be famous the way Charles Manson is famous. Fame doesn’t make anyone a good person. If we focus on being good people and being good friends, we’ll be happier than we would be if we went to a Monkees concert. Just you wait, she said. You’ll see.

Or it works like this: My grandparents—my DAD’S parents--went to Hawaii to visit my aunt while my uncle was stationed there, and they went to all these special places and they got to meet DON HO and JACK LORD. This is all they talk about for the two years after we got back from Guam (where the only famous person we saw was our creepy president). I love the story about how Don Ho kissed my grandma on the cheek. My grandma loves this story. Her eyes crinkle up every time she tells it. She glows when she tells how her daughter set it up, how she was bold enough to approach a celebrity because she knew it would make her mother happy.

Later, my mother and her sisters express deep horror at the prospect of having been singled out at a club or concert or whatever it was. It would be so embarrassing. Plus, those poor celebrities, never able to have a moment’s peace. How would we like it if strangers were constantly barraging us with requests for photos and autographs? Or kisses! Yuck. Leave them alone, for heaven’s sake. It’s only decent.

After the steady application of these lessons over a period of many years, I gradually made the Celebrity Nullification Factor my own. There is no celebrity too lofty to make me stare. Not that I would recognize one anyway, being so busy minding my own virtuous business. Any of you celebrities out there who feel the need to feel like regular folks (there’s such a glut of that), just swing by my place. If I know you, you can’t possibly be a celebrity.

Pens About Town

Yesterday, Juliet and Gigi were featured at the NorCal chapter of SistersInCrime's spring showcase. Fans gathered at M is For Mystery in San Mateo to hear our gals read their latest masterpieces. Gigi read from her story "The Shadow of the River," featured in Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology. Juliet read from Hexes and Hemlines, the latest in her witchcraft mystery series, out Tuesday!

Gigi, being riveting

Somebody was a little crankypants about having her picture taken

Gigi with authors Pat Morin and Michelle Gagnon

Juliet charming the crowd

On V.S. Naipaul: or How To Cope When A Celebrity Behaves Like A Twat

Yesterday, the Nobel Prize winning author, V. S. Naipaul, said a lot of very stupid things about women writers. As an English professor, as a woman, and as an author, these comments obviously pissed me off. I ranted a bit about them on Twitter, and they helped set the tone for what was a really bizarre day for me, yesterday.

That said, one of the things that bothered me was seeing tweets, Facebook comments, and online commentary in which people expressed the idea that they will either no longer read Naipaul, or that they will refuse to start reading him. In other words, they've dismissed him as a writer because, when it comes to women, he's a first rate twat.

And yet, he's also a celebrity--and not just a celebrity, but a celebrated intellectual, a Nobel laureate, even a knight! How can he get something so utterly wrong, and be right about anything else? And does that mean he's not worthy of anything he's won?

The fact is that really, really intelligent people can have enormous blind spots. They can be awesomely intelligent in many, many realms--but be ludicrously stupid when it comes to particular issues. Naipaul is a great example of this sort of shortfall: before he harangued women, he'd made offensive comments about Africans, various former colonies, former-colonials in general, and the overweight, to name but a few.

So what do we do with our celebrities, especially our intellectual celebrities, when they reveal their hidden depths of twatocity? Do we throw out the baby, the bathwater, the tub, the water, and the rubber duckie?

My problem with this stance can best be summarized in two points, which I think are mutualistic of one another.

First of all, Naipaul isn't saying anything that I don't hear, all the time, as a female writer and reader. Men and women constantly ask me, "Would a man enjoy your books, or are they just for women?" Think about everything that statement implies, people. Have you ever asked the ticket booth person at the movie theater, "Will a woman enjoy this action film?" And yet, in discussing Naipaul on Facebook, a very funny male writer friend of mine talked about how, upon buying tickets to a movie for him and his wife, the boy behind the cash register warned, "You know this is a chick flick, right?" On the other side of the cultural spectrum from the spotty teenager, meanwhile, Brett Easton Ellis warns that "women can't direct," as they lack "the male gaze."

In other words, across the cultural spectrum, women are dismissed every day as artists. We write "books for women" and enjoy "chick-flicks," and it's our own brothers, husbands, sons, friends, neighbors, and/or colleagues who are doing the dismissing. We even do it ourselves! I've heard myself saying, "Yes, it's written by a woman, but I think you'll like it," or, "I hate chick-flicks." I think I'm being either helpful or honest, but what I'm really doing is pandering to cultural stereotypes about the efficacy of female art (which such usages suggest is specific) in comparison to male art (which such usages suggest is universal).

So Naipaul isn't alone, and--at least to me, as a woman--he's not the scariest shark in the waters. Give me a hundred Ivory Tower academics making vaguely feudal pronouncements over the spate of active politicians in office, people with actual power, currently trying to strip away women's reproductive health rights or redefine rape.

Secondly, I think the stance of refusing to read Naipaul because we disagree with his personal politics means we cut off any insights we might gain into his character, empathy for why he's gone on such a silly path, and any understanding of how his particular prejudices are part and parcel of why he's considered a genius. We're never going to understand prejudices, be they racial, religious, or gender-based, unless we engage with those who embrace them. Nor are we going to understand how people benefit from having such prejudices in our society, unless we explore their thinking and how their thinking fits into the world they live in. Think about it: Naipaul has been given the greatest awards a man can win in Western society. Instead of assuming he's won them despite his politics, I think we're better off assuming he's won them because of his politics.

We need to understand how those politics work, if we're to combat them. And boy, are we living in a day and age where women have a shocking amount to combat.

Don't get me wrong: I can understand not wanting to financially support Naipaul. To be honest, I'm probably not going to put him on a syllabus, or buy his own work myself. That doesn't mean, however, that it's not available in libraries or on the shelves of friends.

Furthermore, as women and as rational thinkers, I think we owe it to ourselves not only to understand the enemy, but understand why that enemy is considered a genius, and how that "genius" is intertwined with his plethora of prejudices. For, while I wish Naipaul was just a kooky writer living in antiquity, as some have dismissed him to be, I think he's very much of his time. And while we've come so far, ladies, we can't assume we get to rest on our laurels.

Not least because those laurels keep getting given to men like V. S. Naipaul.

For The Love Of Shatner

--Adrienne Miller

Unlike Juliet, I’ve never been hit on by a celebrity, nobel prize winner or not. The closest I’ve gotten to greatness is when I passed the guy who played Owen on Torchwood in Disneyland. I wasn’t quick enough with the camera so, yeah, I understand that, according to the laws of the internet, it didn’t officially happen.

That wasn’t the only time I’ve been in the presence of a celebrity though. There was the time my mom and I went to a Star Trek Convention. Yeah, I’ll give you a second to stop and soak in the geektastic nature of that sentence. My mom and I went to a Star Trek convention...and it was awesome.

Of course, it was only fitting as my mom was the one to introduce me to Star Trek. Starting when I was very young, she and I would snuggle up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and watch the classic series. Maybe it was the bright colors of the uniforms, or maybe I was just born a sucker for stories of good triumphing over evil, but I was hooked. 

But even with our love for all the of the series (except for Deep Space Nine) we aren’t really hard core fans. I don’t own a Starfleet uniform. My mom doesn’t have scale model of the bridge set up in her spare room. And neither one of us speaks a lick of Klingon. Even so, a few years back, when I heard about a Star Trek convention coming to a nearby city, I just knew we had to go. The kicker: Shatner and Nimoy would be there. Together. 

And I love me some Shatner. Young Shatner. Old Shatner. Doesn’t matter. The man is a combination of pure charm, hypnotic overacting and unapologetic self awareness all rolled up into a bundle of pure awesomeness. There was no way I was missing out on that.

"One of the advantages of being a Captain is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it."

The convention was every bit as awesome as I had hoped. Row upon row of vendor tables hawking every tacky little bit of merchandise that a geek girl like me could ask for. I even got to see my mom swoon a little when she met the guy from 2001: A Space Odyssey, though she denies to this day that she did.

Then it was time. We pushed our way into the crowded ballroom to watch Shatner and Nimoy speak. We clapped at the pre-show clips. We cheered when they came on stage. Then they started talking...and were dead boring. I don’t mean a little yawn worthy. I’m talking bor-ing. Two old friends up on a stage talking about nothing in particular. Awesome if you were one of the two friends, but if you happened to be one of the other several hundred people in the room you were left feeling, well, more than a little out of the loop. 

Fifteen minutes into it my mom turned to me and says, “Do you want to go?” I nodded, and we walked out of the room and away from the very thing we had driven two hours to see. 

Over a consolatory corn dog, we figured it wasn’t their fault.  Nothing wrong with them. No, we were the idiots who had driven all that way expecting to see Kirk and Spock instead of two regular guys filling time on an empty stage. They’re actors who are best when scripted, not court jesters performing on demand. My mistake. 

We made our way home a little disappointed. But I have to say, the disillusionment that one of my favorite celebrities was nothing more than mere human like everybody else didn’t diminish my love for William Shatner. 

How could it?


**Update**- My mom just texted me to say that the actor's name was Gary Lockwood, and she most certainly did not swoon. (She totally did)

Hanging out with Octavio Paz

by Juliet

"Merece lo que sueñas."
(deserve what you dream)
— Octavio Paz Libertad Bajo Palabra

I did a stint as a faculty wife.

Not just a faculty wife, mind you, but in Princeton, New Jersey. We moved there when my husband won a position as Full Professor, the pinnacle of many a hard-fought academic battle. He was over the moon, but for me the town seemed like the set of a Hollywood movie, complete with shady streets and a town square ringed with quaint stores…but ultimately empty, unreal, a hollow shell. Princeton was small town life meets old-money snobbery, both of which I was unfamiliar with and never quite figured out.

Suffice it to say: this California girl just didn’t fit in.

This is what I was *supposed* to look like. I didn't.

But one thing I’ll say for the place: I met a lot of superstars. Princeton is home not only to the university (with some great gargoyles, *nods to Gigi*) but also the Theological Institute and the Institute for Advanced Studies (where Einstein hung out). Add to this the Ivy League sheen of the Princeton name plus a short fifty- minute train ride from NYC’s Penn station, and you get a LOT of really interesting people passing through.

Just a few of the celebrities I met, some of whom I actually drank with late into the night: Cornel West, Cindy Crawford, Henry (Skip) Gates, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Maya Angelou, Spike Lee, Brooke Shields, David Duchovny, Richard Gere. And a whole slew of Nobel Laureates.

It’s stunning to be strolling along Nassau Square on a sweaty NJ summer afternoon, licking ice cream drips from your arm, and look up to see you’re about to walk into Maya Angelou. She was just as gracious and comforting and…otherworldly…as one might imagine

But my biggest celebrity moment, hands down, was when I attended a university cocktail party for Octavio Paz. For those of you who don’t know him (Gah! You should know this man!!!) Paz was a prolific writer, poet, and political activist from Mexico. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.

Besides writing amazing poetry and culture-shifting essays, he worked as an international diplomat, spoke out against governmental atrocities, helped define the Mexican cultural character and weighed in on politics and art, saying smart things like:

"I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers."

“Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life"

Paz is a cultural hero to most Mexicans, akin to mixing Clark Gable with Martin Luther King, and then tying up that package with some blingy rock-star awesomeness. Mexico loves its poets. Octavio Paz

So my husband and I walk into the cocktail party – me, no doubt, inappropriately dressed (did I mention how I never managed to fit in, exactly?) As always when socializing at P'ton, I was mentally girded for battle. The university was the kind of place where one might wander about in beautiful rooms, studying the art on the walls (in order to avoid awkward conversation) and realize you were looking at a framed Bill of Sale for a human being. A receipt for a slave auction. Things like that threw me. Everyone else always seemed unfazed. I never did get used to it.

Anyway, we walk in and I see a very short, very old man surrounded by a clutch of fawning admirers. My husband goes to get us each a glass of wine while I try to blend in with the wallpaper.

The little old man’s gaze meets mine. He smiles. I smile back. He leaves the throng and comes to stand next to me.

And then he starts coming on to me. I kid you not. The man was fifty years my senior, and several inches shorter, but no matter. He was charming and courteous in that gentlemanly, old-school Mexican way. He said he was bored talking about himself, he’d been doing it all his life. He wanted to know about me and my life. He told jokes, slung compliments, made astute, witty observations about the star-struck folks at the party (he wasn't the only celeb in attendance.)

We laugh. Then I look up to see my husband approaching. My (now-ex) husband was a hard-scrabble, ambitious Mexican immigrant, often possessive and jealous.
I braced myself. Would he make a scene? Though my husband was happier than I was in Princeton, he didn’t pick up on subtle social cues like I did. At the end of the day, despite his brains and education, he had been raised in a poor, working class, immigrant home. And now he saw exactly what was going on: that Octavio Paz, the author of the famous, groundbreaking study of Mexican identity, Labyrinth of Solitude, was making a play for his wife.

If a person were to make a scene at Princeton, publicly embarrassing a distinguished world-class author like Octavio Paz, a person could do some serious damage to his university career.

But my husband simply handed me my glass of wine, shook hands with Paz, told him what an honor it was to meet him…and then walked away. When I caught his eye from across the room, he quite literally threw up his hands.

Apparently, if Octavio Paz wanted me, he could have me.

Later, on the way home (no, I did not *sleep* with Octavio Paz. Get your minds out of the gutter, people!), my husband told me there was no going up against a cultural icon like Paz.

And since I can’t leave this essay without a taste of Paz, here’s one of my favorites:

A través

Doblo la página del día,
escribo lo que me dicta
el movimiento de tus pestañas.

Mis manos
abren las cortinas de tu ser
te visten con otra desnudez
descubren los cuerpos de tu cuerpo
Mis manos
inventan otro cuerpo a tu cuerpo.

Entro en ti,
veracidad de la tiniebla.
Quiero las evidencias de lo oscuro,
beber el vino negro:
toma mis ojos y reviéntalos.

Una gota de noche
sobre la punta de tus senos:
enigmas del clavel.

Al cerrar los ojos
los abro dentro de tus ojos.

En su lecho granate
siempre está despierta
y húmeda tu lengua.

Hay fuentes
en el jardín de tus arterias.

Con una máscara de sangre
atravieso tu pensamiento en blanco:
desmemoria me guía
hacia el reverso de la vida.


Across

I turn the page of the day,
writing what I'm told
by the motion of your eyelashes.

I enter you,
the truthfulness of the dark.
I want proofs of darkness, want
to drink the black wine:
take my eyes and crush them.

A drop of night
on your breast's tip:
mysteries of the carnation.

Closing my eyes
I open them inside your eyes.

Always awake
on its garnet bed:
your wet tongue.

There are fountains
in the garden of your veins.

With a mask of blood
I cross your thoughts blankly:
amnesia guides me
to the other side of life.