Doing it for the narrative

The other night I had dinner with a new-ish friend at a trendy restaurant in Montrose. We have been online friends for years but we’ve never before hung out irl, and when I heard that she was having her own enchantée with a much younger man, I decided our friendship needed to become corporeal. I needed to talk to someone who understood. A few things about this friend: We are more or less the same age, which, as a woman now in her 50s (I just turned 50) I so appreciate this. Most of my friends, and my aforementioned love interest, is much (much) younger than I am.

Back to my friend. We are almost astrological twins— Taurus sun, Libra rising— but she has a much more practical and useful moon— she’s a Virgo moon, I’m Pisces. So while I’m dreaming, she’s making plans and executing them. Beautifully, I might add. We are both ruled by Venus— the planet of love, romance, beauty, food, art— sensual pleasures. We love love. When she said “I’m a romantic!” I thought, wow, so am I. But why have I been pretending for so long that I’m not?

Anyway, our dinner was fantastic. We drank wine and ate pizza (half off after 9pm hello it pays to eat like a Parisian). We have A LOT in common and it was easy, like hanging out with an old-new friend. She asked me if I planned to see my parenthèse enchantée again. I said that I invited him to visit me here in the US, but with the caveat that I think it’s probably not the best idea. He hadn’t yet replied to my lukewarm invitation. She said, “Why not?” I explained that the age difference wasn’t the only issue. He is a new father and estranged from his ex-partner. He is between jobs and possibly careers. But, I confessed, beyond the obvious, what gave me the most pause, was the fear that seeing him again might affect my writing about him. I said, “If we meet again, and it sucks, that will color everything we had before.” I feared it might de-enchant the enchantment. It was all afternoon kir royale’s and kissing in the rain and lost in translation I love you, a little. Real life could, no- would, destroy the fantasy.

When I was writing my first book, This Is My Body, about, in part, an illicit emotional entanglement with a man, I told myself as I was writing “you can’t have both.” Meaning, when I wanted to reach out to the man, I told myself that I could do that, but the results would not lead me to what I wanted- which was to be able to write something beautiful about the pain and joy and confusion I was feeling. Seeing him again in real life could derail my writing— in addition to blowing up my life in a hundred others ways. But I wanted to write a book, I needed to write a book. For many reasons, not all of them artistic. More on that another time.

“Wow,” my friend said, nodding. “Doing it for the narrative.” We say this in online spaces a lot. “Do it for the plot.” When she said that, I realized I’ve been doing it for the plot for at least one and a half books now. The result: I wrote a beautiful book I’m proud of. But I still don’t have what I want, which is real, lasting, hot, sexy, smart love. Am I doing it wrong?

According to the internet, today is Before Sunrise day. It’s June 16. The day the two young would-be lovers in the beautiful Richard Linklater film meet. Before Sunrise came out in 1995, when I was 20, before the internet made it impossible to lose touch with someone. It was very possible to meet someone, have a meaningful encounter as Jesse and Celine do, or even fall in love, and never ever see each other again. This made happenstance connections seem truly magical, and sometimes a little tragic. So the lore goes, Linklater met a young woman named Amy Lehrhaupt at a toy store in 1989 and spent an evening walking around and talking with her, connecting deeply with her, and then they lost touch. He told her he wanted to make a movie about their encounter. He did. Three of them. Linklater hoped Amy would hear of the movie (s) and show up to a premiere, or reach out to him. Years later he learned she was killed in a motorcycle accident shortly before he began filming Before Sunrise.

Why didn’t Linklater find Amy himself? Why did he passively hope she might find him? Did he also worry that meeting her might disrupt his creative process, the ferris wheel of ideas in his head, ideas he needed to complete the film, to make it the way he wanted to make it, without the distraction of the messy nature of real human relationships?

I think the next natural question is- what matters more? Our experiences or what we make from them? Maybe making art from life is a way to control, a way to tourniquet the rush of emotions in a way that makes them manageable? Less scary? But on the other hand, what would happen if I saw the unrecorded life as just as worthy as the recorded. What if I just let myself live. In the conclusion of her 2000 memoir Happening, about her experience seeking, and nearly dying from an illegal abortion in the 1960s, Annie Ernaux writes:

Among all the social and psychological reasons that may account for my past, of one I am certain: these things happened to me so that I might recount them. Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.

But I am not Annie Ernaux— Nobel laureate. I’m just me. A woman. A writer, yes. But just a woman.

In Kate Zabreno’s third novel, Green Girl, she writes, "Sometimes she narrates her actions inside her head in third-person…. Does that make her a writer or a woman?"

*Please enjoy this short video from my balcony on rue Jean Pierre Timbaud, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, the night Paris Saint Germain football club won against Milan. You can see it was just a street party where I was. You can also see I was smoking a cigarette for the first time in 25 years for the narrative. Lol.