The night I realized I no longer wanted to make mischief of some kind. Not like I used to, anyway. About nine-months ago I wrote an essay entitled "Where the Wild Things Were" and submitted it to The New York Times' Modern Love section. Two months later, it was rejected and for the last some-odd months the piece has been collecting dust in my "nomads and wanderers" folder on my desktop, along with a slew of other homeless pieces.
So when my dear friend, Danny asked me to to guest-post on Dad Gone Mad and then accepted my offer to post an essay that never saw the light of anyone's computer (sans for mine) I was thrilled.
GGC
12 comments:
That was a beautiful piece!
DadGoneMad was right. Their loss was our gain, fo sho!
Great job!
It's a sign of gradually accruing wisdom when you realize that the people in your life are people you actually chose and not just flotsam and jetsam you ended up with. I liked the contrast between the real friend (Angela) vs. the stoned guys who ultimately didn't matter, and how they could still end up in the same place. That's the thing about going out and listening to music, I've found: when you're very young, it's about being seen and figuring out what you can get away with. When you're older, it's actually about the music.
Hope some of your other homeless pieces find a way out eventually...
Don't know how you manage to capture your own experiences and make them so universally recognizable. Thank you for this. So glad we got to read it.
New York Times? What do they know anyway?
I'm leaving my comment over here because, well, it's for you and sorry DGM, I read you daily and think you rock, but I love GGC more...
Can I just say how much I loved this? Not only the truth of it, but the telling. I loved the way you threaded your Wild Things references through it, scattered here and there without ever being too heavy-handed, and the way your homecoming was caught exactly right. Without ever having been a real party girl myself, I knew exactly what you were talking about. Lovely.
You write about the struggles in my head. I really truly appreciate your writing.
I love it. I know the feeling. I'm sad this wasn't put in the magazine, but glad because it means I got to read it and love it.
I did enjoy that, thank you.
I agree with kittenpie: you don't need to have been a party girl (oh how I wish I had been just to SAY it now) to understand and feel and KNOW all this. You wrote it beautifully and Modern Love (my favorite must-read on Sundays) would have been lucky to have had this one.
Thanks, guys. Love you all.
i love the modern love column at the nytimes. your essay was way better than anything i've read in it lately. i know exactly that feeling you describe.
I so relate to this. (But you described it far more eloquently than I could... My version would have been, "When did I become a Old Navy-wearin', mini-van drivin', Southern mama?!? WAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhh!) My inner punk is not dead but since my 2-year twins were born has definitely moved on to bigger and better stuff. And somehow that's deeply comforting. (BTW, my kiddos were rockin' out to The Clash on the way to Target today. It made be smile BIG.)
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