It’s funny sometimes what the Mitten can throw at you.
It was just another untethered 517 Sunday night. One spent wandering through Old Town brick. I was unsupervised and unappreciated; it was a night rapidly bleeding into no agenda. Even though the underlying vibe was one of sticky hours in desperate need of filling.
It was the third bar of the night. Hours of pre-partying sloshed behind me. Because it’s impossible to predict the number of pints required to properly wash away the stink of a week’s worth of tin monsters. Especially the temperamental ones, born of European pedigree. Because those fuckers can bite you if you aren’t paying attention.
It was also difficult understanding the dosage required to help calm a wounded heart. The one hurting from the recent editing. Not because of the red pen slash and burn of it all—that was necessary to allow better explanations to flourish. But because of the triggers found in all the scribbled madness from my first days here in the land of Q.D. Donut zombies.
I thought I was finished with that story. And had forced myself to forget those better parts. But revisiting those words threatened to open old wounds.
So I needed some liquid disinfectant to help keep me stable.
And suddenly, there she was. A sit-com style smash cut to a happier scene.
Right behind the bar was an as yet undiscovered, pint-sized literary powerhouse. Sporting large frames and a short shirt. A fellow writer pouring out the pints, when not serving up genuine conversation in a plasticine world.
She guessed from the custom engraving of my mug that I’m a writer; I guessed from her nervous, nearly closing time energy that she is fresh to Lansing. The whole purgatoriality of it all hadn’t yet settled in for her. And that was… refreshing.
I envied her that purity.
Between mug club pints we engaged first in conversation. Then later, a literary version of “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.”
She liked my words; I liked her smile. And the poetry she shared with me on that brittle Sunday night.
It was admittedly a little odd being that intimate that quickly. Strange, but in a good way. Like going to the gym drunk. Intuition said I should trust her. And being the ridiculous fox that I am, that is exactly what I did.
She was kind enough to share her schedule with me. One not terribly compatible with the heavings of heavy tin birds. But I’m sure we’ll figure out a way to make it all work. Because she inspired me to write something real this week. Words that will be shared only with her. And I’m anxious to hear her critique.
Bleeding my very soul out onto the page just to hear her voice again seems exactly like my kind of bargain. So that is what I did. Jumped right the fuck off that literary cliff to bravely share some of the darkness I carry.
And it’s hilarious to me that amongst the excitement of finding another writer that I forgot all about the subtleties of proper social interactions. Because I never actually introduced myself. Granted, part of me is tickled that she only knows me as Typewriter Fox. Yet it nags at me that I don’t know her name.
But she gave me a peek into her soul.
And maybe for the moment, that’s enough.
Because I think we both still have a lot of writing healing left to do.
And maybe, we could do just a little bit of that…together.
