onecheapdate (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
onecheapdate) wrote2018-10-24 10:58 am
onecheapdate) wrote2018-10-24 10:58 am
LJ IDOL - WEEK 3 - Tsundoku
LJ IDOL - Week 3
Prompt: Tsundoku
5 Things I Did With Your Book and 1 Thing I Didn't
It’s a strange feeling to be immortalized in someone’s published writing. Having even the smallest piece of yourself imprinted on a page and bound to a spine and then distributed all across the globe is somehow both exhilarating and invasive. It’s enigmatic and it’s suffocating. And it weighed weird and heavy on my mind from the instant I received your voicemail.
“Hey, Gidget,” you said on the other line, using the painfully familiar nickname you had bestowed upon me when we’d first started dating. It was a moniker you’d used less and less frequently as our relationship progressed, and eventually it was saved only for times when you were apologizing for standing me up or coming home late or being caught in a lie. You used it as a weapon, a device to appeal to my sense of nostalgia and soften my anger. Nothing good had followed that nickname in a long time and this instance was no different.
“I just wanted to let you know you’re in my new book. I didn’t use your name, of course, but it’s very obviously you. I guess I just didn’t want you to be surprised when you read it. I suppose you’re still my muse in some way. Anyway, I’ll be in New York next month as part of the book tour. We should get coffee at that little place you love. The one where you can see the Christmas tree from the front windows. Call me.”
Many probably would’ve found the message delightfully romantic. A younger, more naive version of myself had been absolutely enthralled with the idea of dating a published novelist and the prospect of him being so utterly enraptured by me that I found shadows of myself in his work. I would read your drafts hoping to find myself in the physical description of a side character or in one of the quirks of a protagonist or the namesake of a love interest, but unless I squinted really hard, there was never so much as a whisper of me in your writing. I always found myself half-heartedly disappointed, but ever the optimist, reasoned that I was yours and you probably just didn’t want to share me with the world. So, having this happen now, after a tumultuous seven year relationship and subsequent volatile break up, felt like a slap in the face. You’d intentionally kept me out of your work only to later use it as a tool against me. It was an extension of something you’d done so often during our time together - using words, both literal and figurative, to try and manipulate me.
I didn’t return your call and we didn’t meet for coffee. But when your book was released, I couldn’t ignore the nagging ache in my chest.
5 Things I Did With Your Book and 1 Thing I Didn’t
ONE. It would have been easy enough to avoid your book altogether and I’d intended to do just that. I truly had no interest in seeing your printed portrayal of me, but I felt violated. It was as though you’d chiseled a chunk out of me, crushed it into dust and let the wind carry the particles far and wide. Anyone who bought your novel was holding a part of me in their hands, without my consent. I hated it. And so I found myself bracing against the bitter winter weather and ducking into bookstores. I’d buy a copy or two or more. I amassed a collection of your book hoping I’d eventually reclaim enough pieces of myself to feel whole again. Eventually, towering stacks of your book sat tucked in every corner of my apartment. They littered the coffee table and my night stands. But, the practice never made me feel better and before long I ended my quest. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to discard all of those pieces of me and so I left them and tried to ignore the ever looming piles.
TWO. I was watching a reality tv show that you’d hated. You’d always found it frivolous and uninspired. You’d said I was rotting my brain and insulting your intelligence. I’d cared then, but I didn’t care now. A commercial started playing and I jumped up from the sofa and dashed to the kitchen. I popped a frozen meal in the microwave and leaned against the counter. You’d always turned your nose up at frozen foods. A high-pitched beep signaled my meal’s readiness just as the commercial break ended. I grabbed it and returned to the couch, only to realize the bottom of my dinner’s plastic tray was too hot to balance on my lap. Mindlessly, I grabbed a copy of your book off the coffee table and used it as a plate. Splatters of brown gravy splashed over the thin walls of the container, staining the jacket of your book. I didn’t care.
THREE. I never minded the chore of vacuuming. I would crank up some music and dance around. At first you found this charming, but as time went on my immaturity annoyed you and I stopped doing it. But today, I was feeling myself and I queued up the most sugary pop playlist I could find. I danced around the pole and sang into the vacuum head. I was so engrossed in my living room concert that a particularly energetic burst of choreography sent the vacuum slamming into the leg of an end table. I watched with surprise as the wood cracked and buckled. The table toppled over, sending a stack of your books tumbling to the floor. I frowned at the mess for a moment before piling your books back up and righting the table. I slid the pile under the corner that was now missing support, creating a makeshift leg. It was still a little tilted, but it worked in the moment. I returned to my chore and my performance.
FOUR. Summer turned to fall and the weather became crisp and cool. I turned off the A/C in exchange for wide open windows and fresh air. It made for wonderful sleeping conditions and as I snuggled into bed and under my warm blankets I felt hopeful. I’d always loved autumn and had a inexplicable inkling that this season would be good to me. I fell asleep easily, but my rest was interrupted as the wind outside picked up. The breeze was causing my open bedroom door to swing back and forth and bang against the jam. After trying, and failing, to ignore it, I slid out of bed and pawed around on the nightstand. My fingers easily found a hardcover copy of your book. Bleary-eyed, I grabbed it and moved to the door. I dropped it unceremoniously to the carpeted floor and pushed it with my foot into the corner of the door, using it as a makeshift stopper. The wind howled, but the door didn’t budge. Satisfied, I crawled back into bed to resume my peaceful slumber.
FIVE. Winter had officially settled in. I felt the cold deep within my bones whenever I left the house. And after a long day of being out in the elements, the chill was deep seeded. I shivered as I knelt down in front of the fireplace in my living room, longing for the warmth of a good hearth. An evening of stoking the fire, a bold cup of coffee, and a good book would be a perfect ending for what had been a good day. I started to collect the usual kindling, but paused when I was struck with an unexpected thought. It had been a good day. In fact, it had been a great day. And it was just one great day of many that had come to pass with increasing frequency over the past few months. For the first time in a long time, I glanced around my apartment and saw the stacks of your books, the ones I had collected in my quest to reclaim myself. I no longer felt empty. The piece of me that had been missing had healed itself. It had been filled by the life and the experiences and the love I’d felt in the year since your book’s release. It took all night, but one-by-one, I tossed your books into the fire and watched the flames lick at the pages until they charred and turned to ash. There was no hesitation, no sensation that I was burning a part of myself. I was so much more than any words you could ever pen.
You wrote other books and I’m sure you dated other women. I’m sure you told them that they inspired you and you that couldn’t write if they ever left you. All the things you told me that made me stay even when you were cheating or lying or being emotionally abusive. I pitied the girl I had been, so wrapped up in her ideals of romance and literature and the tortured artist trope. But I also felt free and strong again. In all my time surrounded by piles of your book, I’d never felt the least bit compelled to crack open even one spine. I never flipped a page or lifted a cover. I never read your book and I never would.
Prompt: Tsundoku
It’s a strange feeling to be immortalized in someone’s published writing. Having even the smallest piece of yourself imprinted on a page and bound to a spine and then distributed all across the globe is somehow both exhilarating and invasive. It’s enigmatic and it’s suffocating. And it weighed weird and heavy on my mind from the instant I received your voicemail.
“Hey, Gidget,” you said on the other line, using the painfully familiar nickname you had bestowed upon me when we’d first started dating. It was a moniker you’d used less and less frequently as our relationship progressed, and eventually it was saved only for times when you were apologizing for standing me up or coming home late or being caught in a lie. You used it as a weapon, a device to appeal to my sense of nostalgia and soften my anger. Nothing good had followed that nickname in a long time and this instance was no different.
“I just wanted to let you know you’re in my new book. I didn’t use your name, of course, but it’s very obviously you. I guess I just didn’t want you to be surprised when you read it. I suppose you’re still my muse in some way. Anyway, I’ll be in New York next month as part of the book tour. We should get coffee at that little place you love. The one where you can see the Christmas tree from the front windows. Call me.”
Many probably would’ve found the message delightfully romantic. A younger, more naive version of myself had been absolutely enthralled with the idea of dating a published novelist and the prospect of him being so utterly enraptured by me that I found shadows of myself in his work. I would read your drafts hoping to find myself in the physical description of a side character or in one of the quirks of a protagonist or the namesake of a love interest, but unless I squinted really hard, there was never so much as a whisper of me in your writing. I always found myself half-heartedly disappointed, but ever the optimist, reasoned that I was yours and you probably just didn’t want to share me with the world. So, having this happen now, after a tumultuous seven year relationship and subsequent volatile break up, felt like a slap in the face. You’d intentionally kept me out of your work only to later use it as a tool against me. It was an extension of something you’d done so often during our time together - using words, both literal and figurative, to try and manipulate me.
I didn’t return your call and we didn’t meet for coffee. But when your book was released, I couldn’t ignore the nagging ache in my chest.
ONE. It would have been easy enough to avoid your book altogether and I’d intended to do just that. I truly had no interest in seeing your printed portrayal of me, but I felt violated. It was as though you’d chiseled a chunk out of me, crushed it into dust and let the wind carry the particles far and wide. Anyone who bought your novel was holding a part of me in their hands, without my consent. I hated it. And so I found myself bracing against the bitter winter weather and ducking into bookstores. I’d buy a copy or two or more. I amassed a collection of your book hoping I’d eventually reclaim enough pieces of myself to feel whole again. Eventually, towering stacks of your book sat tucked in every corner of my apartment. They littered the coffee table and my night stands. But, the practice never made me feel better and before long I ended my quest. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to discard all of those pieces of me and so I left them and tried to ignore the ever looming piles.
TWO. I was watching a reality tv show that you’d hated. You’d always found it frivolous and uninspired. You’d said I was rotting my brain and insulting your intelligence. I’d cared then, but I didn’t care now. A commercial started playing and I jumped up from the sofa and dashed to the kitchen. I popped a frozen meal in the microwave and leaned against the counter. You’d always turned your nose up at frozen foods. A high-pitched beep signaled my meal’s readiness just as the commercial break ended. I grabbed it and returned to the couch, only to realize the bottom of my dinner’s plastic tray was too hot to balance on my lap. Mindlessly, I grabbed a copy of your book off the coffee table and used it as a plate. Splatters of brown gravy splashed over the thin walls of the container, staining the jacket of your book. I didn’t care.
THREE. I never minded the chore of vacuuming. I would crank up some music and dance around. At first you found this charming, but as time went on my immaturity annoyed you and I stopped doing it. But today, I was feeling myself and I queued up the most sugary pop playlist I could find. I danced around the pole and sang into the vacuum head. I was so engrossed in my living room concert that a particularly energetic burst of choreography sent the vacuum slamming into the leg of an end table. I watched with surprise as the wood cracked and buckled. The table toppled over, sending a stack of your books tumbling to the floor. I frowned at the mess for a moment before piling your books back up and righting the table. I slid the pile under the corner that was now missing support, creating a makeshift leg. It was still a little tilted, but it worked in the moment. I returned to my chore and my performance.
FOUR. Summer turned to fall and the weather became crisp and cool. I turned off the A/C in exchange for wide open windows and fresh air. It made for wonderful sleeping conditions and as I snuggled into bed and under my warm blankets I felt hopeful. I’d always loved autumn and had a inexplicable inkling that this season would be good to me. I fell asleep easily, but my rest was interrupted as the wind outside picked up. The breeze was causing my open bedroom door to swing back and forth and bang against the jam. After trying, and failing, to ignore it, I slid out of bed and pawed around on the nightstand. My fingers easily found a hardcover copy of your book. Bleary-eyed, I grabbed it and moved to the door. I dropped it unceremoniously to the carpeted floor and pushed it with my foot into the corner of the door, using it as a makeshift stopper. The wind howled, but the door didn’t budge. Satisfied, I crawled back into bed to resume my peaceful slumber.
FIVE. Winter had officially settled in. I felt the cold deep within my bones whenever I left the house. And after a long day of being out in the elements, the chill was deep seeded. I shivered as I knelt down in front of the fireplace in my living room, longing for the warmth of a good hearth. An evening of stoking the fire, a bold cup of coffee, and a good book would be a perfect ending for what had been a good day. I started to collect the usual kindling, but paused when I was struck with an unexpected thought. It had been a good day. In fact, it had been a great day. And it was just one great day of many that had come to pass with increasing frequency over the past few months. For the first time in a long time, I glanced around my apartment and saw the stacks of your books, the ones I had collected in my quest to reclaim myself. I no longer felt empty. The piece of me that had been missing had healed itself. It had been filled by the life and the experiences and the love I’d felt in the year since your book’s release. It took all night, but one-by-one, I tossed your books into the fire and watched the flames lick at the pages until they charred and turned to ash. There was no hesitation, no sensation that I was burning a part of myself. I was so much more than any words you could ever pen.
You wrote other books and I’m sure you dated other women. I’m sure you told them that they inspired you and you that couldn’t write if they ever left you. All the things you told me that made me stay even when you were cheating or lying or being emotionally abusive. I pitied the girl I had been, so wrapped up in her ideals of romance and literature and the tortured artist trope. But I also felt free and strong again. In all my time surrounded by piles of your book, I’d never felt the least bit compelled to crack open even one spine. I never flipped a page or lifted a cover. I never read your book and I never would.
no subject
(I made the mistake of reading it. It was awful.)
This is brilliant and I love this take on the topic. :D
no subject
I'm glad you enjoyed the piece! Thank you for reading!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I could completely understand why the narrator would hate having those pieces of herself out there for others to read (even if not true to her, and then possibly worse-- painting her in some other, untrue light). I cringed when she mentioned buying copies of the book, which only rewards the author. Though it fit perfectly with her feelings.
But once the money had been spent... the unloving treatment of the books, and then their ultimate use as fire-bricks, were exactly what they and the author deserved.
Nicely done!
no subject
I might have been that girl too ... but not of a writer guy but of someone who might have talked about it. The trauma almost the same.
Thank you for penning this. I am gonna come back and re read this - am a masochist of sorts.
no subject