The ugly little plastic gargoyle perched on my computer screen has bright blue eyes now. They used to be beady little black eyes, but I found a bottle of glittery nail polish (don't ask) and fixed them. Much better. Now it'll remind me of what happened yesterday.
I should explain. The gargoyle is part of a nameplate like you'd find on somebody's desk. The nameplate says "Show Me," and it's stuck to the top of my computer monitor with that double-sided sticky foam tape that never comes all the way off when you pull it apart. My ex-boyfriend gave it to me and put it up there to "help me" with my writing. That was before he was my ex, of course. It was also before he decided he was gay and started sleeping with Bryan (I think). But that's another story. I just wanted to make it clear that I wasn't the one who put the stupid thing there. I don't want to take it down because it would leave those ugly little fragments of sticky foam tape. Besides, I guess it was kind of thoughtful of him.
"Show Me." It's the old writer's maxim, you know. Don't "tell" them anything; use words to paint a picture. Simple. I thought I understood it. But then, yesterday, Jonas Lloyd taught me what it really means. Yes, THE Jonas Lloyd. He was HERE on campus yesterday, doing a reading. He was the one who wrote the stories that made me want to be a writer, Period. His work changed my life when I was twelve, and I've never looked back. I've beaten my head against the wall in frustration, I've deleted and torn up hundreds, maybe thousands of pages in the last ten years, I've had panic attacks and self-doubt and I was almost diagnosed with clinical depression once. I told myself I was a fraud and a cheat and that I didn't have any talent. But deep down in my bones, I just didn't believe there was anything else I could be.
So yesterday, I was nervous as hell, and I'd hardly slept at all. I know, he's just a man, like anybody else. He came here in a crowded airplane and probably went to bed tired. He stayed at the Holiday Inn on River Road. He's Normal. He's Human. I knew this in the front of my head, but the back of my head couldn't shake the sense that I was going to be visited by the Great Faerie King, soaring in on a carpet of clouds.
The first glance of him almost dispelled that silly fantasy. He was wearing a beaten-up embroidered blue shirt that was probably as old as I am. His wild gray hair had a slightly yellowish tint, and it had receded past his temples. He had a visible potbelly, too, the way men get when they get old. He was wearing faded jeans and an old hand-tooled leather belt with a big silver buckle set with turquoise. Just another old guy. Breathes the same air as I do. What a relief. Then he looked up at me and the other students, and I saw his eyes.
The Grand Faerie King was back. My body froze, right in mid-sit. You know those geode quartz rocks that they polish mirror-smooth and sell in the nature stores? Jonas Lloyd's blue blue eyes puts those bright, brilliant, intricate crystal formations to shame. His sparkling irises jumped out of his face and grabbed me right where I was. That's probably the only reason I didn't fall on my ass.
After Jerry introduced him, Mr. Lloyd started with a few funny little stories to put everybody at ease. He's been doing this kind of thing for years and years, just touring around and publishing once in a while in the New Yorker or Playboy or something. He's probably told those stories a hundred times over, but he's a storyteller, and he can still make them work. He's like a Santa that hears the same wishes again and again but can still give every single kid a smile that makes them feel special and loved. He talked about his last book, and gave us a reading from a portion of his next one, and then there was a question-and-answer session.
Somebody asked him about Julia in "Abandon Me Not," and he talked for a while about her, then there was a question about his writing process. He says he has to write in the morning for three or four hours, then he has the rest of the day free, but he wished he could do it at night because he likes to sleep in. Somebody else asked where he gets his ideas, and he said he probably didn't have any more ideas than anyone else, he just made a habit of working them out on paper. Ben asked how it feels to have written "Adam's Junkyard," and he said it was funny, because he didn't actually like that particular story too much. He said there were others that he really liked and had high hopes for, but which never went anywhere and weren't accepted by his readers. He said he could never tell what would take off and what wouldn't.
I saw my hand raise itself. He'd been wonderful, and he was very pleasant and good and entertaining, but I could sort of tell that he hadn't said anything he hadn't said lots of times before. He looked right at me, pinning me to the spot, and he said "Yes, Miss?"
"Alison." I heard my voice as though I was at the end of a long tube.
"Alison. What would you like to know?"
"I know this might sound stupid. I don't know how to ask it right."
"I don't know how to answer it until you give me a hint, Alison."
"Okay. I want to know how you do it. What is it that you do? What's your secret? Why are your books and stories so, so Jonas Lloyd-like, and other things just… aren't? I mean, I try and try, some of what I've written is okay, I guess, but… um. How do you make your work so GOOD? I mean, how do you work your Magic?"
He just looked at me and blinked. Twice.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm asking. Forget it. Go on to someone else. I'm sorry."
