When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
I’ve slept with a few writers and I have to recommend it. Yes, they’re self-involved. Yes, they will take the best of you and use it in their next short story. Yes, they can be just as awful as non-writing men. But, it’s still worth if you’re seduced by words, by romance, by a guy who can talk about an Alice Munro story while frying an egg. Their sensitivity can be sublime. Their narcissism genius. Mystery and thriller writers are reliable. Poets are grateful. Journalists will eat in bed. Novelists take their time. It’s probably better to sleep with a writer before they get too famous. You know what fame can do to people.
Watcha got?
Filed under: Uncategorized |
Betsy Lerner 
I got nothin’. Some song writers (bad ones). A film-maker or two. Quite a lot of undergrads.
My sister and friends have been talking about “deal-breakers” with men (favorite book being Atlas Shrugged, and the like). I jokingly say “reading”. Part of me just wants a cave-man I think (my husband is an incorrigible wit and scientific intellectual, a renaissance engineer he likes to call himself). I wonder what it might be like to have a lover who let ME do all the thinking, who just shagged me senseless, then made breakfast, looking fit and fabulous.
The love interest in my current WIP can barely read, much less write, but he makes a mean campfire.
I’ve slept with some wannabes, but I’m the only real writer I’ve slept with. I gotta say, it’s rarely been a disappointment.
(Fuck, did I just say that? Or write it? Jeez, somebody get the duct tape and strap me down good and tight. These fingers get to dancing over this keyboard and the most outrageous spew spews out. Mouth, too. Seal it up tight, I can breathe through my nose.)
You know what Whitney says: “Learning to Loooooove yourself, is the greatest looooove of all”
I’ve got zero. Zilch. Never slept with a writer. One guy kept a journal, does that count? Come to think of it, I married him. Then wound up leaving him for a woman. Then she read my journal behind my back so I wound up leaving her too.
Wow, I guess I could use a little duct tape myself.
I’ve had several short-term stands with writers. And also, I’ve read sex scenes written by writers I’ve fucked. It’s disconcerting. I’m glad I’m too old and not doing that anymore–cause here I am at the literary fuckfest known as AWP, and am happily in bed with my laptop.
Unless they are able to write with their penis, it shouldn’t matter. And there is only room for one narcissist per bed.
LOVE!
You crack me up.
I’ve never slept with another writer, but I’ve had no complaints.
Then again, maybe I’ve been too focused on my POV to notice.
That’s a great point. Makes me think I should ask if the lack of complaint means the same thing as praise.
I’m dying to sleep with a writer. Alas, I am happily married, and have been for +20 years. Still….
I guess I’ll have to write a story about sleeping with a writer and see how it feels. Second best or better?
i sleep with a writer. he snores.
I seem to recall a mystery / crime writer who not only wasn’t reliable, but was documentably insane. He believes he’s Hugh Hefner of Nazareth, man with a mission, and his mother the Virgin was murdered by Barabbas. I’m only saying.
Feeling like I have to vomit….
Hm, an emetophiliac. (There’s a word for you, August.)
I had a long obsession with a wannabe, who cast me off and said I would never write a thing. Slap! Slap!
Later I went over to the visual camp and had my ego ground to bits by a fairly-there photographer.
Recently I’ve taken a shine to a cave man.
I’ve had all sorts of lovers and in my estimation cave men are the sexiest. Does yours grunt? The best is when they pull you by your hair. Makes you feel just like Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man.
Quite a few men have slept with me because I’m a writer. I made the mistake of writing them notes. They liked the sex fine, but they LOVED the notes. I find that surprising.
You are all being very naughty today.
You need your mouths washed out with…with…Tom’s Gentle Moisterizing Bodywash.
At least that’s was Tom calls it.
Writers in bed have their issues. The climax always comes 3/4 of the way through.
Ha!
And who said when we discussed Grisham “leaves you hanging, wanting more”?
A poet. The love of my life. There are some things I’ll never forget, including a sweet summer fragrance that always reminds me of her.
The worst thing a writer can do to an exlover is NOT write about them. That really hurts.
I wonder if Philip Roth would agree. I’d rather be the writer than the written about.
Never dated and/or slept with a writer–a few architects, a photographer, a painter…that’s as close to the arts I got. Married to a lawyer and pretty happy. One artist/creative type in the family is enough if you ask me but some people thrive on precariousness…
i might like you better if we slept together–
You forgot book-writing astrophysicists, my Number One Literary Sex Object, whom I have had over and over in my dreams.
I heard Tina Fey name check Temple Grandin last night on 30 Rock. Awesome.
I’m married to a writer. He told me stories to get me into bed and he’s telling me stories still. I can’t divorce him, though, otherwise those stories will be about me.
“Journalists will eat in bed. Novelists take their time.”
And journalists who are trying to be novelists take their time eating in bed. Not the best combo, but it’s what I got.
“eating in bed.” Ha. I did not intend the ambiguity, but make of it what you will, ladies.
All my boys have been in bands.
Nothing like a guitar player who can play you like an instrument until your body is the music you hear when he’s on stage.
My closest experience to sleeping with a writer is when I push the current book I’m reading under my pillow because I’m too lazy to place it on the side table before I turn off the lamp.
Their condoms are full of periods and cummas.
I fell in love with a writer who sent me Pablo Neruda poems and flower petals in scented envelopes. It worked. I married him. Then he became a scientist. But he still writes me poems on high holidays.
Awww. My great grandfather was a ladies’ wear buyer and wrote my grandmother long poems about her dolls when he was on buying trips in New York. I can only hope he slipped in a few love poems for his wife.
An actor who made it…and didn’t want to make me any more, a teacher… too bossy, an alcoholic…couldn’t concentrate…married a uni lecturer who had an affair with Miss University Smarty Pants, then married her…a financial advisor…yawn…but never a writer. Watch out, this cougars on the prowl. Grrrr.
This post has inspired me to impromptu unscientific research. I slept with a writer again last night, as I have so slept for many years. I didn’t take notes–I was asleep–but I’m inclined to conclude that writers are much more enjoyable as occasional bed-mates, or short-term flings, than they are as loci for long-term intimate commitments. Even when they’re there they’re not there.
My research bears this out, too. The IT guy was the most meteoric, but short-lived (take that how you want) and the math teacher was the best for sustainability and overall ability to please. The photographer, the most adventurous. The accountant, the least. The attorney, the most grateful (wait, what?). The property management guys were delicious lovers, but had to be lubed up with lots of alcohol before they loosened up enough to have fun. The journalist/writer, the most romantic, but it didn’t last long before romance became too much work and he took to eating in bed. Which may be more an indictment of me than of him.
This really did make me giggle, especially the mention of taking the best for the next story. I’ve just finished editing my first novel for the hundredth time, and it’s nothing if not an ode to the people who’ve affected me the most in my life. But since I’m a crafty woman, I think I’ve well protected their privacy.
Betsey,
I wrote a novel about this. It is currently being shopped around. I don’t want to say too much because a couple of people have it…