Le maudit Mo D.

our rivals

Yesterday at Costco, I saw a novel written by a woman I vaguely knew at the Ladycollege. She was actually one of the people who treated me the way we treat people with no talent who try to integrate themselves with the improv community. That "I will be nice to you but since you suck there will be a limit to how nice I'll be" thing that we're all guilty of. Actually, she was a little ruder than that.

The story:

During my first month or two at the Ladycollege, I attempted to join the staff of the humor magazine. Looking back, the humor mag wasn't that humorous, but I wanted to make friends with other ladies who fancied themselves funny, and so I responded to their ad for the first meeting of the year. I attended, and met the staff, who discussed the inner workings of the mag, who was an editor, what they were looking for, blah blah blah. I must have said something that they either didn't find funny or rubbed them the wrong way. Or they really weren't looking for new members, but had to pretend like they were in order to get funding from the college. Either way, they didn't want me around and had to think of a nice, passive-aggressive way to get rid of me.

This was their Mo Elimination Plan: I knew that the weekly meetings happened at a certain time and place, and even though my e-mails and phone calls to the editors had gone unanswered that week, I ventured to the Quad to this woman's house and rang the bell. She answered the door in anticipation of the other members arrivals and when she saw me, her face fell. I said I was there for the meeting, and she started hemming and hawing and decided to tell me that they had changed the time of the meeting, but wouldn't tell me to what time it was changed. Tired of my questions, she then slammed the door in my face! WTF, I thought! I turned around and saw her fellow editors coming up the walk to the door that had just been slammed at me. They averted their eyes and went in, making sure I didn't run up behind them to ingratiate my unfunny ass into their unfunny mag staff.

Another blow to my self-esteem.

Anyway, the leader of this pack of hos who didn't want me around is now a published novelist herself. Ordinarily, I am a great back-haver of every Ladycollegian there is. I even lamented to Bob recently that I was sad that we couldn't afford to get IceStone kitchen countertops since a Smithie owns the IceStone company and I like to support my bitches. I am especially curious about and interested in networking with other Ladycollegians of Fiction. But because this woman slammed a door in the face of a bright and hopeful first-year who just happened to be me, I don't want to lay down any cash for her book, much less read it, because OMG she was, like SO MEAN TO ME BITD! That really hurt me and did some damage!

Anyway, I know we're all guilty of pulling mean stunts like this. Hell, Bob and I are still making fun of the low-IQ-ed improv wannabe from four or so years ago who managed to crap up Micetro repeatedly until he went back to Hays County with his gun and his sixer of Natty Light. But I certainly don't expect this dude to ever buy my book, not only because I doubt he can read, but because why should he? I wasn't very nice to him. And it's a novel about not-very-nice people. (Clearly, I am not very nice too.)

Should I rise above and forget that really awful episode, in which I spent my entire college career not doing anything remoted artsy or creative, save my radio show, because I got the message early on that my brand of creativity was not up to community standards? The fact that I really have a hard time with that either means NO, I can't rise above because I have a thin skin, or that maybe she should have let me down a little easier (I'm not shitting you--she slammed the door in my face. And as I recall, it was a door with a bunch of glass panes in it, so I could totally see her on the other side) in order to earn my future readership.

That shit really hurt my feelings.

Posted by Zerd at July 6, 2008 03:32 PM