Do Me Write

Hey, Stephanie! I have a little request. If you’re going to keep changing me, reach those artificial nacho cheese-dusted hands onto the Wheel of My Fortune and spin it to figure out who I’d be this thirty-second time (Yes, I counted.) around, could you at least swap out…you know?

Yes, I’m aware, all too much, in fact. You say that you’re a pantser, that you’re a flâneuse who would rather meander the winding alleys of your imagination rather than follow some preset road map. You balk at the idea of anything other than the thorny weeds of a plot point sprouting up in your mind guiding you to concoct “the most heartfelt romance story to ever grace the pages of Paddweb.com”. Perhaps, my plea would but fall on deaf ears…uhm, fingers. However, as I stand here at the foot of the craggy Pennines (my ninth home), my large brown eyes (which have always been the same) exhausted from deciphering my fate hanging in the air, I feel the need to discuss all this with you course in my veins like ink flows onto a sheet of pristine white paper.

Let’s see now. In the past five months, you’ve thrust upon me the costumes of a flower shop owner from sunny Brighton (for which, I sneezed up a storm. You forgot I had allergies.), a street tough New York cop (Guns! Gore! GAH, no!), a trapeze artist from St. Peterburg (Heights, really?! My stomach just flipped remembering that.). Gosh, there were so many masks, but not much time. My favourite would most certainly be my February identity, a jazz singer from the Philippines with long, wavy tresses and a staccato laugh. Alas, I was blissfully lapping up the dulcet voice and jewel-toned wardrobe you had gifted me with when you smacked your lips together and hit that backspace button. I could only silently scream “NO!” before that blinking black line transformed me from beaming Antonella Callea to pink mohawk-sporting Roxie Matthews from your ill-researched idea of LA. No worries, though. As per usual, I just sighed and did your bidding. What’s an entity that only exists in a yellow folder icon on some beat-up, crumb-covered laptop to do?

However, there is one thing about me that you’ve kept intact, a tiny morsel of my parsed together existence that has remained as solid as the stone walls of the first cave drawings where Homo Erectus first told his tales. From the moment you first entered your email to create that writing website account, you have always envisioned me ending up with Ethan ---- blonde, burly Ethan. Ethan who’s…. uhm…. golden-haired and muscular. I get it. If you, Stephanie Marie Thorpe, can not bag very much married Nathan Hayworth (really clever modifying only the first syllable by the way), if your prince charming slipped that glass slipper on another woman, you suppose that you could at least give me --- the baby spawned by your thoughts, the two dimensional chameleon you conceived for the sole purpose of simulating the elation of being Mrs. Hayworth --- the decency of wedding your dream boy. At least, in this world of the Word document, anything is possible.

Well, indeed, when you’re the one tap-tapping away, everything is yes and amen…. except for what I really want. You see, Stephanie, we ---your characters --- have been hiding a secret from you, a “sin,” so to speak, from the alpha and omega of this entire universe’s existence. The moment of truth has arrived. It’s about time you know that yes, I’m in love…with Daniel.

(Yes, I could observe your mouth contort into some twisted pretzel. Stop!)

I can finally admit to you that Daniel --- the last-minute addition to your piece, the supporting role in the film in your brain cinema you only cast because your Paddweb readers insisted on a best friend for good ol’ moi ---- is the star of every fantasy I’ve conjured up in my fictional consciousness. No, no, don’t yell. I do understand that to develop the hazel-eyed, brunet hero of my journey, you’d listed down every single quality that has enshrined Nathan in your pedestal (literally. I’ve seen you scribbling it at the back of a receipt. My Daniel can’t even get the decency of a proper notepad?!) and ascribed the exact opposite of him. If Nathan spends his afternoons with his cheeks covered in mud on a football pitch, Daniel’s face is constantly covered by a hardbound. If Nathan air guitars along as Metallica blasts from his headphones, Daniel hums to Elton John records, true to his name. You even went the other way on a detail as minuscule as his favourite ice cream flavour, vanilla to Nathan’s rocky road. I was meant to take this difference as a glaring neon sign pointing to my leading man. Well, it did; it was just not the Casanova you had envisioned.

Yes, Stephanie, it is by your fingers we live and breathe when your laptop is on, but once you click on “shut down”, you couldn’t and can’t stop us from, well, living and breathing beyond the script you feed us. Neither could you stop me and Daniel from using the same power you wield over us to draw our own arc into each other’s embrace: the power of words.

You couldn’t stop the day I had reached across the table Daniel was sat at the Character Café and beamed at him. As your machine for writing died down, a surge of energy coursed in my verbally constructed veins. It was but a stream of consciousness when I grabbed his muscular hands, stared into those amber orbs, and gave him a smile more glittering than a Pulitzer in a case. Thankfully for me, he pulled me close and shakily retrieved a folded leaf of stationery bearing a love poem. Like with Cupid and Psyche before, no, you can’t prohibit the inking of affections in black in white.

You couldn’t stop Daniel’s sputtered out request to take me to the Idea Theatre for the very first time. The overmorrow after that fateful confession over coffee, he knocked on my door of my flat (Yes, the one you’d described to resemble your own. I think I’d appreciate you cleaning up after yourself, if only my own abode could be immaculate too.) and jittered as his mouth spilt out his desire to fulfil that daydream he’s had ever since you first fashioned him from keyboard strokes: a movie date. Of course, like in those slow-motion scenes in those Nora Ephron flicks, I leapt into his arms and said yes. Stephanie, any cutesy scene you invent has nothing on the way he gently wrapped himself around my waist as we walked to the ticket counter. And oh that kiss as the two main players canoodled on screen --- tinged with the butter popcorn he so kindly bought for us both, so tender! Inside my mind, it’s as if a reel stopped. Like with Boubil and Schönberg’s Chris and Kim, no, you can’t prohibit us from sneaking away to each other’s company, celebrating as if it were the last night of the world.

You can’t stop Daniel and me promenading by the River of Thoughts and laying out blankets of checkered linen and sweet nothings for a picnic. You couldn’t stop us pressed up against each other, my head leaning onto his firm chest, the cadence of his heart the rhythm section to the melody of the words I’m reading him from the tome in my lap. You couldn’t stop every twirl and every giggle as rain pitter-patters on a rooftop and Stevie Wonder’s poetry in notes blares from a radio. Like with Jo and Friedrich Bhaer, no, you can’t prohibit the cloudy, pillow-like peace that comes with two like-minds letting time fall away together.

Oh, and absolutely not, you couldn’t stop Daniel bending down on one knee, an art deco-style diamond seemingly belonging to Daisy Buchanan in a green velvet box before me. As you slammed your computer shut after the umpteenth case of writer’s block yielded but one paragraph, my beloved picked me up and told me we’d be visiting a garden. Little did I know that it secretly was decorated with tulip petals, sting lights making all that greenery look like Wonderland. I couldn’t help being speechless, robbed of the very glib you had bestowed upon me. That’s when my Daniel knelt down, tears flowing from his eyes and spouted out the question I had always longed to be part of our dialogue: Will you marry me? Soundlessly, without anything I could put in quotation marks, I cupped his cheeks and passionately gave him a smooch. As if I were reading the climax of the most gripping of novels, my eyes were glued to my sweetheart slipping the jewel onto my waiting digit. It is so like us to show you no, you can’t prohibit two souls yearning to spend the rest of their lives together --- yes, even if you, the person who conjured us up, brought us to life.

Stephanie, no, you can not stop our love. Really, all I’m asking for you is to change up my partner in your work so we, the figments of your imagination don’t have to pretend, wear yet another set of masks, when your laptop is fired up. It’s really simple now if you think about it. Since you can not make us cease from writing our own story when you’re not around, all you need to do is accept this needed edit to your tale. Call it constructive criticism.

Oh hey, what’s that sound? Is that clicking? Why are you…no….oh no! Don’t send us to the Recycle B….