you're too young & eager to love

Trying to get into Margot's writing mindset. Or her lack of it, as it may be now.

I was going to wrap this up with a more concrete ending, but I ran out of steam.

--


Kenneth is straightening his tie. He’s using the mirror she hung by the front door. Originally, she thought she would need it for last-minute lipstick touch-ups, but Kenneth uses it more often than she does.

He speaks around his sunglasses that are dangling from his mouth, so he sounds like he’s mumbling. “Are you going to try writing today?”

She graces him with a smile that is all teeth. Her hands are soft when she comes up to him from behind and touches him, smoothing out the back of his shirt. “Like I do every day. I have some time after I run to the store. We’re out of milk.”

He makes a noncommittal noise, a huff from the back of his throat, and kisses the top of her nose before leaving.

She hates when he does that. It makes her feel like a child.



Her office has become a place for bills. A place for filing and records. For the shredding of private documents and failed drafts. It used to be a nest, a creative birthing unit. She once kept immaculate notes pinned to the entire back wall. She had stacked books by her desk for reference, color coting their pages with post-its. Kenneth had never ventured beyond the threshold. He didn’t even knock if the door was closed.

These days, the door is always open. Her computer sits, waiting, blank except for the Safari browser left open. A page of so-called easy recipes for busy weeknight dinners.

With a glass of sweet tea in hand, Margot thinks she might start reclaiming the space. That today is the day where she will finally renew her abilities. Through the shifting of furniture and the decluttering of files, she will see what she once had obtained. The pieces will fall together. Her Word Document will be more than half-hearted notes and unfinished sentences.

She will do this after she gets milk and before she vacuums. She is convinced.



Sometimes, if she’s feeling particularly masochistic, she watches her old interviews. There aren’t many, only a handful, but there’s enough to remind her of how she once was – the potential she had. Her favorite is the second one when she was asked to discuss character creation for a literary magazine of mild repute. The interviewer had been a recent graduate, and he kept pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose while they talked. His shorthand was illegible, but he’d had enough insight to record the interview for reference. He sent her a copy afterwards as a memento. It was a nice personal touch; Margot doesn’t think most interviewers would do that now.

Her youth surprises her every time. She forgets how long her hair was or how easily she used to laugh. Her nervousness is noticeable but so is her excitement. Clearly riding the high that is success, her younger self has a habit of smiling while she speaks, of gesturing wildly with her hands. They flutter around her lap like butterflies, punctuating her sentences.

The interviewer asks about Harrow, one of the characters she is most proud of for his ability to be both villainous and occasionally sympathetic.

On screen the younger Margot answers, speaking softly, intimately, but at length. Her excitement makes her breathy. “We’re talking about a rapist, essentially, and a narcissist. But the thing with Harrow is that the act of sex is something he doesn’t particularly like. Something about it feels unnatural to him. Uncomfortable psychologically, like he’s putting on an act. I always imagine Harrow as the man who sees sex as dominance, which is a popular conception in today’s young men, but not an act to appreciate for any other reasons. Sex is a base urge and Harrow wants to be above his baser impulses. Harrow might force Ita, during their early days, into a brutal sexual encounter and then disappear by himself afterward, trying to breathe through that uncomfortable feeling. It’s not guilt. It’s ego. He might intellectualize the sex in the abstract but in the context of his own life, he understands it’s a performance that is expected of him. If you remember, one of his first initiations for Roman is to witness Roman having sex with one of the companions. As an extension of himself, he needs Roman to perform too. Without the threat of a romantic connection.”

“This a complicated stance on what should be an intimate act. What did you do to consider his mindset? Do you make comparisons with your own life, your own marriage?”

The camera is focused on Margot; she can hear the interviewer but she can’t see him in the recording. On screen she laughs – it’s a bold insinuation to make, and Margot remembers feeling surprised by the suggestion, amused even. As a rule, she always kept her interviews on topic, on the work, on the art. She used to dodge questions about her personal life, for Kenneth’s sake, and maybe her own.

She hears herself answer diplomatically. “Most authors pull from inspiration they are familiar with. We know this. Write what you know, right? Lesson number one. I may be inspired by my own life at times, but this is ultimately a work about societal anxieties at large. The characters are representations of a deeper psychosis.”

She stops the interview.

She isn’t sure if she feels the same now.