The Refusal Slip

The first one, there will be others, but not right now.

I got a letter, postmarked New York, dated December 4, in this morning’s mail. My address is handwritten, so it felt personal. It wasn’t. It was a rejection slip from a publisher, my first.

The message is polite, unambiguous, three sentences long, encouraging, if this sentence means what I believe it does”

Your writing style has tremendous squareness, and open-mindedness, which enables you to express what you have to say in a very small compass.

What the fuck does that mean, oh, yes, — no thank you.

My heart was sickened.

I sent two chapters and felt confident.

It’s hard for me to understand what is wrong. I sent a sample, 20,000 words, a series of brief episodes, that in my mind had a distinctive voice, presented with economy, strength, and vitality. I believed it remarkably tight, with hard-hammered words that reverberated long after the short staccato sentences had been read.

Damn them to hell.

I was still holding the letter when I went into the bedroom. It was a little after 7:00 a.m.

God, Jenny, look at this, and I gave her the letter.

I’ll make some tea, she said.

The bedroom looks untidy, not really, just a pile of clothes waiting to be added to a couple of suitcases. I sat on the bed for a bit, looking at the letter lying on the blankets. I don’t know how long I sat there, a couple of minutes, maybe more, and didn’t think about it until I felt Jenny’s arm around my shoulders. I love you, she said.

I wish I were twenty-two again with only my feverishly enjoyed heartbreaks to consider. I only cared about the writing of songs back then. In old age my last two indulgences are writing stories and drinking whisky.

I pay a big price for these two habits with mental and physical hangovers. I like to disgust my friends, fewer and fewer now, with admissions about looking for MILFS in San Francisco girl, implying a sense of reckless behavior. It brightens my day, and anyway I have an impish sense of humor. Such a way doesn’t exactly warm people to me. I don’t know how to make people even momentarily happy.

What about the book? Jenny asks. Are you going to finish it?

Yes, I’m going to finish it.

There is no immediate response.

Your book, Harry. Your bloody book, your beautiful book. If only there wasn’t your book. Another woman I could compete with that. But your book? Oh, I want it to be good and I want you to be a success at writing because you want that so much and it’ll make you happy, and if you’re happy then I’ll be happy.

But your book isn’t a bond between us, it’s a barrier, a barrier because I cannot share in that process with you, I don’t really have a feel for it, not like you do. So, what can I do, how can I be close?

I feel like an outsider looking in and even that would be okay by me if you were to accept me just as somebody looking in who loves you.

I sat, not knowing what to say except to say repeatedly how I love her, but I’m leaving, pulled by something I don’t understand.

No woman will ever be able to love you the way I do, Harry.

I’ve bragged about what a fine book I’ve written, but bragging, I’ve learned, is the equivalent of a female using makeup; both are attempts to present a bit more unreality to a person.

I want to be alone in the process, to struggle, conquer, or be destroyed. It feels to me that in life, whether back on the island, in California, or buried in the mountains of Colorado, my powers of feeling, of reflection, only reach their sharpest when completely alone.

I write at times thinking I’ll never finish, that inside me is a black hole of despair until I begin, and then I’m holding onto a whale’s tail, plunging again and again… hanging on.

You’ll go away because you always go. You managed a week at home, yet you are always writing about how much you love the place, love me, and love coming home, but here you are, a week later, thinking about going away. I don’t know if I can hang on, Harry. I want to, but I need to know that home is a place you can stay. Is it, Harry? Am I enough for you?

Is Jenny enough for me? Is she enough? Every blink, every time she speaks, smiles, or moves, I want to own it. I could not endure her loving anyone else or having physical relations with another. Yes, she is enough. Everything.

I should be at peace amid all the serenity, but rather, I’m in a state of frazzled nerves simply because people who know about talent decided I have none, not enough anyway.

I’m sure, when I finish this novel, I’ll take some rest, regular exercise, and be in good shape again.

I should die but will not. I am a brave man, but I need help.

Jenny, I’ll do anything you ask of me. I have utter belief in our love.

Harry, the book is making you sick, physically sick, you vomit in the night, and you drink too much. I want you to come out of this thing. Heaven knows how it would go with you if I were in your situation. Too often you seem horribly lonely. You won’t let me in, not Steve, not anyone close, but we care for you, we care about your book.

Those who do not write know anything of the long journey. There’s an impossible anguish, accompanied by the regret of not getting this thing done. I don’t really know when this great window opened into literariness.

I cannot look again at the letter.

Jenny, I’ll pack the suitcases.

One thing I’ve learned for absolute certainty. The book does not love me, the publishing world will not weep for my absence.

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