Literary Salon & Valentine

Jennifer and I sat at the Literary Salon yesterday afternoon waiting to speak for a very nervewracking 2 hours. To calm myself, I did mental blogging. It was a brilliant post, all about Steven Vardy looking and acting like John Cusack and how much I loved Lloyd Dobler and musings on romance and love and Making It Work. Which has been occupying the part of my mind that isn't occupied with thinking about pants removal. And sinking my teeth into my paramour's very lovely tender skin.

But I'm fucking tired. Not enough sleep. Not enough kissing. It's hard to balance the two.

Valentine's was a great great night. My paramour and I met up with one of his friends to have a drink and watch some Remi Royale. Remi didn't go on till nearly 11. Good god, man, I thought, it's a school night. Get that kareoke going, already. But really, we were entertaining ourselves quite well. Remi was fun, but I would have been just as happy to sit and chat and laugh.

After the drink and the friend, there was chocolate cupcake eating and port drinking and present giving and lots of making out.

I'm not so hot on the valentines business, generally. Working in a sex store (or probably a flower store or a candy store) kind of wigged me out on it. After a while, I was sick of other people's romance. So I really enjoyed yesterday for its mix of sweetness (small presents and gestures mean a lot to me) and and low-key non-romance (beer at the royal oak with friends) and hotness (Jesus, I don't even know where to pinpoint the start of that. Two weeks ago?).

But back to the salon. I was really really nervous going into it. There were some big names on that bill, and I didn’t know what to expect. I don’t like not knowing what to expect.

Shelley gave me a great pep talk beforehand. "The only difference between you and them is that they’ve had books published. Think of it this way. If you lived in, like, Toronto, and didn’t know Jennifer, you’d be all freaked out about meeting the person who wrote that great book Grrrl. But you do know her, and so you know she’s a regular person and not scary. It's the same with the rest of them." Right, I thought, yes, very good. People. Not scary. I can do this.

And then I walked into the room. Fuck me. I am awkward and scared when faced with a roomful of people I don’t know. Scared isn’t even the right word. Something inside me crawls up into itself and refuses to come out. I lose all the small words. I feel dumb and featureless. I think I was born with a broken schmoozer.

My favourite conversation, however, happened after our interview was over. I wandered over to where Jennifer was talking to Mary Jane Maffini, who writes excellent mysteries. She looked at us and said "That was so interesting. I had always wondered what people got out of blogging, and now I get it. I have toothpaste too! I hate the olympics too! I could be a blogger!"

Truer words.