I’m still not sure what I expected to hear when she wrote back. Whatever it was I’m pretty sure this wasn’t it:

to anser the last part im not happy with what i make anyway because when ever i finish i think i need to add more and make it better and then even when i do finish it isint my vision of perfect and somewhere along the rode after adding it to be how i want it to be i finally just say fuck it this is how it will be so to answer that question of if thats what i really want to tell u the truth its not that big of a change

I’m not sure why I decided to give her the benefit of one more doubt. Maybe I’m stubborn that way; maybe I have a hard time admitting that sometimes people are lost beyond help. Sometimes people know their shortcomings but can’t summon up the drive to begin correcting them, but I believe in bootstraps, and sometimes you have to try, one more time.

Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? Find your mistakes in this letter and correct them.

You don’t have to make it perfect; you only have to make it right.
-Adrian

I like to believe that I really would have helped her, if she could do this little thing; I like to believe that making the difference would be worth it. Writing is a hobby to me, and missing a contributor’s copy of the YaoiCon anthology is no big loss. This website didn’t exist then, only my old one, and I already abandoned for months at a time.

She didn’t make it better, though. She gave me this:

To answer the last part, im not happy with what i make because whenever i finish i think i need to add more and make it better, then finish. When i do finish it isint my vision of perfect and somewhere along the rode after making revisions after revisions I finally just say ” eh fuck it this is how it will turn out.” So to answer the question of “is this what you truely want?” the truth is its not that big of a change.

---

Is this what you mean?

This time I didn’t write back. I’m not that patient. I’m not that good.

I think about her sometimes in hindsight, usually when she sends me some inane chain-letter or an invitation to IMVu. It’s not very pretty. Subliteracy isn’t much of an option anymore, not in the modern world. Even high-school graduates barely scratch middle-class; we’ve all but written dropouts out of the American dream. At her level, it isn’t about art, but competence. As I said, You don’t have to make it perfect; you only have to make it right. She couldn’t even do that.

She still has five years, maybe four by now. When (if) she graduates high school, the system will cut her loose. In that time someone might make her see how much she’s missing; someone might make her care; someone might make the most important difference of her life. That someone just won’t be me.

My door stayed open for months.

I will shed no tears.

im willing to lern im only thirteen but i want to be a great author more than anything

I spent a lot of time wondering if I should write back. My day job cuts into my writing time enough as is, and I’m not really sure I believe that she wants to improve. Particularly in fan communities, many writers will praise each other and enjoy being praised, even if their work simply doesn’t measure up. Writing is less an end and more a means for growing closer. They write for community, because humans are storytellers by nature, because they enjoy sitting around the virtual campfire.

Basically it’s a circle-jerk of the ego.

It’s too bad that I’ve never really been friendly enough for that sort of thing.

I thought about it until she wrote to me again.

i went to ur website cuz i was interested in more of ur stuff cuz that first link you gave me was pretty cool im wondering if u care if i use ur stuff in some of my storys not published or anything like that im not that stupid ive seen ur copyright but as inspiration do you mind?

My answer that time was reflexive: I do care, and it bothers me quite a bit. While I admit to reading the Wulf Archives in my early teens, I can’t really endorse handing out shameless pornography to a thirteen-year-old, particularly one who can’t even write a coherent sentence. More than that, though, is the idea that someone could just “use ur stuff”; writing simply doesn’t work that way. It’s not like drawing, where you can develop muscle-memory in the process. Inspiration is one thing, but copying is quite another. Published or not, it doesn’t teach anything; it has no instructional value.

I closed out my reply with this thought: If you really want to improve, you could look at what you enjoy about my writing, and practice to achieve the same effect. It’s much more effort, but the work and the credit be yours, not mine, if you make something really worthwhile.

For a while that was enough, but later that night I sat down and wrote her a more complete explanation. She deserved that much, I thought, and ultimately it cost me nothing to sit down for an hour of downtime and try, one more time, to reach her. I’m actually rather proud of it.

> i want to be a great author more than anything

I’ve been trying to decide how to respond to this for a while now.

I can’t teach you to be a great author.

I can’t even teach you to be a great writer.

There is a subtle and important difference, and I hope you understand it. The way I’m going to use it here, an author, I think, is as much a matter of community as it is a matter of craft. An author is recognized by what he has accomplished; he has an audience and performs upon the stage of their expectations, both on and off the page. An author has a presence. By that measure, I am barely an author at all, let alone a great one.

So what am I, if I am not an author? I am a writer. I write. That is all. I claim no allegiance to any community, no responsibility to any fans. My loyalty is to the craft, to the endless pursuit of an aesthetic. To this end I am only an egg, unhatched. For the most part I have learned by doing, fumbling in the dark, and there is very little I know that isn’t taught in school.

Even if I were a great writer, I’m not sure that I could teach you, or that such a thing can even be taught. Almost by definition great writing transcends teaching. There are no magic pills, or even magic lessons; there is no list of things to learn that add up to greatness, at least not in any meaningful sense. “Bring your images to life.” “Omit needless words.” What do these things mean, really? What makes an image live? Which words are needless? I barely even know, and only then by the faint and painful whispers in the shadows of my dreams. Great writing has a certain sublime quality, a certain alchemical purity that I find hard to even quantify, let alone bottle up and teach.

I don’t think I can even teach you to write in my own style. It would be an empty lesson, a farce if not an insult. A style is so… so personal. I can step into Hemmingway’s style, for a few sentences, and it’s like stepping into his head, like seeing the stark cold lines of reality drawn and highlighted by his eyes, like feeling the hard, proud machismo pounding in his chest, and the weight of his existence upon his shoulders. It’s a profound experience, but it is also a profound wrongness; a style is like a man’s skin, like a suit cut for him and him alone. Wearing someone else’s bends you in places where you have no joints, or you wear out the fabric where a seam should have buttressed it. A style is like armor; if it is not yours, you will break it – and it will break you.

So what do I have to teach? I could, I think, teach you to write the same way I do, with the same process, but I ask you… is this really what you want? I don’t think you understand what that means. It is very simple. There are only two lessons:

1 – You must have the courage to see your mistakes, and the determination to find them all. What is a mistake? Everything that is not perfect is a mistake.

2 – You may never forgive yourself for any of them, ever again.

It’s that simple.

Writing is a slavery. I am a servant of my craft, an empty vessel for the words to fill. I suppose I am a good servant, or at least a competent one, but it is hard to tell; three or four years ago I would have been thrilled with what I’m writing today, but as you grow, so too does your understanding of perfection. You chase something that can never be caught, not in a thousand lifetimes of geniuses a thousand times better than you will ever be, but still you serve, because anything else would be unthinkable; you serve because anything else would tear away the piece of yourself that you’ve already poured into the craft. To write the way that I do is to sit trembling in the corner for hours, sifting your mind for the right word; to wake up gasping and desperate in the middle of the night, hunting for paper to catch the phrases before they fade; to beat your head on the shower wall, trying to make the words come; and to wish, at the same time, that you could stop, and that it would never end.

More than that, though, writing this way means that you will never again be happy with anything you ever make.

Is that what you really want?

Think about it.
-Adrian

I suspected that it would go over her head (to be perfectly truthful, I think basic sentence structure goes over her head), but maybe in five years she’ll open it again and understand what I’m trying to tell her. That’ll be worth it.

Realistically in five years I’ll be ‘that 1 meen guy who was 2 stuk up to help me’.

That’s a cross I’m willing to bear.

Forward to the Aftermath

do u think u can help me with my writing?

She made it sound so easy. I don’t think she understood what she asked.

I remember a story about a pianist, supposedly Vladimir Horowitz but probably apocryphal. After a concert, it’s said that a woman came up to speak with him, amazed by how well he played. “I’d give twenty years of my life to play like that!” she gushed.

Horowitz looked pleased. “Ma’am, that’s exactly what it takes!”

I wanted to tell her this story, because I think that was my biggest reservation. I don’t believe in “writing talent”. Writing is a matter of discipline and precious little else; writers who “naturally” do good work have internalized it, turned craft into instinct. It takes years – decades in most cases – to make a compelling writer from scratch. She told me later that she was thirteen. That puts her in eighth grade, maybe even high school, and still unable (or unwilling, perhaps) to spell out “you” or use any capital letters.

I’m not a miracle worker. I’m not extraordinary. I’m just a public-school brat with a good work ethic and a few good teachers; I started public school in kindergarten and stayed in public schools (minus a summer) until the day I walked off the stage with my bachelor’s degree. Teach For America turned down my application. In eight years or more, she couldn’t find the motivation to learn basic sentence structure; what made her think I could give it to her in my spare time?

Still, I wrote back, trying to nudge her in the right direction.

Do you really want the help I have to offer? I’m an infamously unforgiving tutor, as I believe that writing is an even more unforgiving master.
There are probably better ways to ask that question, if you really mean it.

-Adrian

A few hours later, my email alarm went off again.

my question is do u think in the futur u could help me with my own writing?

*headdesk*

Forward to part 3

This is a story about some email I got a few months ago, after I’d handed the link to Graveyard to a few people. The first one looked something like this (names excised to protect the dim):

Subject: i met u on gaia and love ur work
hi, i met u on gaia im g——— or on aim m————
after reading that link u sent me “graveyard” i really liked ur wrigting so i searched u on google and thats how i found ur site.
do u think u can help me with my writing?

Usually I’m thrilled when developing writers come to me and ask for some personal mentoring. I enjoy the opportunity to watch them develop and grow into themselves. I get to see myself make a difference, sometimes. One writer even told me that he hears me correcting him as he works. It’s quite a compliment, really, a vote of confidence, a reminder that someone out there thinks I know what I’m doing, and that I’m doing it well. I don’t get very many.

Sometimes I’m less enthusiastic. In general I like to believe that people with the benefits of computers and modern public education, for all the faults in both, ought to know the basic fundamentals of English usage. People who self-identify as writers, particularly, should have the discipline to avoid being outright idiots in that regard. I like to believe that writers coming to me for help are competent, or at least willing to meet me halfway and avoid wasting my time.

I tend to get a bit irritable when people work to undermine this basic faith.

On the other hand, I do try to give people the benefit of a doubt. As frustrating as they can be, the would-be writers who don’t grasp the fundamentals need help the most. A well-turned sentence can improve a good impression, but subliterate writing can make such a bad impression that nothing else will matter. My office regularly throws out résumés, unread, for laughable cover letters.

Part of me believes in salvation from ignorance and redemption from stupidity. Part of me believes that the effort is well-spent, that they really do want to improve. Part of me believes that, even if I don’t see any results, something I’ve said might click, a year or two later, and that I might make some small and important change.

Most of me knows that I’m a dreamer, but I still like to believe. It seems better than the alternative.

There’s plenty of time for mockery if things don’t work out.

Forward to Part 2

If you go out walking, through cold, deserted streets, sometime between last call at the bars and last dance at the clubs, you find yourself caught in that hazy middle, between not-quite-yesterday and not-quite-tomorrow, perfectly alone. The rest of the world fades away, until nothing exists except you and your thoughts and the next square of pavement. You can bring a friend sometimes, a close one and certainly never two, and you come out enlightened, somehow, with this zennish sort of acceptance and understanding of each other. You can bring a lover, too, and that’s even better, because it doesn’t matter if the world tries to keep you apart, because the world doesn’t matter, not in there. The darkness wraps around you, like a cocoon, cold and warm, lonely and deliciously intimate, all at once, and for those fleeting hours, all that matters is the way he breathes and the way he talks, the way he fits against you, all long, soft-sheathed muscles and gentle, supple curves, but most of all the sparkle in his eyes, and the way he tries to hide just how much you mean to him, just how much he trusts you with the secrets of his life.

I spent almost every night there, with Nicky, back when I could call him mine. When he left I spent them there, alone, never trusting the girls or boys after him with that delicate, perfect place.

It’s the most beautiful place in the world, a little slice of Eden.

I don’t know if I can find my way back anymore.

Earlier tonight I was slipping into it, just mulling over my fifth breakup in twice as many months. Three years ago Nicky left, three years ago he walked off into the darkness, and since then, I couldn’t find a stable relationship, couldn’t care for someone the same way, couldn’t find someone who cared the same way. It was all very depressing, a slow and painful string of failures, building over the hole he’d left in my life, and it was nice to find something familiar, someplace to lose myself and let it all wash past me. Somewhere between the park where we used to walk, and that new club, Oblivion, a shy little voice reached out to me, out of an alley, and pulled me back into the world.

A voice reached in and brushed along my thoughts, shy and almost girlish. “Hey, mister… cold night, huh?”

“Yeah, pretty cold.” You barely have to leave the nexus once you’re used to this kind of stuff. It just comes out, automatically. You know it. The same thing happens when you get hit up for change too often… you just shrug and mumble “sorry” before it even registers.

“Can I warm you up? You’re kinda cute, so it’s just twenty bucks. Hundred if I’ve gotta strip. Two hundred for all night.”

What the hell. I’m not proud. Sometimes a cute, slutty little rentboy’s just what the doctor ordered. Fuck him rough and fuck him stupid, fuck him ’till he screams because he means it, fuck him until he comes in your hand and sucks it off your fingers. His money’s on the nightstand. He’s gone when you wake up. No worries, no obligations. “Getting kinda late… hundred-fifty.”

I heard a little sigh, and quiet, pattering footsteps as he started walking behind me. “Can I leave early? Most days I can get a couple tricks on the six-AM train.”

“If I’m done with you, sure.” I reached into my jacket, took a swallow out of my flask. Jim Beam’s a friend of mine, more than I like to say.

He caught up to me and slipped up under my arm, pressed against my side. He felt right there, perfect, just beneath my shoulder, warm and comfortable in a way I could barely remember. Nobody had felt that good in a long time.

Three years, actually.

I turned, just a little, looked down at him.

Fuck.

My mouth went dry in a heartbeat. I wasn’t sure whether to believe my eyes, wasn’t sure whether I wanted to. I swallowed hard. “Aw, shit, Nicky?”

He blinked once, looking up at me, and I saw the recognition flash across his face before he turned away, hunching into himself, the way he always used to do. “Oh… Kris… Hi, I guess.”

I slipped my hand around his waist, pulling him a little closer as I stroked his milk-white skin, as soft and creamy-smooth as I remembered it. “What happened, Nicky?”

“Just Nick now. Tell you later.” He paused for a moment, thinking about it. “You can still call me Nicky if you want to.”

“We used to talk about everything out here.”

“Kris…”

“Yeah. I know. ‘salright.” I leaned over, pressing a kiss against his temple. His scent filled my lungs as I nuzzled into his thick, soft hair. He still smelled like almonds, almonds and sweet, clean musk, but gritty, intoxicating hints of sex and streets and leather had crept in around the edges.

“Anything special you want?”

I shrugged a little, guiding him back home. “I don’t know.”

The pale light glittered across the deep, cobalt blue of his eyes. “I think I do,” he murmured.

“Oh?”

“Fuck me like you used to?”

I thought about kissing up his naked spine, about the long, slow hours we spent, teasing his body until it would accept mine, about the long, slow strokes I used to make him squirm in pleasure, held tight in my arms. “Fucking’s hardly the right word for it.”

He pressed up a little closer, just the way he used to, resting his cheek into the pit of my shoulder. “That’s why you want it.”

My fingers traced the curve of his side, feeling the way his muscles had gone strong and hard beneath the softness of his skin. They remembered exactly how to hold him, exactly how to guide him forward and tease a slow, insistent line down the curve of his belly. He felt better than I remembered, even, whimpering as he pressed his hips back against my own. I shivered at the rush of memory. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah it is.”

I didn’t remember the whisper of raw and naked sex in the way he ground against me, or the little metal tin he kept in his pocket, packed with a little glass-crystal pipe and a baggie of fine, pink powder. He smiled up at me, running his fingers through his hair to brush his long, dark bangs from his eyes. “I think I’d like that, too,” he said, flicking his tongue across his lips.

I watched him scoop a little powder into the pipe and hold a match under it, until it began to bubble. “What’s that?” I asked, watching him suck the smoke deep into his lungs. He held it for a moment before he let it go in a faint, ashen-grey coil from his lips, watching it drift into infinity.

“It’s just my Lace,” he purred, looking at me through half-lidded eyes.

“Aw, Nicky. You’re using?”

He smiled and reached back, over his head, stroking his fingertips along my jaw. “I want to enjoy tonight.”

For a moment I could believe we’d erased three years in the short walk home, when I closed the door and he melted into my arms, the same shy, nervously excited boy he’d always been, whispering my name into my neck. I held him close, slipping my fingers down his back. From the edge of his shirt, cropped high, just below the blades of his shoulders, I felt nothing but cool, naked skin beneath my fingers, growing warmer as I felt my way down, to the edge of leather slung low and tight across his hips. My fingers sat at the pit of his spine; a few inches lower and I could cup his rear in my hand. He was dressed like almost any other rentboy, raw and patently sexual, but if anything he felt almost innocent, naked and vulnerable in those thin, tight clothes.

I held him there, just breathing him in again. “I missed you,” I whispered.

He stood up on tiptoe, kissing me gingerly on the lips, and offered me that shy, amused smile I remembered. “I know.” Suddenly he hugged me tight, kissing me hard, passionately, hungrily, his lips begging silently for my tongue.

It wasn’t like any kiss we’d shared before, but I lost myself in the moment, falling in love with him all over again. He was perfect, every way I felt him. Naked, perfect shoulders and smooth, perfect back, rounded, perfect hips and long, perfect thighs, sweet, perfect breath and warm, perfect tongue, all melting into a single perfect kiss, a single perfect pleasure to sweep away the years.

He stepped back, gasping, pulling me along with him, almost giddy with excitement. “Can we take a bath?”

I nodded dumbly as he pulled me along to the bathroom, enchanted by the sheer casual sexuality of his motion… and the faint, ghost-grey tattoo in the pit of his back, a flower with long, smoky petals, coiling up his spine. I hesitated for a moment. This was new.

“When’d you get the tattoo?”

“About a year ago. Y’like it?” He bent over the edge of the tub, showing it off as he turned the water up.

“I don’t know yet. It’s different.”

Standing up again, he turned around and pressed himself against me. “I know he likes it,” he purred, pressing his belly against the growing stiffness in my pants. His arms slipped around my neck as he tossed his head, throwing his bangs back away from his eyes. “C’mon, see what else he likes.”

My hands crept up his belly, hugging him close as they slipped under the slick black fabric of his shirt. “I think he likes all of you,” I laughed, pulling it up, over his head, tugging it free from the thin, pink-leather choker around his neck.

His pants were something out of a wet dream, buttery-soft leather next to his delicate, creamy skin, his thighs left half-naked by the long, bootlaced sides. He wriggled his hips as I slid them away from him, lifting his feet so I could ease the shoes from his tiny, baby-soft feet. “And I think I like that.” He cupped my hand over his crotch, hard and smooth, hairless as a child’s.

I kissed him again, trying to hide my surprise.

“You like that too, don’t you? My turn now.” He giggled, nudging me up against the wall, pressing a kiss against my collar. The button slid open with a flick of his tongue. I sucked my breath in, delighted, as he inched his way lower, only using his hands to slide my jeans away after he’d undone them, and nuzzled his cheek against me. “You have the most beautiful cock in the world, Kris. You know that? It’s such a tasty color. Nice and smooth. Clean lines.” He flicked his tongue against the head, suckling on it for a moment. “Almost too thick to play with.” His lips slid down a few inches, stretching comfortably tight against me. “Almost.”

I ran my fingers through his hair, careful not to pull him down, not to thrust into the hot, slick pleasures his mouth offered to me. I didn’t have to. He made wet, sloppy noises as he worked his head up and down my length, just barely teasing the head with the back of his throat.

“There we go.” He led me to the bath, looking quite content with himself as he settled into my lap, my length pressed comfortably against the crease of his rear. “Sex on Lace is the best sex in the world. Cock like yours…” He made a quiet, hungry noise, wriggling in my lap. “You’re going to blow my mind.”

I began to wash him, enchanted by the way his tattoo moved over his muscles with every motion, with the permanent ethereality of the design in ink and smoke. “I think you already blew mine.” I paused, trying to decide whether I wanted to know. “How long’ve you been out there?”

“Two years… ever since money ran out.”

That deserved a little thinking. “You can’t stop?”

He twisted in my lap, just enough to look me in the eye. “You ever hear the screaming, Kris? Withdrawal’s tough, and nothing ever feels good again. I’m not that strong.”

I shut up and washed him, cuddling him gently in the steaming water. After a while it felt familiar again. Skin the color of milk. Hair the color of walnut heartwood. Eyes the color of priceless sapphires. Even a design the color of faint, incense smoke. He hasn’t changed so much, I thought, feeling the way his spine arched beneath my hand, ready for me to wash him inside, ready for me to make him slick with the lotion we’d always used.

He dried me half with a towel, half with his tongue, kissing beads of water away from my chest. And maybe some of the changes aren’t so bad.

“You still have the sheets, right?” He found my bed, sprawling out across it, like a pearl against the deep, china blue, naked except for that pretty band of pink across his throat. We’d picked those sheets together; they matched his eyes. “God, I’ve missed this. Everything.”

“You’re always welcome back here, you know.” I sat down beside him, the way I used to do.

Something flickered across his face – sadness maybe – before his smile returned. “Less talk, more fucking, okay?”

I ran my fingers through his hair. “I miss talking.”

“Please?” He begged up at me with his eyes, looking at me through his long, dark lashes as he took my hand, sliding it gently down his belly until it circled his shaft. “Three years, Kris. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

I never could deny him when he did that. “Okay, Nicky. Let’s see about pumping something up that cute little butt of yours.”

He grinned, holding my hips down for a moment, and gave my cock another long, slow kiss, sliding his lips all the way down to the base. I shivered, almost overwhelmed by the feeling. “Okay, let’s go.”

I looked down. I was wearing a condom. “Huh… I don’t remember us using those before.”

He looked away, ashamed for a moment. “It’s not for me, Kris… it’s for you.”

I blinked a few times, slowly realizing what he’d said. “Nicky… are you sick?”

“Well… no. I don’t think so, at least. I’m pretty sure. I make everyone wear them, and I got tested clean last month.”

I slipped behind him, kissing at his cheek. Part of me wanted to stop right there, to spend the rest of the night holding him, comforting him. Part of me said I needed him too much to care right then. I’m ashamed to say which part I listened to.

He sucked in a deep, heady breath as I slid into him, feeling him stretch around me, wonderfully tight and comfortably easy all at once. It came back out as a slow, contented groan once I sank into him, deep into hot, velvety-soft pleasure. He felt better through the latex than most boys felt in the flesh, and I began to savor it, taking him in long, slow strokes.

“Harder,” he groaned. “Give it to me rough.”

I nipped gently at his choker, tugging at it, letting my hands creep down his sides to hold his hips. “Thought you wanted it like we used to, Nicky.”

He growled, frustrated, squirming in my grasp. “Dammit, Kris. Nicky’s fucking gone, okay? Streets ate ‘im. There is no like we used to. Nick wants it good and hard.” His muscles tensed around me, sending a sharp little arc of pleasure up my back. “And you’ve been waiting years to use him like your little fuck-toy, haven’t you?”

Nicky never talked like that, but it was hard to argue with how good he felt. I rolled over and held him down, thrusting harder, deeper. He had such a nice ass, soft and rounded in just the right way. Just built for a good, hard fuck, built to whisper temptation into the animal parts of your brain. Three years ago he always begged me to be gentle. This time he begged me to give in. I didn’t stop to think about it.

“Harder, damnit. Oh, God yes. Fuck me just like that. Just like that. Harder. Get your money’s worth. I can take it. Harder!” He bucked, writhing beneath me, wanting more, needing it.

Harder is exactly how I fucked him, making him to groan in sharp, staccato notes, harder, faster, louder. He was deliciously hot, hot and smooth in my hands, hot and soft and strong beneath my body, hot and tight and slippery around my cock, and nothing else mattered, so I fucked him until he screamed into the pillow, jerking violently as he came. Once, twice, three times I felt him come, smearing thick, warm stickiness all over my hand. I brought it to his lips, and then he was hot and wet and hungry around my fingers, sucking greedily, coiling his tongue between them, panting as he tried to gulp down every last drop.

Even when I’d exhausted myself, even when neither he nor I could come any more, he still worked himself on my cock, his angelic face smeared and messy, his lips half-open from moaning, still desperate for more.

Just another slutty rentboy for me to use.

One went by, few nights back. It was raining. A kid came in ten minutes later, soaked and depressed. “What happened out there?” I asked.

“Drunk,” he explained, setting down a battered ring box. “Can’t keep this.”

It was an engagement ring, brand-new. “Two hundred,” I offered. He looked worse. “Two-fifty.”

He took the money, numbly.

“Get turned down?”

He broke down and cried. “Never got to ask…”