Salon Columnists

Hopelessly in Love

Dear Hopelessly,

There's nothing hopeless here, only a young man who needs a chance to think, so back off and give him air. It's hard to be in love with someone who is much your intellectual superior, and between a woman of 24 and a boy of 19, there is a large disparity of wisdom and maturity. So maybe your boy won't make the grade. Anyway, let him figure it out. For you, I recommend the 90-day regimen of self-improvement, the surest way to heal a broken heart. Don't sit and brood. Put yourself through boot camp, hurl yourself into mental and physical training -- run, lift weights, clean out your closet, learn a language, read "Ulysses," catch up on your correspondence, lose weight, cut out alcohol, pick up your old clarinet and get your lip in shape, memorize poems, do good deeds -- and fill up your life, dawn to midnight, with sheer discipline. Anyone can do this for 90 days, but if you can only manage 30, that's OK too. Let the boyfriend do what he will, and you take care of you.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I have three young sons and the only satisfying writing I manage these days is letters to friends about my boys. Though I've been covering municipal government meetings in our little town, now I'm considering teaching part time at a local community college. I remember teaching from my work in grad school -- I was pale, nervous, clammy from caffeine and broke -- but often unexpectedly rewarded by the accomplishments of my students. Teaching and child rearing seem eerily similar to me; they both require so much mastery and heart, and I'm apprehensive about attempting both. Will I need a transfusion every week? What do you suggest?

Energize Me Mom

Dear Mom,

Go ahead and dive in. Anyone who has three boys is a brave person to start with, and bravery begets more bravery. Tell your husband (I assume there is one) that you need him to cut you some slack and cover your back for a while, and then take the plunge. Teaching can surely energize you and may give you the juice you need to be an even better mother. Whatever rough spots may ensue, your boys will be better off for having a mother who is happy and engaged and fulfilled.

Dear Mr. Blue,

Five months ago I left my post as a magazine editor to write full time. I've been able to keep my head above water, but I have yet to break into any big-name magazines. I know I have the talent to write for them, but I am having no luck. A lot of people tell me that talent takes you only so far, that you need connections. I'm too shy to suck up to editors and other, more established writers. Is that how to get ahead?

Too Shy to Schmooze

Dear Too Shy,

Magazines are not edited by hermits, so the business does have its social moments when editors and writers stand in a room and eat shrimp and drink Chardonnay, and no doubt some valuable contacts are made that way, but in the end a writer has to be able to put it down on paper. If what you write is original and stylish and funny and editor-proof, then any editor would want you, and he or she wouldn't need to have smelled your after-shave to know that you're good. As a Midwesterner, I share your suspicion of Connections --- I used to look on the Ivy League as a vast intellectual mafia --- but it does your writing no good to indulge in this, and if you're a writer, writing is what matters, not career building. Buckle down.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am stuck, stuck, stuck. I am writing freelance articles, but I have realized that my real passion is finding the story, not writing it. I can see a story under every rock, but once I am faced with actually writing the thing I get depressed and have to force my way through the project. Should I be channeling my abilities in another direction?

Muddled

Muddled, you're not a writer, you're an editor. Buy yourself an editor outfit, get an editing job, go to a salon and have your hair edited, and start taking writers out to lunch in classy restaurants where the appetizers start at $10 and the service is impeccable and the maitre d' knows you by name.

Dear Mr. Blue,

Do people have time for themselves anymore? I ask a woman out and she says, "I can't right now, this has been a hectic period for me, perhaps next week." Next week rolls around and it's the same story. What's a hopeful romantic to do in a world too busy for love?

Impatient in New York

Dear Impatient,

Nobody who really cares about you will be too busy to see you. Nobody who is attracted to you will put you off. We all make time for what's important to us. The woman is giving you a polite brush-off. Don't persist. Be hopeful elsewhere. Someday you may find a woman who is far busier than this woman and who will happily interrupt her busy life to see you, and that's how you know she cares.

Dear Mr. Blue,

My soul mate recently dumped me shortly after moving to another city and finding another man. I've never been closer with anyone in my life, so it's unbelievably painful. I've not had a decent night of sleep in two months. In the past, I always worked to stay friends with my former girlfriends. But this woman really hurt me. Should I send her a letter and say, "Leave me alone, forever," which would make me feel better, or bite the bullet and work through my feelings so we can be friends again?

Bad Taste in My Mouth

Dear Bad Taste,

If you really were going to write such a letter, you wouldn't be asking me for permission; you'd have gone ahead and written it and mailed it. But you didn't. So don't. It's one thing to be cruel spontaneously, quite another to be calculatedly cruel. Let her alone, and let forever take care of itself. If she chooses to contact you in the future, you can decide then how you feel about it. Meanwhile, it's not an issue. If you can't sleep, I recommend the 90-day regimen for broken hearts (see above).

Dear Mr. Blue,

I have fallen madly in love with a woman from northern Germany who came here to San Francisco for a sabbatical and we quickly became wonderfully entangled in each other's life. The problem is that she is quite attached to her home and family, while I have few attachments here. So I face the prospect of moving to northern Europe, learning a new language and making a life in a culture that is very different from my Southwestern upbringing. Will the difficulties overwhelm the delicate process of building a life together? Can a fellow raised in high desert mountains find happiness in flat, cold and dark northern Europe?

Mark

Dear Mark,

Happy people can find happiness in all sorts of places, including northern Europe. Chipotle is scarce, and the winters can be dark indeed, and now and then one may sense a joyless rigidity in the inhabitants, but, heck, how often does a guy fall madly in love? The question is: Can you now fall in love with Germany? Can you find reasons to be there, other than her? Do you have the time and patience to learn German well enough to be yourself, not a child, in her language? This demands some forethought, some calculation: The passion that leads you to the face of the mountain is not what enables you to climb the mountain. So you need to put passion aside long enough to ask if you're up to the task. You will need to endure great bouts of loneliness. You will find that she is a different person in Germany than in San Francisco on sabbatical. Sometimes you'll cry yourself to sleep at night. Other times you'll feel like an utter fool.

On the other hand, leaving home for love is the greatest adventure of all, and who would turn that down who felt it had some chance of success? If you go, you won't regret it, even if the romance falls apart under the stress. Mr. Blue speaks from experience here. What one regrets in one's life is indifference, depression, boredom, not what was done for passionate love.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am working on a master's degree in genetics and am very close to completing the research. I dread the next step: writing the thesis. And then defending it. The thought scares me silly. Can you recommend a novel about a graduate student who struggles with writing a thesis?

Overwhelmed

Dear Overwhelmed,

There is a 1989 novel, "The Dissertation," by R.M. Koster. And there is a gothic horror novel, "The Ceremonies," by T.E.D. Klein, but you should launch into writing your thesis first and save these entertainments for afterward. The way to do it is to do it.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am 25, living in a city I hate so I can finish a professional degree. My husband, whom I love very deeply, couldn't find a job here and went back to our hometown on the other coast. I dread the thought of doing this for another year, but I don't feel I have a choice. I feel this is my last chance to make something of myself after a number of false starts. Any suggestions? Kind words?

Lovesick, Homesick Career Girl

You're very brave to take such a hard road, Career Girl, and bravery is good discipline. After this year, the ordinary little bumps of life won't jar you so much. You and your husband will treasure each other's company more. Your domestic tranquillity won't be disturbed by nattering worries and trifling complaints. Meanwhile, this separation is an opportunity for you and your beloved husband to become correspondents and lavish letters on each other that describe your lives and thoughts in intimate detail.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am a bisexual who recently came out of the closet. I am seriously attracted to my best friend. I haven't revealed to him that I'm bisexual or that I have romantic feelings for him, but I want to. I don't seriously want to have a romantic relationship. I just want to tell him so I can let go of my attraction for him. My therapist recommends that I should let go of this myself. Should I tell him? We are very close, almost like brothers. I don't wish to ruin it by freaking him out.

Twenty Thousand Dollars Worth of Therapy Later

Dear Twenty Thousand,

There is no reason to make a pass at your best friend unless you really long to have a romantic relationship with him. If you do make a pass, then you run the same risk of rejection that anyone else runs. But surely you shouldn't use your friend for some kind of theatrical therapy. And if there were a real possibility of a romantic relationship, probably you'd know it.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I told a woman friend that I want to be "more than friends" and she said she hasn't been friends with a sexual partner in years and can't really comprehend what it would be like. We are very close in every other way, and it nearly killed me to tell her I have feelings for her because the thought of her telling me she does not have feelings for me is petrifying. Should I keep spending time with her, hoping? Or stop seeing her and practice your 90-day regimen?

In Agony

Dear Agony,

It can be agonizing to expose yourself so to a friend, but you did, and don't worry any more about it now. Your friend's response could mean that she was surprised and needs some time to ponder this, or it could be her polite way of saying no thanks, but in either case, worry no further. You said what you had to say, and now it is up to her. If she doesn't want you for a lover, too bad, but you needn't lose her as a friend. So don't stop seeing her. A failed overture could lead to an even closer friendship, which might be much preferable to what you were proposing.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I've been a journalist for going on 20 years and make a not-bad living writing slightly bitchy cultural and social commentary. Two years ago, my companion died after a long nightmare illness, and I started to have trouble summoning up that slightly bitchy tone and re-igniting my interest in a lot of stuff I used to find fascinating enough to write a thousand words about. Now it seems frivolous, pointless. For the last year or so I've been writing old-lady stuff about antiques, historic renovation projects, which is far from thrilling. My personal life is starting to revive a little bit, but I still feel pretty out of it at times. Is it possible to return to the old style at the age of 43? And if it's not, what then? I have nightmare visions of myself writing a pet column.

Stymied

Dear Stymied,

Your life is leading you in an interesting direction, and why not pay attention to it and allow yourself to be educated? Your bitchy commentary was a performance, and probably a stellar one, but it has been overtaken by experience, and now you must find the way to write as the person you are now, not the person of two years ago. Don't be embarrassed about the "old-lady stuff" you're writing -- something better is around the corner.

Dear Mr. Blue,

About five years ago, my husband and I moved from New York to Indiana with our two daughters. Ever since, he's been writing short stories about a writer who moves from New York to Indiana with his wife and two daughters and has a bunch of unhappy affairs with young women with pierced tongues. It's fiction as far as the facts go. But story after story about this same miserable, desolate guy? What am I supposed to think about this?

The Wife

Dear Wife,

Your husband appears to be in a rut, but that has to be his problem to solve. If you're troubled by the obvious parallels, you ought to take it up with him. A writer needn't be so literal as this. Maybe he isn't a very good writer. I hope he's a good husband.
SALON | Sept. 9, 1998

Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue.

Bookmark http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/keil/