Writing Is My Drink by Theo Pauline Nestor

Author:Theo Pauline Nestor [Nestor, Theo Pauline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Reference, Writing Skills, Personal & Practical Guides, Self-Help
ISBN: 9781451665093
Google: YCwLmgEACAAJ
Amazon: 1451665091
Goodreads: 17571005
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2013-11-05T05:00:00+00:00

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W r i t i n g i s M y D r i n k

On the second night of the conference, a book signing and

cocktail party was held in one of the main campus buildings.

Because of its Hamptons location, the conference skewed a

little less literary and a tad more People magazine than most writers’ conferences. Lesser-known celebrities nipped in and

out, attending random readings and lunches. I spent a good

bit of mental energy trying to figure out how this odd as-

sortment of people were connected to each other and never

truly cracked the code, but amongst us commoners a famil-

iar face would occasionally drift—Jane Pauley, Gary Trudeau,

Alan Alda—and not wanting to be total buffoons, most of us

fledgling writers pretended it was natural to be standing in

the bathroom line with Jane Pauley. Oh, but of course, Mel

Brooks has dropped by.

The social incongruence of these odd celebrity sightings in

a social setting more commonly known for its dowdiness added

to my feeling of displacement in the world. A West Coaster in

the Hamptons, a married woman whose marriage was about to

blow apart, I walked into the book party with my social anxiety

dialed to high until I spotted Frank across the room.

I made my way over to him and asked him to sign my copy

of Angela’s Ashes, which he did, and I put the book into my purse. Then the flock of fans around him grew, and I drifted

away and found wine, food, and other fledgling writers to hang

out with. That night back in my dorm room, I final y dug my An-

gela’s Ashes out of my purse. I turned to the title page, and there it was in his scrawl: “For Theo—To a hell of a writer! Frank McCourt.” I closed the book and opened it again. It was still there:

the casual endorsement that made me feel like I’d been handed

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T h e o P a u l i n e N e s t o r

a bolt of lightning. And that loose but old-fashioned cursive: It

could’ve been my dad’s.

After my parents married in a private ceremony at the retire-

ment center where my grandmother, Nonnie, lived, my new

dad, my mom, and I went to Los Angeles to stay with a friend

of my mom’s for a few days. I’d just turned ten, so it didn’t occur to me to question the sanity of two middle-age people marrying

each other after just one year of a long-distance dating, to ques-

tion the fact that my new brother and sister had met me just one

time.

In the course of the next year, my mother, Bil , and I silently

col uded in the process of erasing whatever wisp of a tie I might

still have had with my real father. Shouting out from a Topanga

Canyon swimming pool, I called Bill “Dad” for the first time. I

had to get up my nerve to do it, like I was asking for a raise. I

thought maybe calling it from my spot at the lip of the pool to

his chaise lounge was a safe experiment.

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