The upside of loving a writer

Let us pretend we are still in post-Valentine’s Day love mode, never mind that we are still feeling the vacuum effect of a ‘Villa Rosa’ Saturday eight days ago, and give you the upside of ‘loving’ a writer.

When he stares (dreamily, you will think) into the middle distance, you will imagine he is being the great thinker, thinking great thoughts.

Kumbe he is just wondering why his poo turned out stinky blue last night instead of the usual odiferous chocolate colour. Perhaps his pancreas is acting up? And he ought to lay off the ‘Moon-Beater’ liquor.

With a writer, life, and love (and everything in-between and on the opposite end of the spectrum) is always infused with meaning. A flower or a lover are never just that. However lousy, they are part of her art.

Thus, your one night together may become a poem. If you have an affair, that is definitely materiel for a novella, someday.

And if you actually have a relationship, God help you; that will be the stuff memoir chapters are made of.

Let’s face it — dating a writer is the closest some folks will ever get to a shot at immortality (never mind even if his book will be read by three people, all of them who hated your guts when you were alive).

It beats tombstones, because who reads the epitaphs anyway? They are generally just a meaningless name in a cemetery, with two dates that meant a lot to you when you were alive, though chances are you were not really aware of the calendar on the two biggest dates of your life – the day it began and the day it ended.

A writer, bar Jesus, may be your greatest chance at resurrection – and even reincarnation – especially if you were of bad reputation, and she was your friend.

Rehabilitation is not an exclusive preserve of the prison authorities.

Unconventional lifestyle

Authors, too, have it in their pens’ power. But beware — there is also the phrase ‘poison pen.’

And a writer can leave you in tatters.

Writers can romanticise that stormy night in Budalangi or scorching days you spend in Mandera, so that it looks like it was all one great adventure – later. At the time, soaking wet or sunburnt, you thought he was an idiot for bringing you out here as a ‘different getaway’.

A writer will also give you an insight into an unconventional lifestyle, not the normal eight-to-five haunt of the ‘mortal’.

If she is for real, she is up before both the cockerel and the muezzin, making music with her pen before the moon goes down at dawn, creating art in the bewildering wee hours that belong only to witches and writers.

Metaphysical dialogue

Of course, he could also be the kind of writer who sleeps till midday, looking for ‘inspiration’, gets up to eat pizza and drink beer off the refrigerator (you have to be affluent, usually, to afford a writer pet), and when you come home after a hard day’s work, he’s slouching in your night gown on the sofa, moaning about writer’s block.

If she is a serious writer, be prepared to forever be caught up in some sort of metaphysical dialogue as her inner clock tick tocks time out. She is looking to write life as a large shout, but first has to talk the ‘animal’ into definition.

See what I mean? Then there will be the ‘hustler writer,’ that girl doing lots of small paying jobs while dreaming of her life-defining novel; that guy still living at home with mom while spewing art out, the one whom the ‘Utahama Lini?’ advert was made for.

Love the writer because they will construct you in their heads in a complex way that you will never be in real life. Because their currency of trade is imagery.

Bigger and airy

Stay with them because they think they will forever be remembered, and have half made you believe that their immortality lies outside the universal umbra of the Internet.

Love him intensely even if you know he will take it for granted (their make-believe worlds come first) and somehow, someday, screw it up!

And when he moves out, taking that massive book shelf with him, suddenly the room will feel bigger and airy, and you can now get that second couch you always wanted to complete the L-shape décor of your living room.

If he thinks you were his soul mate, someday your husband (someone sensible, like an accountant or engineer) will open a book he wrote, (and you secretly bought) and ask,

“This crazy guy in his book dedication calls you his ‘violent Violet, his lost violin,’ why?”

And because you are from Nyeri, and because you fought often 15 years ago, then made up, you will be flush and say, “Nothing Jack. Like you say, the guy was crazy.”

Or maybe not.

Perhaps for her, you were just another one of her short stories — out of sight, out of mind. And when she sees you in the supermarket after five years, her eyes barely light up as she says “How are you doing?”

And you say, “Are you still writing?” And she replies, “Are you still breathing?” then walks away, because for her, you are a tale told. And done.

—Tony Mochama is PEN (Kenya)’s secretary general.