The Things I’m Afraid to Write About
One evening, I sat on the brown-leather couch of a younger man who admired me for my writing, and maybe other things, if the salty text messages were true. He came from a different generation, but I was pleased to discover that he shared many of my unconventional opinions and favorite authors, that taste and perspective weren’t necessarily a matter of the year you were born. Joan Didion, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, though I had more reservations about that last one. Books were a common pleasure point, and I was eager to tell him about a literary party I’d recently attended in New York City, where I’d once lived and often visited in the Before Times.
This was 2018, and the party was an informal gathering at the sumptuous Brooklyn brownstone of a writer deemed problematic, even before that word went mainstream. Her place was filled with hardback books and writers who had been invited because they danced on the precarious edge of what was considered appropriate. A New York Times columnist who would eventually be publicly excommunicated. A journalist whose delightfully combative Twitter account I read regularly, like an episodic novel.
I didn’t deserve to be there, or at least that’s how I felt as guests exchanged war stories about the scolds on social media, where I mostly posted upcoming appearances, like a bot run by a PR firm. But in 2015 I’d written a memoir that introduced some controversial ideas about women and drinking, and I badly wanted to be a part of their rogue outfit, even as I clung to the more doctrinaire one I’d long considered my own. I was so proud of this small, private act of civil disobedience that I brought it home to Texas to show it to the younger man like a prized pelt. But the conversation didn’t go as I’d planned.
“So why were you there again?” he asked.
“Because I wanted to talk to other writers about the things you can’t write about anymore.”
His eyes narrowed. “What things can’t you write about?”
“Gender, sex, politics. The things you and I discuss.”
[Nicole Chung: How to organize your writing ideas]
He ran a hand through his hair. “I’d think those would be the most interesting things to write about.”
I gave him an exasperated look. “Are you kidding? I’d get killed!”
