Did I Ever Tell You the One About the Writer...

First of all, sorry for the length of time between posts. My computer has been debilitated by a virus. 59 pop-up ads in under 3 minutes! Nasty.

So I had this dream the other night where somehow, I misdialed on my cellphone and instead of whomever I was trying to reach, I accidentally called Kate, our resident Hot Librarian. So rather than saying, "Hey Kate, this is Julia, I'm sorry but I misdialed," I tried to disguise my voice and just said, "Sorry wrong number" before promptly hanging up. Then I spent the rest of the dream worrying if she recognized my voice.

When I woke up, this reminded me of a similar incident from my waking past.

In college, I wrote film, TV and book reviews for the school paper. One of the books I reviewed really spoke to me so on a whim, I decided to write the author a fan letter, telling him how much I appreciated the book and included a clipping of the four-star review. A few months later, to my surprise, the author wrote back and was equally excited, as apparently, I was his first ever fan letter. Thus began a steady correspondence as he found out that I, too, was a writer, and I found out that he lived in Berkeley which is 30 minutes away from my hometown. That summer, we arranged to meet face to face at a coffee shop in Berkeley. I was 19 and he was 39. I was painfully shy but I think he was excited to meet a fan, so we talked about writing and literature and life itself. We kept in touch and we met up again the next summer. I brought him my writing portfolio of short stories I had written over the last year at school. We chatted again, like old friends, and we talked a bit about our personal lives. Of course, being 20 and a bit of a social recluse, I didn't have much to say. I can't remember how personal his stories were but to be honest, nothing really fazes me. That night, I went home and tried to dial a friend of mine to see if he wanted to hang out. But instead, I dialed this writer's number. He picked up and I realized what I had done, but instead of identifying myself and telling him that I had misdialed, I just hung up.

Well, he *69'd me and called back. I picked up and hung up. He did it again so this time, I picked it up and I was like, "Hey, what's up?" He asked me why I called and I said, "I didn't call." He said, "Yes, you did. I star-69'd you." And I just said, "Oh." So instead, he started talking about liking my writing so it wasn't that big of a deal. Did I act like a retard? Yes. Do I have any idea why I acted like a retard? No. The actions of Ms. Julia often make no sense within the realms of this universe.

I always felt awkward about that episode and we lost touch for a while, until a few years ago, after I had been firmly entrenched in Los Angeles, I got an email from him. He explained that he happened to be googling women whom he'd wanted to sleep with but didn't get the chance to, and found some sites with my movie on it. So he wanted to say hi. I wrote back that I was happy to hear from him and asked him what he'd been up to.

Until a few days later, it hit me. Wait a minute...he had wanted to sleep with me?

I was the most clueless, innocent, naive kid, just meeting an author she liked, hoping to gain a mentor. It totally went over my head that he might have ulterior motives.

So the moral of my story is:

If you misdial someone you know, just identify yourself and say that you misdialed because chances are, they have Caller ID. And moms and dads--don't let your kids write fan letters to figures who are twice their age.