介绍： 051 | An Empty Heart Is One That Can Be Filled

I was 31 before I got my heart broken.

It was spring and I had quit my job and driven across country to an artists' colony in New England, the kind of place that provides you with a cabin in the woods that is not within sight of any of the other cabins. My resi...

介绍： 051 | An Empty Heart Is One That Can Be Filled

I was 31 before I got my heart broken.

It was spring and I had quit my job and driven across country to an artists' colony in New England, the kind of place that provides you with a cabin in the woods that is not within sight of any of the other cabins. My residency was for eight weeks. I hoped to finish my first novel there.

The poet arrived a week after I did. He was too skinny, but his eyes were very blue. I think his first words to me were something about how his throat felt tight. I was feeling the same thing, I told him. Maybe, he said, it was a reaction to all the MSG they put in the food.

A rumor was circulating that the MSG came in by the case to the back door of the kitchen. (This, I think, tells you all you need to know about how writers will, despite being given room and board and lunch dropped off in a basket on the porch, manufacture anxiety.)

My first joke with the poet was about "Lolita." We were sitting at dinner and another writer was waxing on about the novel. The poet and I both said that the disturbing pedophilia canceled out the luscious prose and we could not worship it the way we would like.

Actually, we may have just caught eyes, not having to explain (love means never having to explain the misogynistic pedophilia of "Lolita"), and the other writer fought back, so the poet held up his napkin as a screen between the "Lolita" fans and us. Everyone laughed. I swooned.

A few nights later we watched short films made by other residents. There were no seats left so we stood in the back. He was just behind me, breathing into my hair, our bodies seeming to speak to each other in the dark.

When it was over, with hardly a word, we got into my car and drove out of town. We ended up in a small village that had been transported back to 1969 by a film crew, with thick wooden signs for the soda shop and beauty parlor and a huge advertisement for old-fashioned men's shoes painted onto a brick building.

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