10:04

by Ben Lerner

even if she was visiting her parents upstate or spending time with a boyfriend, whom I could be counted on to hate.

I opened the bottle of red with the label displaying the most distant year, taking pleasure in the knowledge that its value would be lost on me.

I said, “Everything is fine, I’m going home now,” said it just so I could say I’d said it in case she was upset later that I’d left without telling her.

It was a job Alena held part-time in order to support what she called her “artistic practice,” a practice Sharon had had trouble describing and about which, because of the phrase “artistic practice,” I’d had grave doubts.

She said thanks, but she doubted she’d need help; her tone implied my offer presumed a greater degree of intimacy than our exchange of fluids warranted.

Although I’d felt a small frisson when The New Yorker had accepted it—my parents would be exceedingly proud of me—and although I wanted the approximately eight thousand dollars, I also relished the opportunity to turn The New Yorker down, to be able to tell the story of my story as evidence of my vanguard credibility.

It was still unseasonably warm but there was now an implication of winter in the air.

It was quiet enough that he could hear the bartender shaking one of the artisanal cocktails whose prices he was resolved not to complain about aloud,

That he would form no memory of what he observed and could not record it in any language lent it a fullness, made it briefly identical to itself, and he was deeply moved to think this experience of presence depended upon its obliteration.

She was not unusually beautiful, but her proportions, visible through her black pantsuit even while she sat, were consistent with normative male fantasy.

I managed to look her in the eyes as I thanked her, but the knowledge in hers was terrible, as if to say: Take a good look, pervert.

“Why reproduce if you believe the world is ending?” “Because the world is always ending for each of us and if one begins to withdraw from the possibilities of experience, then no one would take any of the risks involved with love. And love has to be harnessed by the political. Ultimately what’s ending is a mode.”

So while I assume I was asked to talk about how I became a writer with the idea that my experience might be of some practical use to the students here, I’m afraid I have nothing to offer in that regard. But I can tell you how, from my current vantage, I have constructed the fiction about the origins of my writing, such as it is.

After two quick glasses of Sancerre, the distinguished male author started holding forth, periodically tugging at his salt-and-pepper beard, his signature gesture, moving from one anecdote about a famous friend or triumphant experience to another without pausing for the possibility of response, and it was clear to everyone at the table who had any experience with men and alcohol—especially men who had won international literary prizes—that he was not going to stop talking at any point in the meal.

She smiled with only the left side of her mouth in a way that doubted the statement; I found the expression winning.

There was one other story I knew I would tip in, a story I’d only recently heard from Alex’s stepfather. “I’m not sure how this will fit, exactly, but the protagonist had—will have had—a relationship when he was younger that I think will form an important part of his history and relate to his inclination toward fabrication. He’s in college and falls in love with this woman, Ashley, a couple of years his senior who, about six months after they first get together, comes back from the doctor in tears and tells him she’s been diagnosed with cancer.” “That young?” “It happens, right? Say they find it somehow during a routine examination. At first it looks like she’s going to drop out and go live with her family during treatment, but then she decides—in part because she’s in love with him, in part because her relationship with her parents is difficult—to undergo it there, at a hospital not far from campus. This is the first romantic relationship either has ever been in where one partner really has to care for the other, not just try to impress the other; it’s his first serious relationship away from home and it’s developing in the shadow of death. There’s no surgery, but then—worse—there’s radiation and chemo; he drives her to the hospital in her car for each treatment, dropping her off because, for whatever complex of reasons, she doesn’t want him there, asks that he respect the intimacy of her relationship to her oncologist, a woman with whom she feels close. He waits in the p...

part of what I loved about poetry was how the distinction between fiction and nonfiction didn’t obtain, how the correspondence between text and world was less important than the intensities of the poem itself, what possibilities of feeling were opened up in the present tense of reading.

A basic, acute physical desire for one of the women passed through me, and was gone, as if the desire were en route to someone else.

I couldn’t remember if I knew him too well to ask him to remind me of his name, and then it was too late.