There is a short story attached to this, Literati, to make the entry legit. But I really put this up because I want everyone who reads me to know something.

I love you.

This, for all the people who've been here with me since the beginning or come along the way as ships changed, who've read me since '99, who've offered me so much encouragement:

My courage has been flagging for so long that even though I write and write, I've all but given up hope that i'll be published soon. I want to explore subjects like these, pen this kind of story, not just the pretentious literary shit i've been churning out. The old themse, love, are all there is on this earth worth wasting time thinking about; misery is so prevalent in everyday existence, and once you've read Walker Percy's Moviegoer you've done about all you can with that. Mostly I think I want to write YA novels, because for teenagers, it's still ok to dream, to obsess, to want, to crush, to fantasize non-pornographically.

I just wanted to...I don't know... thank everyone who's left a kind word or constructive, encouraging review for the last six, seven years. I don't think you all realize how much you've shaped me as a writer, and I should've given you the credit long before this. You will always be remembered fondly.

Sometimes I have these weird dreams that some of the intuitive readers (whose reviews I've always kept a hopeful eye out for and whom I respect as writers) will all be living in New York, and we'll somehow randomly stumble accross each other, and form a writing group in some basement bar/coffeehouse where we can rave about intelligent romance and sexy sex and brilliant smut and bad boys with brains and writing, writing, writing, nothing but writing.

You were crucially formative, for lighting that hope and starting that dream, exposing me to the world of 'publishing' and helping me to understand what the reader longs for when they read a love story. Over the years I've learned how to plot a story and avoid the pitfalls that beset other 'literary' short-story writers and novelists who get so caught in their own language that they forget how to plan for tension and continuity, how to keep the reader reading, how to induce that sweet dizzy state, how to transcend ship and genre and captivate with the writing itself. I learned about all the stories people want from life, the things they care to dream about, be reminded of - tropes as old as 17th century love songs and still as powerful.

So for that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Someday I hope to pen a serious love story -still using the name Lucia Marin - that you'll want to take home and keep and re-read - as a tribute to all of you. And it might have a good girl in a plaid school skirt and a few bad boys in it.

Yours,
luce

Now, a short story. Our girl grows up. A little.

Love Story

She's not Ali McGraw or doomed to die from cancer after graduation, thank god, and he's not going to be a rich lawyer. It doesn't really matter. She's in college, and it's late autumn, and the leaves are almost gone. November is cold in Connecticut, but not as cold as before, when she didn't have someone to curl into on the long, grey afternoons.

He made fun of her the first week, when she was studying Thomas Merton. They lay on the couch, protected from skin and sudden heat and loss of complete perspective on all things important by sweaters. Hers was a thin J. Crew cable, befitting a serious Yale journalist. His was an old L.L. Bean, thick grey nappy wool, two dollars at a thrift store in the Village, befitting a cranky future author. He was poking her arm and teasing her, mimicking Ryan O'Neal's tone of wonderment in a peter-pan falsetto (I'm studying! I'm really studying!) until she had to shut him up the only way she knew how. It was a waste of an afternoon. They lay huddled under her thick Yale blanket with its blue and white stripes, feeling the dusky slide of dry, velvety skin against cotton, against each other's fingertips, against hair and eyelashes and lips. She shrieked when he flapped it open, letting in a freezing draft, to punish her for some small barb or another.

He fell asleep afterwards. She touched his hair lightly, running her hand over it like a ghost, and wondered how it was possible to be so happy on this earth and how long it could last. Nothing that good can last, she thought. Then,

Yes it can. As long as two people are intelligent, have functioning brains. I guess it could. Why not? I say when I'm mad. He tells me what he needs. I can tell, I can see the underlying things, the real motives; he's a man. It's simple sometimes. As long as what he loves best is writing, as long as what I chase first is my dream, it doesn't matter how much we are apart. Any goddamn misunderstandings are just going to have to work themselves out, that's all. I am efficient. I won't let it get too bad.

Outside, the light was fading into evening. She drew back into the soft, cool gloom, into the warmth of his chest, his neck, under the thick blanket, into safety. If this one true thing is not right, then nothing is. There's no hope for the world. But I won't give up and I wont' stop believing. I will not listen to what anyone says. I won't be cynical about a single thing. It's bigger than both of us. It's here. It's coming. Love, big, bad, endless love, and I will claim it for a lifetime. Nothing much else matters. Nothing much at all. Here I am, I guess. And all that trouble.

She felt herself trembling. Her eyes were wet. The black, naked branches of the trees were dissolving into dusk, blending into the purple, chilly darkness. She was happy. She was so tired. She felt herself falling asleep.