I emailed Jeremy Lin a story that I wrote at the behest of my friend. Not soon after, he emailed me back with this reply, “I liked it, if you make the capitalization normal and send it to me I’ll publish it on the website of my publishing company, muumuuhouse.com.” A few minutes later, he sent me a follow up email, “I got an idea. I’m going to France on December 3rd because they’re translating my books. If you are in Paris from December 4 on 7:45AM until December 10 on 5:45PM, you can stay in my hotel room with me. But you have to ‘cover’ the entire trip, as if you are a journalist, in the style of all your other pieces, then get it published somewhere. (I’ll help you find a venue). If I were rich I would pay for your plane ticket but I honestly have like $300 right now. But I am willing to pay half the amount of your plane ticket later, when the piece is published. I’ll pay $700 of the ticket price after the piece is published. The piece should be at least 10,000 words.”
I replied, “Okay, I edited the story so the capitalization is standard. I have attached it to the email. As for Paris, I’m interested but I might have trouble getting the funds. I’ll keep you updated. Thank you very much for your interest in me and my writing of course. I feel very flattered.”
“No problem. Sweet re: Paris. Sweet re: story. I will post it in one to seven days.”
We emailed back and forth, fixing technical details in the story. Then he published it on the Muumuu House website. We arranged to chat on Gchat one afternoon about Paris.
“Hey. I feel like I was in a really social mood when I thought of the idea, now I feel like it’ll be way too stressful,” he typed.
“Okay. I probably couldn’t get the money anyway.”
A few days after Jeremy Lin published my story, I received an email from a reporter who wanted to do a phone interview with me about it.
“Hi Marie. I’m a reporter for the New York Observer. I’m writing because I read your story and admired it and want to write about it, and maybe first person writing/the Internet more broadly. I was wondering if I could interview you. What do you think?”
After thinking about it for days, I apprehensively agreed to do the interview with the encouragement and support of Jeremy Lin and my friends. The interviewer and I talked for an hour on the phone about my motivations and intentions with regards to writing, sexism in the literary world, Jeremy Lin, and aspects of writing on the Internet. The reporter ended the correspondence by saying that she would email interview Jeremy Lin for more information.
*
The day after the interview, Jeremy Lin forwarded me the responses he gave to the questions that he had received from the journalist.
“Tell me about how you met Marie Calloway. What did you think of her writing and also her as a person?’
“I’ve never met Marie in real life. Based on her Facebook, writing, Tumblr, etc., I think she’s funny, kind, discerning, interesting, and attractively confident.”
“‘Why did you decide to publish her story on Muumuu House?’
“Simply because I liked it. I read it all at one time without stopping and was surprised, later, to learn it was ~15,000 words. It has similar qualities (detachment, focus, attention to certain funny/interesting details, lack of a “good/bad” agenda) of other writing I like that’s autobiographical and first-person. (I’m thinking The End of the Story by Lydia Davis and Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys), but maybe her writing is even more extreme and direct and even less sentimental.”
I read this email several times in awe.
*
I felt anxious and uneasy the entire day before the piece came out. I had no idea what the article would say or how I would be represented in it. These feelings didn’t subside after it was published; it was titled “Meet Marie Calloway: the New Model for Literary Seductress is Part Feminist, Part ‘Famewhore’ and All Pseudonyms” and the article itself was full of gossip (“compared to Ms. Calloway’s other stories, Adrien Brody made bigger waves in literary New York because Mr. Brody was fairly well known here”) rather than any focus on my story and “first person writing/the Internet” as I had been told it would. The reporter made a lot of conclusions and judgments about me and my writing that I didn’t agree with (“with writing like Ms. Calloway’s, it’s tempting to believe that there is some sort of feminist impulse at work, that she derives power from humiliating men with her sexuality, the same tool they used to objectify her.”) I felt uneasy to be suddenly upheld as a “feminist writer,” which I had never thought of myself as and which seemed like a tremendous burden.
*
Jeremy Lin and I Gchatted about the article immediately after it was published on the web. He was also concerned about how he had been portrayed in the article. He quoted one of the mentions of him, “‘The poet/novelist/deadpan literary provocateur [Jeremy] Lin, once rumored to be the author of Hipster Runoff, made a documentary about [Internet fashion model Bebe Zeva] early this year, in which Ms. Zeva, now 18, poignantly tells him about growing up without a father. Later, Mr. Lin sprays whipped cream on her face and rubs it in her hair’” and said, “I feel like I definitely come off as like I’m trying to prey on young girls and as an unseemly presence in the piece.”
“Yes. I was concerned about that. I’m sorry that I helped to create a Jeremy Lin is a creep meme,” I replied.
“I don’t care. I feel like I feel nothing from any negative press about me anymore.”
“Oh. Were you ever bothered?” I asked.
“I’m not really sure. I think since I didn’t know anyone, and wouldn’t be in contact with anyone who would have the opportunity to think bad things about me in real life, it just concretely had no effect on my life, which I was able to focus on. Now I feel like I always assume that I will probably like the person getting shit-talked and, based on experience, not to believe what’s written. And I feel like the few people I’d be able to be friends with also think that way, so it doesn’t affect me concretely. In terms of publicity, there was a study that showed that bad publicity helps more than good publicity, because it gets more attention. Then after like three years people forget if it was good or bad publicity, they just remember that you got publicity, which seems true.
“By the way, I feel like in the past I’ve felt really sensitive about pieces about me, like I viewed every single thing as negative, as you seem to be doing. For instance, when I read articles about me, other people would think what they were saying was good, but the same details about me I would think are bad. But I think that’s just from being sensitive.”
*
The day after the article came out, it was discussed on Gawker, a popular Internet gossip site, and HTMLGIANT, a popular literary site. There were hundreds of comments.
“How is she going to feel when all her friends and family find out about her explicit blog about being a hooker in London. I am pro-sex and sex work and everything but this is not feminism, it’s attention-whoring and it’s going to blow up in her face when it’s no longer cute.” [female.]
“I’m just offended that every teen who makes her diary public gets referred to as a “writer,” as if sharing what are essentially Penthouse Forum-quality passages is some kind of challenging profession.” [male.]
“This is the literary equivalent of two straight girls making out on a keg in a field party. If this can be described as ‘chronicles of women’s sexuality,’ so can Penthouse Letters. Anais Nin this ain’t.” [male.]
“It bothers me that anyone would consider this scenario remotely compelling—a young girl desperate for attention and validation solicits a random, married writer twice her age in a position of relative authority for sex, he cums on her face (easily one of the most degrading sexual acts, and one heavily influenced by porn culture), she writes about it in awful prose that’s borderline pornographic, and you manage to find something redeemable from it all.” [male.]
“feminism as pure opportunism. let’s fuck famous people and tell how shitty they are. or let’s pretend to fuck famous people and tell. the younger we are the better. americans are such prudes. this whole deal would be so much more *edgy* if she were 15 or better yet 13. what’s the legal limit? the sasha-grey-azation of society. It’s my choice whether I profit off my documented degradation! if I profit, then I am in control! if I profit, I win! look at me! I can fuck famous people and hit buttons on a keyboard! I can take 10 cocks and then write about it! i’m a writer! joyce ain’t got shit on me!” [sic] [male.]
“To write something like this pseudonymously in a fashion that outs the other person certainly meets the author’s self-definition of ‘fame whore’ with the accent on the whore.” [male.]
“She’s confused attention with power and has let herself be used, sexually and now by other writers who are more savvy than herself (who profits here?). Her sexual exploits seem to be traumatizing experiences that she orchestrates to tantalize people who get off on the degradation of women (including herself). She has written repeatedly about how she is frigid, how sex is painful to her and how violence turns her on because she was a victim of rape. Just gross… and sad.” [male.]
“marie calloway is a lazy boring writer who I know through a friend to be histrionic, predictably ‘unpredictable’ and most likely autistic.” [sic] [female.]
I spent the entire day reading all that had been written about me. I incessantly ruminated over all of it to the point of mental exhaustion, working myself up to a panic attack which finally culminated in me hiding from my parent’s Christmas party in the guest bathroom. There, I curled up into the fetal position and hyperventilated. After an hour and a half, I got up and logged onto my computer and went onto Gchat. Jeremy Lin immediately messaged me.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Is it possible to pull my story off of Muumuu House?”
“I feel aversion to that but it’s up to you.”
“Yes. I don’t know. I guess I should not decide while I’m panicking.”
“I feel really good about all of this.”
“Why?” I asked.
He sent me a long email titled, “why I feel good about all of this,”
“Benefits for Marie
1. More people know about you and writing, which makes you and your writing more valuable, which ensures you a larger chance of financial security. Financial security means that you will feel less pressure to do things that you don’t want to do. Financial security also means that you will feel less pressure to compromise any of your views or art or writing or anything.
It also ensures you a larger number of people who know about you and view you as worthy of attention. This means you will have a wider range of people with which you can choose to talk to and be friends with. This means you will be less likely to ‘settle’ for someone in terms of friendship or romance; you have more of an ability to ‘choose’ who you like most. This is what I think when I get negative coverage or people say I’m an ‘attention whore.’ It’s to ensure financial security, not to gain something called ‘fame’ which is an abstraction and so is something I have no concept of. I can’t ‘get’ fame.
Benefits for People like Me
1. I’m excited about all this. I’m excited you exist. I feel less depressed because of this and your writing and you, in the same way I’m less depressed when I read any work of art that I like. This entire thing is so unlikely and exciting to me and in a way that is also positive, I feel, for society and everyone involved. As an ‘art project’ this is exciting to me. Something that I feel is morally good and artistically original/exciting is happening now and I feel less depressed or bored about life because of it.”
“I’m glad that you are glad that I exist.” I responded.
Jeremy Lin’s email opened a floodgate inside of me, and I told Jeremy Lin all about my worries about writing, my feelings of alienation, as well as the guilt, humiliation, and anger (“We didn’t talk about ‘feminism’ or ‘famewhoring’ or ‘revenge’ in the interview at all and I specifically asked the reporter not to focus on any gossip and she said she wouldn’t. I was so stupid to not have known that would happen. I feel completely ashamed.”) that I felt in a rapid fire stream-of-consciousness over Gchat. I concluded it with, “I feel like I will be embarrassed of this spill tomorrow. Please reassure me that you don’t mind or think less of me.”
“I enjoyed reading all that, thanks for sharing. There’s nothing that you can say or do at this point that will make me think less of you, I feel. To me, I view this as: I’m happy to know someone like you, I have an increased chance of financial security (via increased knowledge of me), and that I’m happy to read your writing and see what happens with you and your writing in the future.”
I then told him about my fears of what he had meant with the invitation to Paris, about how my friends and Internet commentators had said, and how even I had wondered, if that he was just trying to get me to have sex with him, and that that was the reason he had even published my story in the first place.
“No, I didn’t want you to come to Paris to have sex. I like talking to you and I like your writing and your personality and sense of humor and willingness to publish things. I thought that I wanted to meet you and probably would at some point, and the most interesting way to do it would be to preempt you writing about it by making it the focus. I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to do anything without consciousness of it being written about which seemed exciting, but only in a certain mood.”
“I can’t go into a situation knowing that I’ll write about it,” I responded.
*
After we were done chatting, I replayed the phrases “I’m excited that you exist” and “there’s nothing that you can say or do at this point that will make me think less of you, I feel” over and over in my mind; it was successful in tampering the negative phrases that had been playing in my mind all day. No one had ever said anything like those things about me, and I realized that deep down it was what I was always longing to hear from other people, that all of my social interaction with other people was really just out of a want to hear those sentences, and so I felt almost existentially relieved by talking with him that night.
However, the intense criticism of me and my story on the Internet continued to grow. I began to receive death and rape threats over email. I mostly fought the compulsion to reply to the comments, and simply deleted the negative emails that I got. Nevertheless, a comment that essentially called me an “ugly slut” pushed me over the edge, and I broke my silence by responding “fuck off” to it. Right after I did that, I was immediately intensely embarrassed, but there was no way to delete my comment. I emailed Jeremy Lin out of desperation for consolation about everything.
“I am worried about how ‘attention’ makes me act weirdly. I tend to crack under pressure. I feel embarrassed about responding ‘fuck off’ to an idiotic comment on Thought Catalog. I feel like all of this ‘attention’ on the Internet is all very draining and exhausting, yet also addicting. I feel like it will be difficult for me to be able to write for a while due to reading all of these things about me, as stress and expectations on myself, and also the perceived expectations and opinions of others, make it impossible for me to write well. It seems like if I want to become a ‘successful writer’ it will be a lot harder than I imagined and in ways that I did not imagine. Maybe it won’t even be possible due to how I crack under pressure. I just felt like telling you all this to get it out, by the way. I’m not expecting you to act as my therapist or something like that.” I wrote.
“I feel like you already have enough for a book, so maybe you can relax for a while and focus on what you’ve already done. I feel like you navigated this as well as I can think. I feel glad to have been a part of this in some way. I feel like the most shit-talking you will ever receive has probably already happened, with this, and it will gradually decrease from now on, so there will be less stress maybe. Overall, just good job, thank you for sending the story to me in first place,” Jeremy Lin replied.
“Thank you. I feel happy that I made you ‘proud’ of me, and that I helped you get hits.”
*
After this message, Jeremy Lin and I Gchatted later that day.
“What do you think when someone says there are flaws in your writing, or when someone says you have talent? Do you think any of those people are right, whether they say you are good or bad, or do you think that everyone just has different preferences?” he asked.
“To be honest, I haven’t really thought about it.” I replied.
“If someone says your writing has flaws or is good, that implies they know a concrete goal that your writing has, which can be measured in numbers, and that the number would be higher or lower if you changed your writing in a certain way, I feel, but that seems incredibly hard to measure, even if two different people had agreed upon a purpose for your writing that could be measured, like ‘increases heart rate in reader’ or something. But it can be depressing to never think in terms of ‘good’/’bad’ without defining contexts/goals in each instance.
“I feel like it’s two completely different ways of using language, to (1) never use abstractions with 100% seriousness especially qualitative ones, without defining contexts or goals. (2) To use them. (2) makes it so there’s always some purpose, there’s always some people who you view as having ‘good taste’ and others as ‘bad taste’ and there’s always that ‘conversation’ happening, that argument. I think that like 98% of people are (2), but I can only do (2) self-consciously, because I know that it’s not accurate. But out of all the people on the Internet, I’ve found some people who write things who do (1) mostly and have published them on Muumuu House.”
I said that I appreciated his thoughts, but that I wasn’t in a cerebral mood at that moment. In actuality, I was very interested in Jeremy Lin’s opinion, but thought that I needed to do more reading and think on my own about this before I formed an opinion. But I was too afraid to tell him all of that.
*
A few days later, Jeremy Lin and I were invited to participate in a letter in the mail writing project, and also participate in a reading that was to be held in New York in connection with it. Jeremy Lin then arranged a Muumuu House reading to be held around that same time. He emailed me about the Muumuu House reading, “Would you want to confirm the reading for February 21?”
“Yes, the 21st it is. I just booked a plane ticket to New York today. I feel very grateful towards you.”
“I’m excited that you’re coming and that we have readings. I’m really glad that you’re coming,” he replied.
*
Until then, my interactions with Jeremy Lin had been overwhelmingly positive and supportive. Perhaps this led me to a false sense of complacency; that he would like me no matter what I did. Even with Jeremy Lin’s emotional support, the onslaught of hundreds of comments calling me a horrible writer and attacking me personally got to me. Out of want for support, I emailed a writer that I admired. After I sent it to her, I forwarded the email to him, hoping that he would comfort me, even though the email contained these lines, “The ‘attention’ positive and negative is making me get into an unhealthy obsessive/self-hate cycle and I developed massive writer’s block and I lost my voice and confidence in my ability to write. I know the thing to do is just to ignore all of the comments, but I can’t help but read things about me. I hate how I’m being described as some Jeremy Lin imitator or groupie. I don’t want to be really associated with Jeremy Lin/Muumuu House (as a writer), I really want to escape that shadow.”
Jeremy Lin responded to the forward, “There will always be people talking about you if your writing is available. The more people who read your writing, the more money you’ll make and the more people will talk about you. If you don’t want any personal attention I think the only way to do that is to completely make up an identity and write only completely made up stories. Even if you have no Internet presence, if you publish a book, people will be talking about you. I think the only sustainable solution is to just learn over time to not be affected by what other people say or think. As for what you want or don’t want to be associated with, focus on what you like and publish your work at places you like, and talk to people you like, and that’s what you’ll be associated with and if it’s what you like then that won’t be a problem. But being associated with things is unavoidable also.”
I could tell that he was upset with me. I wrote him a reply email, “I’m sorry if I came off as rude or offensive with regards to what I said about not wanting to be associated with you or Muumuu House. I didn’t mean it like that, I don’t know. I really feel very grateful to you for publishing me on Muumuu House, and all of the advice and support that you have given me.”
Jeremy Lin replied, “Can you elaborate on ‘I didn’t mean it like that, I don’t know’ as much as you can or want to? I feel that it would decrease the awkwardness I feel now, and also I’m interested. I’m also interested in any elaboration of your original email. I would like to know more. Who do you seek validation from? From reading your blog and Facebook, I feel like you place more value in writing that is political and uses academic terms, but your fiction is nothing like that. I think it’s interesting, the difference. I can see how you wouldn’t want to be associated with certain things. I am interested in hearing more, both out of interest and to decrease the awkwardness.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want things to be awkward. I don’t want you to dislike me or think less of me. I’m not sure who I seek validation from. I feel like I would be unhappy and insecure unless every single person who read my writing said they liked it and got what I was intending to do 100% and obviously that is impossible. I think deep down I published things because there was a desire to be understood by other people, but that didn’t really happen and it now seems kind of ridiculous to think that could happen. Instead there were just a lot of people misunderstanding me and totally misrepresenting me as a stupid Jeremy Lin puppet attention whore.
“I guess those people don’t matter but it was very frustrating. Why do other people feel they understand my motivations and intentions with regards to my writing? Why do they feel like they can write in detail about my mental health? Why do they feel they get to decide if I’m ‘degrading’ myself, and assume that I have no understanding of those things? Why do they get to decide that just because my writing seems straightforward and direct, or that because I’m a 21-year-old ‘girl’ that I can’t have any intent with regards to my writing that isn’t directly stated? And so on… I guess I just feel like I don’t want to be associated with you as a writer in the way that it brings people to think my whole writing efforts are just to impress you/get famous/attempt to write exactly like you.
“As a writer and as a person I admire and like you a lot. I like how you are very intelligent but don’t feel the need to show it off and are completely sincere and unpretentious, and I feel the same about your writing. Probably I was trying to use publishing as a way to bypass forming real life relationships with people, which is very difficult for me to do via awkwardness and social anxiety. I also feel like I desired to be validated by people as a writer and wanted to be able to see myself as a writer. I realized that I do want a book though I know I won’t make much money or probably be reviewed well. I can’t say why really that I write. I don’t really aim to make money so much as like you said you did (not that I think wanting to make money is a bad goal). Writing is just something that I’ve done everyday since I was like seven years old and it feels like something I have to do, the same as with eating or whatever, but I feel like I come off as pretentious or taking myself really seriously if I say that. I don’t want to be pretentious or ambitious and I really dislike those qualities in other people. I hate any sort of artifice. I feel like I can see myself becoming someone who is very ambitious and careerist and tries to suck up to people and who brags about being published in places, and I don’t want to be like that, and I can’t really operate or write under those conditions,” I responded.
“Thanks for typing all of that, I feel less awkward. Some people understood you and your writing. Wanting to connect with people is also a main factor as to why I write and publish things, forgot to mention that. Don’t you feel you were successful in that? You’ve met a lot of people through writing. You didn’t feel ambitious before? What were you thinking when you were sending out stories and emailing me a lot of times even if I didn’t respond, with your writing? Is it different now? I’m interested in what you think about Muumuu House, because I honestly feel that Muumuu House is the least careerist, sucking up, ‘contest’-like thing for writing there is now that I know of, since I and most people published that I know of on the site honestly believe that there is no good or bad in art (for example I 100% believe a 10-year-old’s writing is not less good than James Joyce’s, or replace either with any people) and have demeanors where it’s impossible to fake interest or ‘suck up.’ I feel like someone who wants to avoid those things you listed would feel an affinity with Muumuu House. But I also think that you want validation and it’s an environment where you won’t get much. I don’t value intelligence and feel aversion to the word ‘talent.’ I feel like based on your stories I would think that you would like my writing, but based on other aspects of you I feel like you wouldn’t like my writing. I feel like if there is anything I’m the opposite of it’s probably essays I’ve read by n+1 people. So I’ve felt vague about what you think about me and why you repeatedly send me things. Can you elaborate on that? Also, what do you think about all the advice people have given you? I’ve felt aversion whenever I’ve read any advice people have given you. I feel like you know what you’re doing and when I read other people’s advice it makes me feel like I want to help you feel like you don’t need their advice,” Jeremy Lin wrote.
“It’s true that some people understood my writing, and my friends who knew me well grew to understand me more. For instance, my friend said, ‘my girl friend in high school really likes your writing and admires you. I think there are a lot of people, girls especially, who intuitively understand what you’re writing about and feel excited about it.’ I guess it’s hard for me to focus on that, though. It’s also true that I started to talk to a lot of people I really like because of my writing. I guess it just comes back to insecurity; a desire to be recognized by intellectuals or everyone, even. I don’t know what to do about that. I don’t know why I sent you things. I feel like I was just on autopilot and did those things because they intuitively felt like the thing to do and there wasn’t conscious thought behind it. I didn’t know or think much at all about Muumuu House before, and I had never read any of the writers there except I read a few of your short stories and Richard Yates, but I read those way after I published writing on Thought Catalog and sent you writing. I see some competition, ambition, and sucking up though it is in a different way than in other places.
“I admire how firmly you feel about all art being subjective. I don’t know how I feel about it. I haven’t thought or read enough about it, though my intuitive feeling is that it isn’t, totally, but now I’m thinking more and more that all art is subjective, but again, I don’t feel like I’ve read or thought about it enough to have a legitimate opinion. The most cynical part of me feels like it is a cop-out, with regards to my own writing, if I were to believe that all art is subjective. I haven’t really thought about or read about ‘talent’, though I can imagine that it is similar.
“As for you with regards to your writing, I liked Richard Yates, and a few weeks ago I bought Shoplifting from American Apparel. Before you published my stories, my interest in you was sort of ‘sociological’; I was more interested in you as a sort of cultural entity than as a writer or person and I read Richard Yates through this lens, as well as the idea that I acquired of you (without thinking on my own) that you were just a talentless, gimmicky writer. Now, it’s different, of course. I think, partly, that sending things to you was just kind of a social experiment. I was curious as to how you would react. I never expected you to publish anything by me.
“About liking and admiring academic and intellectual writing but my own fiction not being like that, I feel like I’m fascinated by that kind of writing and I think it’s more interesting than fiction. I think a lot about politics, but I’m not confident enough to write about those sorts of things directly, only indirectly through fiction. Maybe I’m not intelligent enough, either. It’s really frustrating to be someone who is genuinely interested in things, but perhaps lacks the intelligence to directly contribute to any sort of meaningful intellectual discourse. Also, the way that I think is not so rationally, but often intuitively and emotionally, and I make ‘high ideas’ cognizant mostly through the lens of myself and my personal experiences. Obviously this doesn’t work for that kind of academic writing,” I wrote.
“Why do you think that thinking your writing is subjective and is a copout? It makes life even harder for you (because you won’t be with the 95% or whatever that believe otherwise) and (I’ve written about this elsewhere but don’t know where exactly, just trust me that I’ve thought about it a lot) it’s moral, it reduces pain and suffering in the world, to view art as subjective (basically it reduces hierarchical thinking and reduces qualitative-abstraction thinking; outside of morals it’s historically, I estimate, more original; finally, it’s more accurate, going by natural laws). In terms of how much you work on your writing, art being subjective or not is irrelevant. Everyone still has their ideals if art is subjective and it will take as much work for someone to make a story into their ideal if they believe art is subjective or not.
I’d be much more interested in reading political or other essays by you than something via n+1, something with a lot of terms and received ideas. I feel like, based on what I know, a larger percentage of advances in whatever field have come from non-academic people who were able to think concretely and without the use of terms (or something). In your fiction you’re able to write how things are, I feel, not how one would think they are, having read thousands of novels. I feel like you have a brain that is able to view things without preconceptions, in terms of your fiction, but you are resisting using that for other things. That you were really seeking validation is what I sensed whenever you asked me for help or advice.”
After this conversation I thought about how I admired Jeremy Lin’s obvious intelligence and thoughtfulness, though I wondered if he was trying to mold my thoughts and ideas and felt uncomfortable.
The rest of the week leading up to the readings in New York, Jeremy Lin continued to at times emotionally support me and give me advice on publishing my writing over email, and I felt touched when he expressed concerns about his own writing to me. He mailed me a booklet of drawings of koalas clutching onto cats that he drew for me, and I looked at it often.
*
I arrived in New York City on February 17. I was staying at an Internet acquaintance’s house, and the night culminated in me coercing him into holding me while I cried and shook from the immense anxiety I felt about being in New York to meet Jeremy Lin and to do readings, an anxiety which I summed up to him in one line, “I just feel like I owe everyone something, and I can’t deliver.”
“They like you because of the work you produced. You don’t need to offer anyone more than that. You don’t owe anyone anything. Look, even if Jeremy and all of those people hate you in real life, which won’t happen, you don’t need them. You don’t need any of those people,” the acquaintance said.
Laying there I thought: I know that I don’t “need” Jeremy Lin to be a writer, but that’s not what I’m concerned with. Or perhaps I do need Jeremy Lin, because I know that without his emotional and public support I would have cracked. I want Jeremy Lin to like me a lot, though I don’t know how much I genuinely like him as a person and how much my feelings are distorted by him being Jeremy Lin. I then thought about how I couldn’t explain to anyone how I feel that my entire social existence amounts to a burden for other people, about how guilty I feel for making them interact with me, and how I know that the only hope for anyone to enjoy interacting with me is if I’m somehow able to conceal my real personality.
*
On Friday, I emailed Jeremy Lin asking if he wanted to meet me on Saturday. He said that he couldn’t, but that we should meet the day of the reading, a few hours before the event. On that day, we arranged to meet at a smoothie shop called One Lucky Duck. I took a taxi there and stood outside of it, smoking. I had to wait a while because I had arrived about twenty minutes early. I had been very afraid of being late as I had gleaned from his books that Jeremy Lin hated lateness.
After waiting about half an hour, I saw Jeremy Lin walking towards me, carrying a MacBook. He was smiling. I started to smile when I saw him, and I wondered if it was because I was happy to see him, or if I was happy because he was smiling when he saw me.
We said hello to each other. Inside, Jeremy Lin helped me pick out a smoothie and bought it for me.
We sat side by side in a booth.
“Is that a tattoo?” Jeremy Lin asked of the name TOM written on my arm in black sharpie.
“No. It’s the name of my best friend. I wrote it today so that I would feel less nervous.”
Jeremy Lin nodded. We sat in silence for a few moments.
“I liked it when Adrien Brody said ‘Am Appy’ in your story.”
“Yeah, that was funny.”
Jeremy Lin gave me Xanax so that I would feel less nervous during the reading, and we split a tablet of MDMA. He put it directly into my mouth with his fingers. I thought about how people on the Internet would write about Jeremy Lin “drugging young girls” if they knew about this.
He turned to look at my face and sighed, “I can’t believe I’m twenty-eight.”
He started to tap on random keys at a rapid-fire pace on his MacBook. “I’m typing the URL to my secret blog,” he said. I laughed.
He wasn’t talking, just hitting random keys on his MacBook out of what seemed to me like boredom.
“Am I doing something wrong?” I asked.
“No. I feel like I can talk to you.”
He asked me what I had been doing in New York so far.
“Yesterday I met with the guy who wrote the shit-talking post about me that you responded to. He said he’s going to come to the reading, but he doesn’t know why because he hates Muumuu House. He hates n+1 too, though.”
“I feel like there’s people who like Muumuu House, then there’s people who like n+1, and then there’s those other people.”
“Yeah. I thought that people usually like one or the other. He was really nice and seemed really smart, though. I think I have a crush on him.”
“I don’t get crushes anymore,” Jeremy Lin said.
This seemed sudden, and kind of severe to me. I felt a little taken aback.
We sat in silence for a while.
“I feel like you don’t like me,” I said finally.
“No, I like you, I like you, I definitely like you.”
I pinched his arm with my index and middle finger. His arm felt tiny and bony and I didn’t like the feel of it.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and I stopped. This was my blatant attempt at flirting, and it had failed. I said that I was sorry and felt buzzed from the Xanax.
Then I said that I was attracted to him. I wasn’t sure if I was attracted to him or not, but said that I was because I was confused as to how he felt towards me and wanted to know.
“In what way are you attracted to me?” he asked.
“Isn’t there only one way to be attracted to someone?”
“Like you would have sex with me?”
“Yeah.”
“Who wouldn’t you have sex with?”
I felt offended by this, but just smiled and said, “Frat boys at my school who hit on me.”
“That’s…” he said, brushing me off.
“I thought you only liked really tall guys,” he said.
“I care mostly about age and intelligence, I guess.”
He said that he thought that before we met that I had made a point of saying that I wasn’t attracted to him.
“I just said that because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“You are attractive…I’m just not attracted to anyone. I watch too much porn,” he said, smiling.
“I’m sorry. I feel kind of affected by the Xanax. This is a really awkward conversation.”
He said that it was fine, and that he liked awkward conversations.
*
He said that he had to meet his friend at a bar, and so we left and started to walk towards it.
He began to talk about the email that I had forwarded to him.
“You are so smart and like, confident in your writing. I want to make you feel like you don’t need those people’s advice. Like I feel like there’s like fifteen versions of some writers, but…” I guessed the implication was that there was only one Marie Calloway. I was flattered, but I also thought about how he was urging me not to listen to anyone’s advice, while at the same time he frequently gave me advice. I wondered if what he really wanted was for me to only listen to his advice.
He asked me exactly what I had meant about what I had said in the forward about him and Muumuu House.
“I feel like I already told you, in that email I sent to you.”
I felt confused and frustrated by his disbelief and lack of satisfaction in my explanation, and wondered if perhaps that this was the result of there being something about the way that female writers are treated that male writers can’t grasp.
“I just feel like there’s something you’re not telling me,” he said.
“I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me,” I said, wondering about why he was badgering me about this issue after I had explained it to him the best that I could.
“It makes me feel like you’re using me to further your writing career.”
“No!” I said, and stopped in the middle of the street, my arm stretched out towards him. I was completely shocked that he thought that.
“What are you doing?” he asked, laughing.
I walked to the sidewalk where he was standing, and he started to walk again, but then I stopped and started to rub my eyes, halfway in between actually crying and forcing myself to cry. I wanted to cry so he would see that I was a good person and not a calculating user, but he seemed completely unfazed by my tears. He discussed people using other people in the literary world, and how most people had relationships like that, and about how it was okay to be honest and acknowledge them.
“I feel like you’re projecting qualities of other people or yourself onto me,” I said. I didn’t really think that, but I couldn’t think of any other way to articulate that I thought that he was wrong.
“I don’t think I am,” he said, smiling and shaking his head.
I thought then how it seemed impossible for me or perhaps even anyone to outsmart or manipulate Jeremy Lin, at least when it came to interacting with him on an interpersonal level.
“Can we start walking again?” I asked.
“Yeah. You were the one who stopped.”
We began to walk again and were silent for a while until Jeremy Lin said, “You didn’t get Good Morning, Midnight, did you?!” in a playfully accusatory tone.
“No, I got it,” I insisted, and felt relieved that he had dropped the issue of the email, though also sad about how he seemed to believe that I was indeed only trying to use him.
“But you didn’t start reading it yet?” he asked.
“I started it but, I don’t know. I like writers like Raymond Carver and Tolstoy and Joyce Maynard.”
“I feel like Jean Rhys is a lot more similar to how you write than how Raymond Carver or Tolstoy write. Are you not interested in reading writers who are similar to you?”
“I don’t know.”
*
We reached the bar and Jeremy Lin and I met his friend, a writer who would also be reading that night. They talked about drugs, facing each other with their backs to me. I sat staring ahead at the bartender. I ordered a beer and drank it rapidly, feeling suddenly very alone. I thought about what a quiet, ignorable presence I had. I wondered if for as long as I was with Jeremy Lin and there were other people there, I would always feel like a hanger-on.
*
Jeremy Lin, I, and the other writer walked into St. Mark’s Bookshop together. There were about eighty people crowded inside. I felt simultaneously excited and high on a sense of “celebrity,” and yet intensely ridiculous for feeling that way, as well as anxious. This was to be my first reading.
We all separated and I talked to the friends who had come to see me read as well as to a few fans of my writing who approached me.
After about half of an hour of talking and waiting, Jeremy Lin came to the microphone and announced that the reading was going to begin. I was sitting in the very front in a row of seats that had been reserved for all of the readers.
Jeremy Lin opened the reading and introduced himself. He read from his Twitter feed (“horror movie titled ‘Flying Shark that can Open Locked Doors’”) and after reading thirty or so tweets ended abruptly by saying, “that’s all I’m going to read,” and introduced me. The crowd applauded. I walked to the microphone.
“Thank you very much. I’m Marie. I’m going to be reading from a story that I wrote called ‘Adrien Brody’ …” I continued to awkwardly explain my story. I felt strange, but I had thought before how I should explain it, because otherwise I would come off as arrogant, a sort of unspoken “of course you’ve heard of me and my story.” Through the corner of my eye I saw Jeremy Lin smiling as I was explaining, like he was embarrassed, embarrassed of me.
“I’m sorry, I’m really nervous,” I said, laughing, as an apology to Jeremy Lin.
I began to read. I kept my eyes firmly on the paper and was able to become unaware that there was a crowded bookstore full of people watching me. While I read I felt like I was able to become like an automaton. I recited the words on the page without thinking or feeling much. But near the end of my reading, someone laughed after I read the line “I could feel him lose his erection,” breaking the audience’s silence. After the laugh, I looked up from the paper I was reading from at the audience. I was terrified by the sight of a hundred blank faces, staring. I quickly looked back at the paper and (shakily at first) began to read again.
When I was done reading everyone applauded and I walked back to my chair and hung my head down, with my face in my hands. I thought I had done well, but that I should present myself as being ashamed so that others would judge me less.
*
After the reading, Jeremy Lin and the rest of the Muumuu House readers went to Blue and Gold, a nearby bar, along with all of their friends. While I was talking to my friend, Jeremy Lin came up behind me and placed his hand on my shoulder. I thought about how I liked the feeling of his hand on my shoulder.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I feel like I didn’t do well.” I did actually think that I had done well, or at least okay, but I wanted him to say something nice about me.
“You did a good job,” he said.
We didn’t talk the rest of the night. Jeremy Lin talked to his other writer friends, and I talked to my friends who had come to see me read. But at the end of the night, I hugged Jeremy Lin before he left. As I embraced him, I felt like he hadn’t wanted me to hug him and felt uncomfortable. He felt very thin, even skeletal, to hug.
I was left thinking that he hadn’t liked me.
*
The next day Jeremy Lin emailed me, “How’s it going, how was your day? What’d you do?”
“Hi. In the morning I took the train from this guy’s house to back home. Then I went to meet this literary agent. He was very kind and seems to really like me and seems interested in representing me, I think, maybe, but says my next move is to get published in places like Harper’s before releasing a short story collection. That’s what people want first, apparently. After that I slept a lot. I feel lonely yet sick of people.”
“I’m interested in hearing about you and the agent. I feel like there would be an agent who would want to sell a book by you now, if you put a book together out of the things you have and maybe one more thing first then approached them with that. I don’t think Harper’s, etc. is necessary. I feel like it’s nearly impossible to get published in Harper’s unless you have major connections but you can get a book published without connections.”
“I’ll think about all of those things and ask people about it. Do you want to hang out today? I’m meeting this guy for lunch today at 1:30 and then I’m free until the reading,” I replied.
“You can ask me about book things. I feel like I know what I’m talking about re: agents and books. I’m meeting someone at 6:30 or so but I want to hang out with you. I’ll be done with the library at 4:30. I’m at 79 Washington Sq. South or I can meet you wherever. I’ll have email or text until then. I can give you some Xanax if you want.”
*
I took the R train to 8th street and we met outside of the station. Jeremy Lin examined my copy of “Monthly Review,” and then he led me to a vegan restaurant because I said that I wanted a drink before the reading.
When we arrived, I sat down and ordered a 32-ounce Sierra Nevada.
“How was meeting with the agent?” he asked.
“I think he liked me a lot.”
“Why? Why would anyone like you?” he asked in a jocular tone.
“I don’t know,” I said, laughing.
He must like me, you would only joke like that with someone you really like, I thought.
We started to discuss the reading. He read the last line of the piece he was going to be reading that night (“when I read my mom’s e-mail I cried also”) and asked me if I thought that he should add other reasons that he had started to cry then, like how he had no friends at the time.
“I think that’s kind of a cop-out,” I said.
“It’s more honest.”
In the end he decided to read it as it was originally written.
*
We started to walk to Housing Works Books, where the reading was being held.
“Who do you think is the biggest fan of your writing?” Jeremy Lin asked.
I smiled. “I don’t know. Probably no one.”
“It’s me.”
*
When we arrived at the reading, Jeremy Lin separated from me to be with his friend, who was thin and pretty and blonde. I sat in the seats reserved for readers, and spent most of my time watching Jeremy Lin chatting, huddled up with the blonde woman, looking at his iPhone together. The first reader read, and then it was my turn to read. I got on the stage and read like an automaton again. When I was finished, the audience applauded me, and then I returned to my seat. I didn’t pay attention to any of the readers. I only looked at Jeremy Lin talking with the blonde woman.
*
After the reading was finished I went over to Jeremy Lin and stood next to him. As we were talking, he was approached by a large group of fans. I stood there awkwardly as Jeremy Lin turned towards the group and began to talk with different people.
As I stood there looking at Jeremy Lin and his crowd I thought about how I desired to be close to him, for him to like me above all, and yet also how I felt overshadowed and stifled by him. Here, literally, as audience members flocked to him and everyone ignored me, and also as a writer, as my most honest thoughts and experiences were summed up by many as a Jeremy Lin imitation; a gushing groupie’s love letter to an older writer she desperately wanted to be fucked by. I thought back to a comment about me that I had read: “a story by a young, immature writer who’s trying to impress her writing idol [Jeremy Lin]” and how I would probably always feel stifled and overshadowed unless I were to somehow totally disavowal Jeremy Lin from my life and career, and accept all of the difficulty and pain that would bring. I wondered if I would ever be able to reconcile my ambition to be a serious writer with my desire to be loved.
*
At the end of the reading, Jeremy Lin, the blonde woman, my friend who had come to the reading, and I decided to go to Jeremy Lin’s apartment. There wasn’t enough room in the cab for all of us, so Jeremy Lin told my friend and I to take another cab and meet them. When we arrived on Jeremy Lin’s street, he hadn’t been waiting for us. I thought of a documentary I had once watched featuring an interview with Cynthia Lennon where she talked about being left behind by John Lennon on a train and how she knew then that their relationship was over. Then I felt ridiculous. I texted Jeremy Lin for his exact address.
*
My friend and I arrived at Jeremy Lin’s apartment. He and four other people were there. While walking in, I was struck by the starkness of it. It was dimly lit, and was totally bare except for a bed and other necessities.
I went to Jeremy Lin’s desk and took two tablets of MDMA, and an Adderall.
I went over to Jeremy Lin.
“Can I smoke in your room?” I asked.
“No, no no no…”
I smoked outside of the window, along with the four other people there. The blonde woman who Jeremy Lin had been conversing with at the reading tried to talk to me. She said kind things to me while I thought mean things about her.
I went onto Jeremy Lin’s bed, where his MacBook was lying, with his Gmail open. I typed “Marie” into the search bar. I clicked on an email conversation that he had with another writer who had read at the Muumuu House reading.
“I like Marie in person, but I’m not attracted to her,” Jeremy Lin had written.
“I expected to be more attracted to Marie in person. Also, I felt Marie read ‘poorly’, but she has a good reading voice,” the writer had replied.
I stopped reading.
“What did he mean by that?” I asked to Jeremy Lin who had come to sit next to me on the bed.
“It’s in quotes. You know what it means.”
“Like it was conventionally a poor reading?”
“Yes, that’s what it means.”
I felt like I was acting like what men refer to as “difficult and needy,” but on drugs I couldn’t restrain myself.
“Why aren’t you attracted to me?” I asked.
“I’m only attracted to girls who weigh like 100 pounds.”
“You think that I’m using you, like a sociopath,” I said.
“No.”
Jeremy Lin moved away to talk to the other people in the room.
I got onto his MacBook and Google searched “Marie Calloway” and intentionally sought out negative things that had been written about me. (“It was just a girl mimicking [Jeremy Lin.]”)
Jeremy Lin saw what I was looking at and scoffed. He ordered me to stop looking at those things because “it’s just going to make you sad.”
“Don’t you think there’s more things in life than just being happy? But, no, actually I feel silly that I cared so much about criticisms of me. It seems so immaterial in the face of doing readings and meeting with an agent and being surrounded by encouraging people…”
“Good.”
I got off of the computer and talked to my friend, who was standing near the window. We talked about men and body image and writing.
“I remember that you said that one day you want to write a story that’s completely incomprehensible to men,” my friend said.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, smiling.
“That’s sexist. You’re the most sexist person I’ve ever met,” Jeremy Lin interjected.
I flopped down on his bed, sighing, “Men are so oppressed.”
“Me and my friend were talking about how it seems ridiculous to call you a ‘feminist,’ but you support a lot of female writers through Muumuu House and you wrote that article about how female writers are taken less seriously than male ones.”
“I did write that… I think everyone is sexist and racist.”
I lit a cigarette and started to smoke it in Jeremy Lin’s bed.
I said something to Jeremy Lin about inconsiderateness.
“How am I inconsiderate?”
“In your books,” I said, thinking in my mind how a review in the New York Times had referred to the Jeremy Lin character in one of his books, Richard Yates, as a “psychologically damaging bully.” I thought about how calling him a “bully” was too harsh, but that he had seemed really controlling and intent on molding the female character in that book, and that this was interesting to me because I thought that he had been trying to mold me as well.
He was going to respond, but then I sat up, revealing cigarette ash all over his white sheets.
“This was incredibly inconsiderate!” This was the first time I had ever heard, even heard of, Jeremy Lin raising his voice.
“Well, now you’ll always have a part of me in your bed,” I said, smiling and laughing.
He looked me and I averted his gaze. I could tell he was disgusted.
“I need to write,” I said.
“What do you need to write?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t have anything in mind, I just felt that I had to, in that moment. Jeremy Lin slid his MacBook to me and looked over my shoulder. I typed about how I felt that Jeremy Lin owed me something, that he had a responsibility to me.
“I feel like I have given you a lot of publicity,” he typed back.
I felt annoyed that he seemed to not understand what I had meant.
I typed bad things that had happened to me in my life, and that how I thought that usually male writers wrote female characters poorly, but that his portrayal of a teenage girl in Richard Yates was exceptional.
Jeremy Lin got up off of the bed and walked away to talk with his other friends.
My friend and I lay on Jeremy Lin’s bed and talked intimately. Then Jeremy Lin addressed me, standing up, holding a copy of his book, Bed.
“I didn’t like that one. I liked Richard Yates, though,” I said.
“You don’t like pretentious prose?” he asked, smiling.
I asked him if he would give me a copy of Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee because I had enjoyed the author’s reading.
“Won’t that book just make you jealous?”
“Why would it make me jealous?”
“You know, she is my wife.”
“I know.”
He threw four or five Muumuu House books at my head.
*
The other guests at the party decided that it was time to leave, and left. Jeremy Lin and my friend urged me to leave as well, but I said that I didn’t want to yet, and that I would catch up with my friend in a few minutes.
Jeremy Lin was lying stretched out on the other side of his bed, as far away from where I was sitting on it as possible. I said things, and he didn’t respond.
Finally he said, “Your friend is waiting for you,” with a high degree of irritation in his voice.
I thought about how normally being some place and interacting with someone when they don’t want me to, as Jeremy obviously didn’t then, is one of my worst fears. However, while I was on drugs I didn’t care about any of that. I thought that it was interesting how I was for the first time in my life pushing past the desire to never interact with someone in a way that they didn’t want me to.
“Oh, yeah.” I had genuinely forgotten about her. I realized that I should leave for her sake.
“I just don’t want you to lose interest in me and stop talking to me, Jeremy,” I said quietly.
He said no, and that he only publishes people on Muumuu House that he thinks he will be interested in for a long time.
I got out of his bed and walked out of his apartment.
*
When I got back home from New York, the first thing that I did was email Jeremy Lin.
“Hi. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable at the party thing. It’s just drugs make me spill my guts. I feel like you would be interested in that in my fiction but not from the high, crazy girl at a party. I’m not sad you aren’t attracted to me, really, by the way.”
“It’s okay. I usually like talking in that manner, just not at that moment. I had also felt irritated by your other actions, like how you got cigarette ash everywhere. So I didn’t feel like talking like that at that moment. But I liked talking to you at other times. Did I give you you are a little bit happier than I am? Almost all of it is about a girl I liked that I wanted to be closer to who didn’t want to be closer to me. I feel like I felt how you felt when you were lying in the bed not wanting to leave. It’s in one of the poems in there, where I don’t want to leave some girl’s place but she’s kicking me out.”
I wanted to ask why he had told me about that part in his book, but I was too afraid to.
*
“I don’t think Jeremy Lin likes me anymore. I’m afraid that he’s lost interest in me,” I wrote in an email to a mutual friend of Jeremy Lin and I.
A few minutes after I sent that email the friend responded, “I don’t think you understand him. You expect him to see you as a sex object, but he sees you as a person, and as a writer. You should stop thinking of sex as your best thing and realize, like Jeremy has, that writing is your best thing.”