First Times

 

I’m writing a book and I hate it, but I also think it’s good. I hate the characters, but they’re well developed. I hate the dialogue, but it’s fluid and witty. I hate the setting, but it’s vivid and lively. I’m not saying I’m a good writer; I just finally have a solid piece of writing that I’m proud of… but I fucking hate it, and I think I’ve figured out why.

It’s the first draft of a first manuscript about first love. Now that I think about it, the story is full of firsts. I have to write about what I know, and I’m 22, which means all I know are firsts. I have no business writing a whole book. I don’t hate my characters because they’re bad characters; I hate them because they’re naive and self-destructive. I hate them because they’re my age, and their depth is limited to my 22-year-old understanding of the world.

I want to continue working on this book because I think I've started something that might be worth reading one day, but I’m afraid I’ll grow out of this project. Actually, I hope to; I expect to grow out of it. I’m about to finish college and move on from the concepts I’m writing about. Whole new sets of firsts are waiting for me on the other side of graduation.

That’s the thing about first times, we want them to be so monumental and significant, but most of us stumble through our first time doing anything. Our first job, our first serious relationship, our first fight with a friend, the first time we get behind the wheel of a car. Our first time doing anything remotely “adult” or scary might make for a funny story, but it’s rarely riveting or enjoyable. We get more pleasure out of the humor of the anecdote than we do from the experience itself. First times have no precedent. The idea that you have to do something multiple times to get good or comfortable with it is nothing new.

I know you already thought of this, so I’ll just point out the elephant on the page… I have yet to meet a person who has a romantic or even particularly pleasant story about losing their virginity. A person’s first time having sex is almost always awkward, uncomfortable, painful, messy, or (coughs) quick – if you’re lucky. Good sex doesn’t happen until later. The “later” sex is what people want to read about.

Firsts are sort of boring. They have a quality of innocence that might strike a tone of nostalgia or wholesome awkwardness, but I read to escape my awkwardness, not to relive it. So why would I put something into the world that’s already been stamped with a mark of mediocrity?

Maybe I should pay more attention to getting the “first times” out of the way and less attention to making them count. Maybe there’s more value in living for the repeats. I think that’s the problem with this manuscript I’m painfully working through. It’s not going to make it past the file on my desktop because it shouldn’t. It has no right to be read. It’s my first.  

I’m going to move on and experience more things to write about. Better things. More firsts times, but also more second times. It’s the second times that I should be writing about, and the thirds and fourths. I have a whole life of second times ahead of me. So this is me, putting the book project to bed… because at least this isn’t my first blog post.