This Woman Is Stalking Me

When I was nineteen, Joyce Maynard published her article An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life. In The New York Times Magazine. It was a cover story.

I was pretty broken up about it. Even a nineteen-year-old redneck like myself knew what a New York Times Magazine cover story meant. This was during a period of my life when I wrote maybe a sentence over an entire three-month school vacation. What was wrong with me?

Plus Maynard was as cute as the dickens.

While I was working at my kitchen job one summer, I met a girl from Maynard's home town, who told me some really intriguing gossip about her. Which didn't make one bit of difference in my life, though the gossip turned out to be true.

Over the years I would see Maynard's essays here and there. I couldn't publish squat and major publications were taking her work on subjects like having her haircut and going to the store with her kids.

Then after I saw To Die For with Nicole Kidman, I found out Maynard wrote the book.

Well, I can be mature. Really. She has her little career going for her. And now I've got my little career going for me. The past is the past, right?

Wrong!!!! She's publishing YA, which is very nearly kids' books!

I can't get away from her.

But why should I think I should? Perhaps I'm just making an unreasonable demand.

She's still cute as the dickens, too,