So my little writing group is coming up on our one year anniversary, and I want to do something special, but I’m not sure what I should do – because it seems like every Monday when we get together it’s an Occasion, you know?

I’ve thought about making sweets, but it would have to be something Really Nice – see, there’s always food, whether it be popcorn (we almost always have popcorn, and Zoe and I totally compete for the half-popped ones that settle to the bottom), brownies that someone brought from a batch that went extra, or fruit. There was one night when Avery brought carrots because she, “wanted something crispy.” And while Zoe and Skipper argued over the idea of the meaning of crispy, Avery was into the carrots. She still insists to this day that carrots are crispy. Maybe it’s like how apples are called crisp or snappy when they’re perfect ripe. I’ll go there.

But I totally digress. Skipper said something the other night about tiramisu and world peace. I think it came up one night when we went to Barnes & Noble for frosty drinks because it was too damned hot to meet in the basement – you know they have these little scoop-sized desserts at the cafe? OM NOM NOM.  I wonder how difficult it would be to make a tiramisu…

In honesty, I never imagined that I’d be involved in a writing group, but now I don’t know how I’d ever manage without this one. I got involved in it accidentally – Skipper was doing a research project for her women’s’ (womyn’s?) studies major, and she got in touch with a bunch of women to meet and be interviewed, a bunch of women who had some connection to politics, right? And one of the women that she talked to was Candice, who used to be one of our housemates*. But I didn’t know that they were meeting, and so went about my merry daily business, which that day involved being in the basement, working on Daniel’s  Big Blue Moon dress, midnight satin, to match the silver shoes he picked up in Paris the March before. I think I was laying out Swarovski crystals to figure out a fancy pattern or something. Anyway, I was engrossed enough that I wasn’t really giving a full ear to the conversation behind me. They must’ve totally thought I was rude.

Well! Candice (go figure) never actually showed up. Which is amazing, considering that she spent so much time unconscious on the couch down there**. But Skipper and the other women had no idea what Candice looks like – so they assumed that I was her. I caught onto that about halfway through the interview, because, you know, I’m wicked quick on the upshot.

See, the only experience I’ve had with politics is voting, and a short stint with PIRG back in college***, so when Skipper asked me how I got into politics, I was alllll confused. Turns out that Avery is a speech writer (how glamorous!), and Zoe does political work on the local level with voting and voters’ rights (how cool is that?) – and then there’s me, with a paper sack full of Swarovski crystals and a hunk of deep blue satin, stammering, “I, uh… Well, you see… Um… What holds women back from politics? Well, maybe… men?”

That’s we all realized what was going on. I put down the crystals back in the baggie and made some popcorn. We gobbled down two bags of the stuff while sorting out the confusion.

Well, Skipper still wanted me to be part of her project, and I kept showing up for the interviews. Sometime during the second session, Avery mentioned that she wanted to write a book – write something that was for herself, instead of for someone who hired her to write. And we all sort of jumped in, being supportive, and saying that we would help her – how about if we just egged each other on? Zoe was taking a poetry workshop at the library and needed time to write, and I have all these pieces of dragon stories – why don’t we all just meet every week to write?

As Kim Deal would say, “And then the next thing you know…” and ta-DA, we have a writing group.

So here we are almost a year later, and I think we should mark the date, you know? So. Tiramisu?

***

*I will eventually talk about Candice. I’m still a little scarred from the last few months leading up to her departure.
**Grrr! Shared space is for SHARING!
***I don’t recommend it.