Books, Movies, TV shows, stage plays, all say the same thing about writers. Well, I think there is a check list to follow before one can be considered a writer. I think I have established myself the clichés to warrant calling myself one. Let me go over my checklist: Divorced, check. Suffered a mental breakdown, check. On going sessions with a Shrink, check. A week in a psychiatric ward, check. Lap top, check. Strong imagination, check. Ability to put together sentences, check.

The thing is the clichés doesn’t stop there. The following narrative is so mind-bogglingly-clicheish (it’s a word) you would think that it’s fiction. Trust me I did not make this up. They say write what you know, so here it is:

As much as I want to enthrall you of my fascinating testimony on how writing prevented me from killing myself, I will stop right here in trying to attempt to engage you with my deplorable, sad story. Because I’m trying to write something uplifting, well it’s kind of sad too but I don’t really see it that way where I’m coming from.

            The thing is I have a problem, a girl-problem! I know writers have been writing about it since ancient times. Hell! I’m sure there is an undiscovered Stone Age Painting somewhere out there in Namibia, France or Australia about a caveman bemoaning his long lost love.

My story is not particularly unique but I beg of you to spare me some of your time, since this narrative is more of my attempt of finding her than anything else. I want people to spread this story around until someone forwards me a good lead so I can locate Valeria.

            Any information would be very helpful but if you are not from Los Angeles California you are not the Valeria I’m searching for. I know it’s so…so…damn I can’t think of a better word…cliché…a writer in Los Angeles looking for a girl named Valeria. If I have a bow and arrow and I shoot it up in the air and wait for it to land back to earth, chances are I’m gonna fucking skewer a writer. It’s the same thing when it comes to finding a chick in LA named Valeria.

As far as I know she is Russian (that narrows it down a bit) petite and small, about 5’2” and she has light brown hair with a short haircut, a pixie cut. It’s been two months since I saw her last so I don’t know if her hair has grown long enough to a bob. Mid-twenties, light brown eyes, elegant straight-edge-shaped nose, luminous skin, olive-tinged.

Are you still with me? Good, because I am about to dish out the good part and tell you why I find it compelling to mention that I am a writer.

I wrote because I just wanted to write. My twelve year old loves to read books and she was constantly writing up stories. To encourage her creativity I humor her and we make up stories all the time. As a therapeutic tool it was very effective because I felt I’m doing something productive, and that I finally am doing something that I wanted to do since I was learning English back in the Philippines.

After my divorce my intention is not to hook up with a woman. I am trying to heal myself and I was “immersed” in my writing, as in I-couldn’t-sleep-obsessed-with-my-writing immersed. Anyway, I discovered my groove, my process. I don’t want to bore you with it but let me just say that I was really surprised that, in all places, I have to be in a coffee shop to able to write. Well I can write anywhere, I just found myself more creative in a coffee shop. I know…I know…a writer hanging out in a coffee shop…when will the clichés end!

So there I was writing day and night, going to the coffee shop in the morning, going home for a two hour rest then reporting to my “office” again. It was a plus that the seats are so damn comfortable too, drinking coffee for no apparent reason as if I needed help staying awake, I enjoyed myself and the creative process.

One hot day in January, after a very weird chilly LA winter, I was minding my own business writing and enjoying my cup of joe, then out in the corner of my eyes I see a smooth pair of legs walking in the coffee shop. After months of seeing covered up women a chick in tiny shorts is a fresh vision, more of an apparition really. When I looked up, my first thought was “Fuck me”. Not “Fuck me” as in sex “Fuck me” but more of a “oh-my-lord-what-a-vision!”

Then my next thought was “Never gonna happen!”—she was that gorgeous! Not “hot”, no. “Hot” does not suffice in describing her—she was in the levels of Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly.

So I thought that a millisecond away from writing is a millisecond wasted so I immediately ceased any other thought or fantasies about her—it was unproductive. But it wasn’t lost on me that she was seated just two tables down and that her shirt was too small that her belly button was showing—she was wearing a thin cardigan most of the time but boy there’s no avoiding seeing her smooth and flat belly. Oh men it was heavenly! Just to make it crystal clear she is no slut, her style is not that whatsoever. You know a slutty style from a sexy style when you see one. I’ve been in LA long enough to distinguish who are attention hungry women to the ones who are just effortlessly sexy. She is a woman of elegance and her beauty heaps superlatives.

So it was a shock when she started talking to me. I fucking know alright! A beautiful woman finding interest to a lonely and tormented writer—I swear it’s the truth!

It didn’t start off right away. It must have been a month before we started a conversation. I’m at the coffee shop every day, I see her every other three days or so and I always avoided her—I do not want to waste any time with my wonderings, I really don’t know why I was obsessed with my manuscript, as if I was going to lose my mind if I ever stop writing—so I kill any thoughts whatsoever in talking to anybody in that place and that’s including ultra-pretty girls. I just don’t want to waste any time entertaining any fantasies about an angelic beauty.

One day for whatever reason I found myself sitting close next to her, as in a foot-close-next-beside-me close. I was early as usual, she came in right before lunchtime and the gods must be with me since the usually crowded coffee shop was all of a sudden a table free. She sat down next to me and my first thought was “Oh shit!”

For a full ten or twenty minutes I didn’t know what to write. Usually I was just typing away, clicking loudly at the keys, annoying other patrons. But at that moment she sat next to me I immediately became awkward with everything…my writing, my clothes, my hair, all of a sudden I was painfully aware how everything with me was wrong. I told you I wasn’t looking for a hook up so I really didn’t care what I wore until that instant.

Cups of coffee and a small bladder don’t go well together, so I always find myself having to ask my neighbors to watch my laptop as I go to the big boy’s room, besides my loud keystrokes, routinely asking people to watch my stuff must’ve been the second top reason why I annoyed people.

I’ll give it to you straight. My mouth was dry the whole time she was sitting next to me. With herculean effort I forced myself to write, it didn’t matter that most of what I was writing didn’t suit my taste, I just have to write to keep the momentum going and to quit being too self-conscious.

The first hour I thought I was just imagining it. I can see in the corner of my eye that she was reading off my screen instead of doing her own thing with her laptop. At times I felt she wanted to start a conversation with me. If it was a creepy old Korean guy, seated next to me that day, I would’ve left but there’s no way that I would snob an Elisha Ann Cuthbert beauty like her. Out from nowhere, the inspiration started to flow, like a dam bursting really. And with the risk of sounding arrogant, I was writing magnificently and eloquently. Fuck me! I discovered my muse! May be she found me, I don’t know, how it works.

My unfinished manuscript at that time kind of hinges on one persona, a supporting character, with great importance rivaled only by the heroine. I know that the character would be beautiful but in no way was I on top of my writing form. I didn’t know how to describe her, but for some reason, at that moment I knew my character was going to look like the stunner sitting next to me.

I have to talk to her, get a closer look, and I had a perfect excuse to start the conversation. I turned to her…and I asked her if she could kindly watch my stuff while I go to the bathroom. Genius!

I knew that she would look over and read what I was writing when I left. Women are such curious creatures. Sure enough when I came back her first question was: “Are you writing a book?” Holy shit! I have to play it cool, milk my mysterious persona, the stranger, the creative romantic in the coffee house. So I said “Something like that”. Smooth right? Her “curiosity meter” must have registered high levels because I saw her eyebrows arching when I answered her. Holy crap balls! I was actually impressing somebody! I let it simmer for two minutes or so as I fumble with my earphones pretending to adjust something. Then she said “what about?” and that’s how it all started.

I told her the storyline and she listened showing slight interest. I wasn’t trying to intrigue her, but at that time I didn’t know what her haircut was called so I asked her. She told me it was a pixie cut and I proceeded to type, not wanting to forget it and eager to create my character’s physical description. Then she asked: “Are you describing me?” I couldn’t read her reaction. Was she offended? Did she thought me creepy? So I answered her with my typical moronic response when caught off guard by a beautiful woman: “It’s more of a reference”. And lo and behold…she smiled…really more amused than flattered but I thought it was a good sign.

And then it began—the friendly banters. I was working, she was working, so it wasn’t really a smooth flowing communication. It’s more of a minute here, a minute there and it went like that for several days.

I was practically saving her a seat for the whole two to three weeks at the coffee shop as she tends to come in late. Most of the time I found myself leaving the place before she does, I have a disability that hinders me from sitting in long hours.  I was desperate because I didn’t know how to take it from there and I just let the days gone by without any significant move on my part. I didn’t even buy her a cup of coffee or anything. Have I mentioned that I was just recently divorced after a decade long relationship, I was so rusty somebody could have deposited me to the junkyard, plus I was always awkward with girls way even before my first marriage.

Although we were talking and laughing she still treats me at arms-length. I can sense what was bothering her, I found out she was an extremely private woman per our conversations, and that when she figured out that I described her in my book, she kind of felt violated. So I’m kinda torn if what I’m doing right now would work. This might backfire but the hell with it. These are desperate times.

So I thought long and hard and decided that I should show her how I wrote about her:

“Captain Jane Austin is a petite woman, even her military gear and battle dress uniform couldn’t hide her slim built. She appears to be in her early twenties, several years older than me, yet she is shorter than I am. She has light brown hair, in a pixie cut, a short hairstyle for women; her hair is long enough that she is using hairpins to tuck the ends of her hair—neatly and elegantly behind her ears— exposing her graceful oval-shaped face. She has expressive light brown eyes, elegant nose and voluptuous lips, not too full yet not too thin, that highlights her already stunning appearance; as if it was not enough, she was also blessed with a flawless face, smooth with a tinged of olive giving her a luminous glow. If there was a Helen of Troy, “The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships”, Jane Austin might be her reincarnation. I have no idea how a beautiful and sophisticated looking woman like her can fit in the Army—her beauty seems out of place, surreal, in the gritty world of soldiers. All of a sudden I feel I look inadequate in front of this woman, I realized that I should’ve made an attempt to brush my hair or at least put on a lip gloss or something. All though I am taller than her, and the fact that I just met her, she already has an effect on me as to make me feel small. I feel dreadfully insecure and simultaneously jealous of this woman…”

That’s how my heroine sees the stunning woman that I had the great luck and pleasure of meeting in the busy, pricey, coffee shop that I got to intimately come to know as my “special place”.

Great writers believe in their muses. I the unknown, mediocre LA writer is in no position to quarrel, because I know, even in just a brief, singular, precious point in my life I saw one. And I am blessed that the one I met loved what I wrote. For the first time I saw Valeria blushed. As if to prove my muse’s influence over me even further, I was moved to write a poem, something I haven’t attempted in twelve years. I offered it to her, that’s the only way to show my appreciation, write a poem and give praise to my muse. Seeing her blush for the second time I was filled with exuberance, it’s like taking a closer look at the beauty of the sunrise, making me wanting to see more and help me overcome the bleakness of the night.

On three more occasions I saw her.

I always thought I had a good sense of humor but I always fumble when I talk to her. It’s either that I’m funny and that she’s the one who doesn’t have a good sense of humor or it was the other way around. To match her beauty she has an equally cool personality. She wasn’t easy to react, that’s why I was happy seeing her blush, and she has a dry sense of humor. She’s smart and we appear to be in the same wavelength. If I knew that I would see her for just three more days I would’ve done something about it. I played on the idea of staying behind and waiting for her to be done working and walk her home…but I was just so awkward I didn’t know how to go about it.

This is where I have to end my story. I really don’t know how to write how I lost my muse because if I attempt it, if I put down the words, I would be making presumptions. I do not want to mess this up.

But don’t feel too bad for me, I finished the manuscript, a great personal achievement, and nobody can take that away from me.

Now help me. Spread the word. I want to find her so I could present her a copy of my manuscript. Any leads would be helpful but what I really need is a solid information because I will only hand my manuscript to her in person. And maybe when that time comes, when I again find myself face-to-face with her, I will have the courage, and the wits, to buy her a cup of coffee.



ALL PHOTOS AND ARTICLE ARE COPYRIGHTED.
COPYRIGHT 2013 RG and His Quest

Thanks to my Brothers: RG no. 1 and RG no. 2 for all the help and E, for    sitting in for a photograph.