After waiting a whole week to receive the first assignment in the memoir-editing project, during which I admit to not being successful in containing my guarded optimism on it, I received two chapters for review, accompanied by a brief note.
It was late evening and I had just reached home after a long ride home, following a wonderful weekend at J’s country home. I felt a bit delirious. Maybe the memories of playing frisbee at the beach on consecutive evenings and the three-hour hike up and down a nearby hill, being accompanied by two canine acquaintances we had met on the way up, were contributors.
Maybe it was the first explicit allusion to affection in the note, which seemed to have peeled off the outer coverings of my predefined role in the relationship, which I had little contribution in defining apart from its meek acceptance.
I’d nevertheless felt ambitious enough to promise the return of at lease one story reviewed by bedtime, something I wasn’t able to keep. I had found myself engrossed in a blend of watching a game on the telly and jamming on my newly-sweetly-setup P-bass.
By the time I remembered, I had already committed myself to bed with the ritual of taking my medications for the night. So I sent a brief apology, asking for an extension of the original deadline by a day.
Monday was relatively busier, but by evening I had carved out enough time to have finished reviewing, editing, annotating a few paragraphs of a story that described the naughty misdeeds of a youthful man in boarding school, confined to an adolescent’s body. I did find myself enjoying the process, maybe even more than what I had expected to.
One of the unexpected joys was what I ended up discovering on the previous editor/reviewer, who had left a wonderful note at the top of the document. The existence of a previous reviewer was brought up briefly in the original conversation where the informal agreement for collaboration for the memoir project was agreed upon.
Looking things up is as natural a part of the review process for an an editor as is the lavishing of saliva on the cleanliness of hilt is for a cat. Google showed me wonderful things about the person I was looking up. A well-known literary figure whose first book—a memoir, would you imagine—was met with praise and adulation because it gave a voice to the voiceless for a marginalized people, which I proudly belonged to.
So in my response that went attached with the partially reviewed story, I’d ended up writing, in post- and post-post-scripts, notes of joy and happiness at this discovery.
Tuesday morning was rung in by a fierce note questioning my sanity and audacity—for having cooked up a fantastic story, spotlit by the assignment of the incorrect sexual orientation to the original editor/reviewer! The only logical conclusion to come to is that this person must still be living rent-free in the heart of the unamused storyteller.
By late afternoon, the fire remained un-doused despite a couple of explanation/apologies. The actual purpose of the review seemed to have been discarded, thanks to the ubiquitious inaccessibility of Microsoft Word’s doomed Track Changes feature, in the eyes of the less experienced.
I felt like I had willed into existence a barrier that I had feared will get in the way of the next phase of a fledgling friendship/relationship. I felt like I had proven myself right in wronging in the things I set out to do. I felt weak and vulnerable.
Yet, somehow, on Wednesday, I found myself having the strength to gently guide the email conversation toward its rightful direction. By afternoon, I found myself in a Zoom call, covering the rear of Microsoft—for the ineptitude of its software engineers who stubbornly refuse to bother about the user experience and accessibility of the dreaded feature.
It’s Friday morning as I type this, and I still don’t have a substantive review of my review yet. I’m sitting with my appendages crossed, feeling like I have some strength to remain in the chase.
