A couple of months ago I finished my last screenplay, "Wildflowers of the West."

I wrote to an e-friend that after I put this script "through its paces in the marketplace," I would retire from writing screenplays.

For me -- unrepresented and lightly produced -- the "marketplace" consists of paid readers and contests. So, although I think this is the best script I have ever written, and does in fact represent the best I can do, there is scant chance that "Wildflowers" will ever see the light of day, or of film, even digital.

I wish I could report that this development was unfolding with a Zen-like bow of acceptance (and the concomitant re-direction of my energies to a greater purpose) or even a jaunty Katherine Hepburn shrug-and-stride away from the elusive object of desire, but I am more like the truculent adolescent, kicking at the dirt, wearing sweats and sneakers and attitude, exuding defiance but yearning to be told, "But you are pretty, you are."


Of course, the genuinely pretty are never soothed this way, and it is certainly never followed with brave advice, "Now, if only you'd wear a little more eye makeup ..."

I am reminded of my first serious-ass crush. It took place in junior high and the object of my desire was Alex Logan. Desire is the operative word here -- I had never felt anything like it. I had been enamored of pretty eyes or a graceful swoop of hair, but Alex was the first one I wanted to do things to, specific things, things I could picture and blush about. Olive-skinned, tawny, angry, haughty, Alex was North Kirkwood Junior High School's James Dean.

To say that Alex Logan was unaware of my existence would be such an understatement that I cannot even find a metaphor for it -- I had, at that stage, not even a taxonomy to assign myself to, it was junior high, so we had not yet divided ourselves into our interests -- inept sports (funny how athletes are worshipped without regard to their skill), orchestra, drama.

Anyway, I lusted. And I learned that Alex Logan was going out with Karen Carter.

This was a scandal! Karen Carter was a year older than Alex Logan. She was a freshman in high school! while Alex and I (Alex and I! sigh!) were eighth-graders.

Cut to: the flurry of calendar pages being torn away. High school over, college over, I am back in Kirkwood, engaged in patio cocktails on one of those long midwestern summer evenings in which the shift from day to night doesn't lower the temperature but merely changes the key.

A relative of mine is getting married and these are the bridesmaids and the bridal party flotsam, the chicks who were cheerleaders, or pom pom girls, or anything but brainy like -- honor roll, right? Writer award from the state or whatever? You always were serious. Where do you live now? New York? New York City? In the city? Kimmy Miller's cousin Brad went there, you know, the gay one, wasn't it a shame what happened to him ...

Karen Carter? No, she's not coming. She's away in Illinois at a funeral, I think it was her grandma, or a great aunt ...

"I used to be so jealous of Karen Carter," I voiced, with the courage of much group therapy. "Dating Alex Logan and all."

Pause, then exhalations into the already thick, already damp and laden, air. Despite their junior varsity triumphs, these bridal shower girls were, nearly to the man, chain-smokers and had learned from their mothers the art of the long smoky dragon-like exhalation of disappointment and disapproval.

"He used to beat the shit out of her," one of them said.

"Alex?" I was dumbfounded. "Karen?"

"Remember that trip to Cabo, she was so bruised she had to wear sunglasses the whole time," one bridesmaid said, hissing smoke. "I was up in first class and I went back to say hi and I like saw her all swelled up and everything and I'm, like, God, you're such an asshole."

"Karen?" I repeated. "Alex?"

But the bridesmaids and courtiers had moved on; my concerns were nothing. I was there on sufferance, after all. It was only my indisputable connection with the bride that kept me on that privileged midwestern patio. I had never handled a pom-pom, worse yet, I had forsaken Kirkwood for New York, so who cared about my crush on Alex Logan?

He used to beat the shit out of Karen Carter.

So wow, I thought, on that Missouri lawn, good thing I never got what I wanted.

But couldn't I have gotten it for just a little while?

posted by Elizabeth at 11:14 PM