So this has just been a weekend chock-full of firsts, because
I am, for the first time ever, a Diarist.Net
award finalist. In three years of journaling, quarters
have come, and quarters have gone, and nary a finalist graphic has graced this
journal.
Now, I admit that I don't often write finalist-worthy entries.
But Robyn thought I did, and threw
this entry into
the Best Account of Public/News Event category, and it made it into the
top three.
I was an advisor on the panel this quarter, so I knew I was nominated, which
I suppose I wouldn't normally be allowed to tell you but since
Robyn already told you,
I'm invoking the doctrine of inevitable discovery*, which is my favorite
legal doctrine, because the name just rolls off your tongue so nicely.
Anyway, I'm really very honored that my entry about a
twenty-year-old tragedy
was selected as a finalist from among some truly heartbreaking entries about
the tragedy we're all still dealing with.
On a much, much lighter note, I'm sorry to report that my actor boyfriend never wrote me back.
About a month ago, I clicked open my Hotmail account and discovered a brief e-mail from an actor I had literally dreamed about dating. I had written about the dream in this entry, and apparently he was sitting at home one evening Googling himself, and the entry came up. The snippet in Google contained only the part about dating him, and not the part about it being a dream, so he thought it was an ex-girlfriend's site. He visited, saw that it was a dream, kept reading, and evidently liked what he read, so he wrote and told me.
I immediately went into a spastic dither, the likes of which had not been seen since last February, when I was almost really close to possibly being mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. I consulted with my closest advisors and we deemed the e-mail authentic, mostly because if you were going to impersonate a famous person in an e-mail in an effort to play a joke on me, you wouldn't pick him. (You'd pick him, yes?)
So I spent the better part of the afternoon drafting the perfect response. I wanted to convey the same smooth attitude I cultivated when I lived in Los Angeles, where it is perfectly routine to discover Dennis Franz standing behind you at the grocery store and therefore profoundly uncool to look like a blubbering starstruck nerd from Kansas. (Don't get me wrong, I actually was a blubbering starstruck nerd from Kansas, I just learned how not to look like one.)
Anyway. I composed what I thought was a pretty good answer, friendly but aloof, saying things like "I'm glad you liked my writing" and avoiding things like "OHMYGOD, I can't believe that, like, a FAMOUS PERSON actually wrote me!"
Then, of course, I was compelled to rent this movie, which I hadn't seen before. And, well, I did like it a lot, and I did have his e-mail address, and how often do you get to tell someone who was actually in the movie that you liked the movie? So I wrote again, a four-line e-mail, swearing that I wasn't about to start stalking him but I just saw this movie and I really enjoyed it and that's it, I swear, I'll never write again.
And I haven't. And he never wrote back. And yeah, okay, that would have been cool, but I'm not bitter that he didn't. I'm sure he has much more important things to do than to become e-mail pals with a girl who has already admitted to dreaming about him which I would imagine would be kind of creepy. He took a pretty big chance in writing to me in the first place, seeing as he had no guarantee that I wouldn't go completely mental and give out his e-mail address to everyone and start stalking him for real, so really, you have to give him credit for that.
Honestly, I just had a really nice weekend, carrying around this little secret about the actor who wrote to me. And yes, I have purposely avoided mentioning his name here, because I'm sure he isn't reading anymore, I don't want him finding this entry in Google.
(If you are still reading, please don't write me back now just because I bitched about it, because I'd be all kinds of embarrassed to know that you had seen this.)
(Well, okay. You could write me back if you really, really wanted to.)
(But you don't have to.)
(I think I need to go to bed. Good night, everyone.)
* This doctrine says that evidence which would normally have to be suppressed under the exclusionary rule may be admitted, if it can be proven by the prosecution that the evidence would have been discovered by the police through other legal means. Aren't you glad you know that now?